If you’re an indie app marketer looking to scale user acquisition profitably, understanding how to structure Apple Search Ads campaigns can be your secret weapon.
Straight from the App Masters Virtual Summit, this post shares a snippet of expert insights from Gabe of Incipia.co — revealing the foundational (and advanced) strategies you need to crush it with Apple Search Ads.
How to Set Up Apple Search Ads Campaigns
For beginners who are wondering how to get started in setting up Apple search ads campaigns, you should consider these things: your budget and how much time you have to manage it.
You can go with the starter route, which is enough for most who spend a few thousand a month. If you are spending tens of thousands a month, you have to go to the more advanced route.
Basically, for Apple search ads, you’ve got a broad match that gets you really broad coverage of all the search terms that people are searching every day. This search match is a good way to start because it gets you a wide net that captures all the search terms without having to do a lot of effort.
You also want to add an exact match campaign where you have exact match keywords. If you’re bidding five dollars for that then you know that you’re going to pay up to $5 for that exact keywords.
Over time, use your search match campaign and look through the search terms and pull all those search terms that you want to bid over into your exact match campaign; and add them as negatives to your search match campaign. This way, when somebody searches for that term and it’s going to your exact match, you can pay enough for it to get traffic.
You might also want to have a brand campaign just to do some brand defense. The app results in iOS and searches are huge and they may take up two-thirds of the screen. So if you’ve got the competitors coming in and showing ads on top of your organic results, there will be a surprising number of people who are just gonna click on that first result. You might lose some keywords if you have some downloads of your brand.
On the more advanced side, you can structure things into tiers. You can have ad groups that have your highest LTV for those users in your exact match and use the CPA goal to bid a little bit higher and use a very high bid to make sure you’re giving the algorithm enough room to bid highly for those keywords that you really have good LTV.
You might have tier 1 LTV where your bid is very high. You might have a tier 2 where your bid is medium and your LTV is medium and a tier 3 where you LTV is a little bit lower because you want traffic but don’t want to pay as much for it. These things are on the more advanced type.
How to Distribute the Budget Between Broad Match Versus Exact Match
You’d want a kind of waterfall or as much budget as you can to the exact match. If you have $1,000 a month and you can spend all of that for the exact match then that’s great.
Over time you’re gonna build more keywords in exact and you will spend more budget, but if you’re just starting off you might allocate $250 towards exact match and the rest of your budget towards the broad and search match. If you’re capping out of budget on the exact match you can raise it up to $300 then to $350 and see how much you can spend on exact match.
Why Apple Search Ads Matter for Indie Apps
Apple Search Ads are one of the highest-intent user acquisition channels available. When done right, they can:
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Bring in quality users who are actively searching for apps like yours
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Drive lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) compared to other paid media
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Give you valuable keyword data to improve organic visibility
But the key is setting them up strategically from day one.
Step 1: Start Simple — Broad Match and Search Match Campaigns
If you’re new or operating with a modest budget (under $10,000/month), Gabe recommends starting with:
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Search Match Campaigns: Let Apple automatically match your app to relevant search terms. Great for discovering new keywords.
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Broad Match Campaigns: Target broader variations of your keywords to cast a wider net.
Pro Tip: Search Match is your keyword discovery engine. Use it to find new high-performing terms you wouldn’t think of manually.
Step 2: Build an Exact Match Campaign
Alongside your broad match efforts, set up an Exact Match campaign:
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Target very specific keywords you want to own.
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Control your bids and budget precisely.
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Over time, move successful search terms from Broad/Search Match campaigns into Exact Match for maximum efficiency.
Action Step: Always add your top-performing keywords as negatives in the discovery campaigns once they’re added to Exact Match. This avoids bidding on them twice.
Step 3: Defend Your Brand
Don’t lose users at the last second!
Gabe recommends setting up a Brand Campaign:
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Bid on your app’s brand name and variations.
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Prevent competitors from stealing traffic right above your organic result.
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Protect your hard-earned app store presence.
Step 4: Distribute Your Budget Strategically
When it comes to budget, here’s the ideal waterfall structure:
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Prioritize Exact Match: Spend as much as possible here first.
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Secondary on Broad/Search Match: Use remaining budget to discover new terms.
Example:
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Budget = $1,000/month
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$250 for Exact Match (to start)
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$750 for Search/Discovery
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Increase Exact Match spend over time as you harvest more winning keywords.
Quick Tip: If your Exact Match campaigns consistently spend their daily budget, increase their allocation — that’s a sign they’re working!
Step 5: Advanced Setup — Tiered Bidding Based on LTV
If you’re spending tens of thousands a month, level up by tiering your campaigns based on user Lifetime Value (LTV):
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Tier 1: High LTV users — High bids
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Tier 2: Medium LTV users — Medium bids
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Tier 3: Low LTV users — Lower bids
This structure gives you better control over customer acquisition cost relative to expected revenue.
Conclusion: Actionable Tips for Winning with Apple Search Ads
To recap, if you want to crush it with Apple Search Ads:
✅ Start with Broad Match + Search Match for discovery
✅ Build and prioritize an Exact Match campaign
✅ Defend your brand with a dedicated Brand Campaign
✅ Allocate budget smartly: favor Exact Match where possible
✅ For advanced scaling, tier bids based on user LTV
Remember: It’s all about collecting the right data early — and turning those insights into precision targeting.
