So far, Apple Search Ads (Apple Search Ads) has opened a total of 60 countries and regions including North America, Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, etc., and has become an important channel for overseas market purchases. However, most of the domestic promotion staff are still in the white stage, and there will be misunderstandings on some basic problems, so we have sorted out some of the most common ASM difficult questions on weekdays to answer your questions.

Myth # 1: There is no need to place ASM on brand words or number one

Many customers we have collaborated on have made this request, and feel that the brand word or the number one word is already in the high ranking position, and there is no need to spend extra money to buy advertisements. However, we highly recommend the placement of brand words or top-ranked words for two reasons:

① The ASM advertising position is the first position on the search results page. If the keyword advertisement is placed on the competitive product, the first-ranked word will be squeezed into the second position on the result page and the traffic will be grabbed by the competitive product

② Apple has a protection mechanism for brand words. ASM ads for brand words are generally assigned as text materials. According to our research data, most users will still directly click on the natural search results of the App, and will not click on the ads. Yu Free occupies one more placement on the search results page.

Misunderstanding 2: Keyword popularity and search index is to change the soup without changing the medicine, the popularity has no reference value

There is a difference between keyword popularity and search index, which is expressed in 2 points:

① They have different scopes. The popularity is only for ASM, and the search index is for all keywords in the App Store;



② Their algorithms are different, and their numerical ranges are also different. The keyword index is generally distinguished by 4605, reflecting whether the keyword has popularity, and the popularity is within 100.

We believe that these two data should be used as reference data in the ASM launch. Some keywords with "0" but not popular "0", or keywords with popular "0" and not "0" are also necessary Delivered. Because our test data shows that this part of the word is also of order of magnitude.
Myth # 3: ASM only targets keywords that have been covered

Keywords that are not covered can also be placed in ASM. We recommend that a large number of keywords can be screened at the beginning of the placement, and then the keywords will be deleted according to the advertising effect. In general, keywords can be extracted through product analysis, competing products (App / website / social media / review), search engine, Baidu index, Weibo search list, Google trends, user research, etc.

Myth # 4: Keyword coverage only needs to be filled in the promotion area

There is not necessarily only one language in which the keywords of a single region are effective. For example, there are currently two regional language versions in effect for keyword coverage in the United States: English (United States) and Spanish (Mexico).

We recommend covering 100 characters for all regional language versions in effect in the delivery region.
It should be noted that the keywords covered by different regional language versions cannot be combined, for example, "free" is covered in English (United States) keywords, and "games" is covered in Spanish (Mexico) keywords, but the keyword "free games ”will not be ranked.

Myth # 5: The bad post-installation data for ads is due to delivery issues

The follow-up data for ad installation includes activation, retention, payment, etc. There may be several reasons for the poor conversion of these data:

① Data attribution problem: If the user has turned on the advertising restriction tracking (LAT On), then the data after his installation will not be classified into the ASM channel, but attributed to the data of natural users;

② The quality of keywords is not good: if the correlation between keywords and products is low, it will cause users to mistakenly click or find that they are inconsistent with their target products after installation, and directly uninstall them to reduce the data conversion rate after installation;

③ The product needs to be optimized internally: there are few or not enough internal entrances to attract users, and the loading time of the landing page after the jump will reduce the data conversion rate after installation.

The solutions to these problems are:

① Data attribution: restrict the target users of advertisements, and block LAT On users;

② Keyword quality is poor: block keywords with low correlation and poor conversion rate;

③ The internal optimization problems of products vary from person to person and need to be adjusted according to their own product problems.

Myth # 6: Increase bids to increase ad impressions

Both bid and product weight will affect ad impressions. When the product weight under keywords is low, no matter how high the bid is, it may not be assigned to impressions.

In addition to bids and product weights, the auction environment will also affect the advertising impressions. For example, if a new advertiser participates in the auction, its product weights and bids are very high, so even if you increase the bid, the proportion of advertising traffic is still decreasing For example, an advertiser who previously served withdrew from the auction, and its historical acquisition accounted for a relatively large amount, so even if you did not raise the bid, the existing ads will get more impressions.

Myth # 7: No ads can be placed on scheduled products


The scheduled product can be advertised to guide users to pre-order the product, and the product will be automatically downloaded after going online. However, it is impossible to count the reservation data of the product. Developers can check the growth of the reservation data of their products in the iTC background, but they cannot distinguish the reservation users brought by the ASM channel.

Myth # 8: The unit of ASM traffic distribution is App

Our research found that Apple allocates traffic in units of creative sets (Creative Sets). Under the premise that the optimization of the material set is good enough, creating more material sets can further expand the volume.

Misunderstanding 9: Putting keywords already covered can improve its keyword index

After the keyword is placed in ASM, it will not affect the keyword index. The search index is related to the search volume, and the search index can be improved after the search volume increases. However, ASM ads are displayed after the user ’s search action, and the search action occurs before the user sees the ad. Therefore, placing ASM does not affect the search volume of keywords, and naturally does not affect the search index of words.