Structure Apple Search Ads by intent, and let discovery feed the rest
A workable Apple Search Ads account separates brand, category, competitor and discovery traffic. Here is the structure, match types and negative keyword rules that keep it clean.
A common way to make an Apple Search Ads account hard to manage is to let a single campaign hold brand terms, generic terms, competitor names and Search Match traffic together. One budget and one set of bids then has to serve searches with completely different intent. You can't read the results, and you can't change one part without disturbing the rest.
The fix is a structure organized by search intent. It isn't the only valid layout, and Apple does not require it, but it is widely used among app marketers, and it makes every later decision easier.
Four campaigns, four jobs
A common layout, described for example in a widely cited guide from the ASO consultancy Phiture, separates the account into campaigns for each market:
- Brand. Exact match keywords for your own app and company names, plus common misspellings. These searchers already know you. The campaign usually has the lowest cost per tap, and it shows you how much branded demand exists.
- Category (generic). Exact match keywords for what your app does, grouped into ad groups by how close the term is to a download decision. A search for a specific feature is a stronger signal than a search for a broad topic.
- Competitor. Exact match names of similar apps, grouped by category or value proposition. These tend to be the most expensive taps with the lowest conversion rates, so they deserve their own budget cap, not a share of a general pool.
- Discovery. A campaign whose job is finding terms you haven't thought of, not driving volume by itself.
Whether to bid on competitor names at all is a business and legal judgment that depends on your category and your risk tolerance. The structure works with or without that campaign.
Give discovery two ad groups with different jobs
In the Phiture layout, Discovery has two ad groups. One has no keywords at all and just turns on Search Match, which lets Apple match your ad to searches based on your app's metadata and similar apps. The other uses your existing exact match keywords as broad match keywords, which expands to close variants, synonyms and related searches. The broad ad group can surface expensive unrelated queries, so watch it closely and cut individual keywords that waste spend.
Keep these two apart so you can tell which mechanism found a useful term and which one is burning budget.
Use negatives to stop your own campaigns bidding against each other
If a keyword is in your brand campaign and also in discovery, the two compete for the same impression. The rule that follows is simple: in each Discovery ad group, add the exact match keywords from the brand, category and competitor campaigns as negative exact match keywords. Discovery then only serves searches you haven't already claimed elsewhere.
This list needs maintenance. Each time you add a keyword to a core campaign, add it as a negative in Discovery. Without a script, this is manual work, so put it on a weekly checklist rather than a vague intention.
Close the loop every week
Discovery is only useful if what it learns moves into the core campaigns. A routine that holds up:
- Open the search terms report for the Discovery campaign.
- Pick terms with enough taps to judge, and add them as exact match keywords in a small test ad group, sometimes called a probing group.
- Give them a short, fixed period at a modest bid.
- Promote the ones that convert to the right core campaign, and pause the rest.
- Add each promoted term as a negative in Discovery.
Note that Apple hides terms with very low volume, so a search term report will never show you everything.
Decide budgets by role, not by habit
With the structure in place, budgets become a statement of strategy. Brand needs enough to avoid running out of daily budget on your most valuable searches. Category is usually where growth comes from. Competitor is optional and should be capped by what it returns. Discovery should stay small, because it exists to feed the others. Hypothetically, if the account spends $10,000 a month, you might begin with a clear majority on brand and category, a capped slice on competitors and a small remainder on discovery, then move money according to the cost of the downstream action, not the cost per tap.
Split by country when markets differ in cost or conversion, since each needs its own bids. Don't split further than your volume supports; campaigns with a handful of taps a week cannot be optimized.
The takeaway: build the four campaigns, wire discovery to the others with negatives, and run the weekly promotion loop. Structure doesn't raise performance on its own, but it makes it obvious where performance is coming from.