Apple's Today tab and product page ads need their own measurement plan
Apple Search Ads is adding ads to the Today tab and to the bottom of product pages, starting October 25. These are browse placements, not search, so budget and read them separately.
Apple has told developers that app ads will begin appearing on the App Store's Today tab and on app product pages starting October 25, in all countries except China. With the existing Search tab and search results placements, that makes four places an app can advertise. Apple first announced the new placements in July, saying only that they would appear "soon for testing."
The strategic point is that two of the four are not search. A person who types a query has told you what they want. A person who opens the Today tab or scrolls to the bottom of an app page is browsing. Those audiences convert differently, and mixing their results into your search numbers will make both harder to read.
What the two new placements are
- Today tab. The Today tab previously showed only editorial content. Reports from the July announcement say the ad slot sits in the second position on the Today page and carries the same blue ad marker as Search ads. Apple's pitch is that the app can appear prominently on the front page of the App Store.
- Product pages. Ads appear at the bottom of other apps' product pages, below the section showing the developer's other apps. Reports say developers cannot choose which apps' pages their ad appears on, so an ad may appear next to a competitor's listing.
Apple says ads only use content from approved App Store product pages and follow the same privacy standards as its other first-party ads, with no targeting of individuals or of groups smaller than 5,000 users.
Keep them out of your search campaigns
Search campaigns are organized around keywords, bids and match types. The new placements work differently: there is no query to match, so the structure that makes search readable doesn't apply. Create separate campaigns for each new placement, with their own budgets, and don't add them to the campaigns where your brand, category and competitor terms live. That way, a spike or drop in the new placements doesn't distort your search benchmarks.
Set a cap and treat it as an experiment
You have no history for these placements, and neither does anyone else. A fixed test budget is the honest approach. Hypothetically, if you spend $40,000 a month on Apple Search Ads, you might test each new placement with a small share of that, enough to buy a meaningful number of taps over four to six weeks but not enough to hurt your search program if the placement underperforms. The right number depends on your cost per install and how many installs you need to read a result.
Decide before launch what success looks like. Pick one metric that reflects value, such as cost per trial start or cost per purchase, and one guardrail, such as the maximum cost per install you will tolerate. Without that, any result can be argued in either direction.
Expect different intent, so measure beyond the install
Browse placements tend to create awareness and curiosity, which can produce installs that look cheap and then fail to engage. Judge them on what happens after install, using your attribution provider or backend data: activation rate, trial starts, early retention, and revenue per install. If you can only see the install, you will favor whichever placement produces the cheapest ones.
Also watch your search results for a halo. If a Today tab campaign brings people who later search for your name, those taps may land in your brand campaign. This makes brand campaign performance look better and the new placement look worse than it really is. Compare brand search volume before and during the test, and note any change next to the placement results.
Get your product page ready
Ads draw on approved product page content, so the page you send people to is the creative. Review your screenshots, preview video and first lines of text with a browsing user in mind: someone who didn't search for you and needs to understand quickly what the app does. If you are already using custom product pages with Search Ads, consider whether one of them suits a browsing audience better than your default.
Know what you can't control
Based on the July reporting, developers can't pick the pages their product page ad runs on. If that holds, you can't reliably exclude competitors' pages. Judge the placement as it is described today, and confirm the available targeting options in your account before you commit budget.
The takeaway: run Today tab and product page ads as a separately budgeted, separately reported test, decide the success metric before launch, and measure value after install, not just cost per install.