Apple Search Ads discovery campaigns are designed to provide advertisers with maximum reach on the App Store, helping them uncover new, relevant keywords for search results ads. A typical discovery campaign uses broad audience targeting, with two distinct ad groups: one set to broad match and another with Search Match enabled. This structure ensures that your ads appear for a wide variety of search queries.
Discovery campaigns are essential for all accounts, regardless of the campaign structure, as they help expand the keyword pool and drive new downloads. For newcomers, these campaigns are critical for quickly building a keyword list, though budget concerns often lead to neglect, which can harm long-term growth.
Understanding the importance of discovery campaigns is essential for all Apple Search Ads users. Even as your campaigns scale and expand, discovery campaigns will remain a vital component of your App Store advertising strategy.
Apple Search Ads offers three primary match types for discovery campaigns:
● Search Match
● Broad Match
● Exact Match
For each new market you’re targeting, you can set up a discovery campaign with any of these match types to maximize reach and keyword discovery.
Search Match automatically identifies relevant keywords based on your app’s metadata, category, and market context. This type blends branded, generic, and competitor keywords without manual input.
For example, if Kazidomi, a Belgian app for healthy products, runs a Search Match campaign, Apple could target keywords like “supermarket,” “healthy food,” or competitors like “Walmart” or “Yuka.”Search Match can also show ads for high-traffic keywords like “Twitter” or “Snapchat.” To optimize, set irrelevant keywords and any terms already targeted in other campaigns as negatives. Additionally, exclude branded keywords to focus on uncovering new opportunities.
Regularly review the Search Terms report to identify successful keywords and transfer them to stable campaigns for further optimization.
With Broad Match, you gain the ability to uncover new keyword opportunities by providing seed terms of your choice. Unlike Search Match, which automatically generates keywords based on your app's details, Broad Match requires you to specify the initial keywords. Apple Search Ads then finds related keyword variations to broaden your reach.
For instance, Kazidomi can target competitor keywords like “Walmart” or “Yuka” in France using Broad Match. Apple Search Ads will then expand the keyword list by identifying variations linked to these terms, increasing the potential for new discoveries.
However, be sure to manage negative keywords carefully. This includes excluding branded terms and any keywords already used in other campaigns. Doing so ensures that your Broad Match campaign uncovers new prospects without overlapping with your established keywords.
Once the campaign is live, it’s important to consistently monitor the Search Terms report. Identify keywords that show high performance and move them to more structured campaigns. This helps you leverage the most effective keywords while preventing them from being recycled in discovery efforts.
While Search Match and Broad Match campaigns are effective for uncovering new keywords, Exact Match campaigns offer a higher level of control over your ad targeting.
With Exact Match, your ads will only appear when users search for the specific keywords you’ve chosen. This precision ensures you're reaching highly motivated users, making it ideal for focused discovery efforts.
Since you're bidding exclusively on specific terms, there’s no need to set negative keywords. However, it’s still important to review keyword performance regularly to confirm that your targeting is aligned with your campaign objectives.
There are several reasons to complement discovery campaigns with manual keyword research:
● App Updates: New features can generate new search queries. After updates, quickly compiling a fresh keyword list helps target these new opportunities.
● Seasonal Events & Holidays: Special occasions or events can lead to new search trends. Timely keyword research is key to targeting these short-lived opportunities.
While discovery campaigns offer a continuous stream of new keywords, they can be budget-restricted. Manually discovered keywords can be added to your broad match campaign to verify performance and explore more keyword variants.
You can align manual keyword research with discovery campaigns in various ways:
● Directly to Exact-Match Campaigns: Add newly discovered keywords directly to exact-match campaigns for precision targeting. Consider creating a separate ad group to monitor performance.
● Testing within Discovery Campaigns: Place new keywords in a separate testing ad group. Once you’ve identified the best performers, transfer them to exact-match campaigns.
● Probing/Proxy Campaigns: These are ideal for quickly increasing impressions and testing the performance of new keywords.
Effective management and optimization of Apple Search Ads discovery campaigns involves several key tasks:
1. Regularly track campaign performance to identify high-potential search terms for user acquisition.
2. Move successful search terms into appropriate campaigns—brand, category, competitor, or value-tier campaigns—set to exact match type for more precise targeting.
3. Transfer top-performing keywords from exact match campaigns into the broad match ad group in your discovery campaign. This enables the platform to discover additional relevant variations.
4. To ensure transparency, add all exact match keywords from your exact match campaigns as negative exact match keywords in your discovery campaign.
5. Add all broad match keywords to your discovery campaign as negative exact match keywords. This prevents underperforming or irrelevant search terms from targeting your ads.
6. For promising search terms discovered in your discovery campaign, you can add them to an exact match testing campaign (also known as a proxy or probing campaign) for further performance evaluation.
When managing Apple Search Ads discovery campaigns, there are a few important considerations:
1. Broad-match campaigns can easily become a burden without regular oversight. Make sure to review them periodically to negate irrelevant or underperforming keywords.
2. Discovery campaigns may require a warm-up period to accumulate enough data for effective performance evaluation. Ensure you allocate a sufficient budget to gather the necessary data.
3. Newcomers often trim budgets too quickly, hindering proper scaling of discovery campaigns. Proper optimization requires ongoing investment and a long-term approach to see meaningful results.
4. If you're using a value-based Apple Search Ads campaign structure, consider adding a testing (or proxy/probing) campaign. This will help you evaluate the effectiveness of newly discovered keywords in relation to in-app or in-game events, such as purchases and subscriptions.
For better campaign management and optimization, consider leveraging FoxAdvert’s expertise in app marketing. Our team of experts is ready to help you drive targeted traffic and achieve long-term success on the App Store. Reach out now to start maximizing your campaign performance!
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