Understand and create
ad groups

Use ad groups to define who sees your ads

Apple Search Ads campaigns contain ad groups where you can specify different max CPT bids and audience settings. In Today tab, Search tab, and product pages campaigns, ad groups include bids and audience settings only. In search results campaigns, ad groups can contain bids, audience settings, keywords, negative keywords, and ad variations. Each of your campaigns will be made up of one or more ad groups.

Note that the time zone you set when you created your Apple Search Ads account will define the start and end times for all of your ad groups and reporting metrics.

Consider focusing each search results ad group on a theme or strategy

To make each search results ad group as efficient and effective as possible, think about how customers search. Each ad group should focus on a common keyword theme or strategy related to your app in anticipation of how customers might search for it. You can also consider creating an ad variation based on a custom product page you’ve set up in App Store Connect to tie to your theme. You may want to set ad group max CPT bids for more common-themed ad groups higher than those with keywords related to a less common theme. Distinguishing ad groups this way also allows you to track and manage your spend separately.

Here’s what this might look like:

Say you have a camera app with some unique filters that aren’t available anywhere else. You notice that 80 percent of customers are searching for it from an iPhone. Consider creating an ad group specific for iPhone so you can further refine your bids to get more impressions from iPhone users.

Or, if you know that customers of a specific gender or age, like males aged 18 to 34 years, are more valuable customers to you, you can create discrete ad groups to closely manage your exposure and max CPT bids for these audiences.

How to create a new ad group

  1. On the Ad Groups dashboard, click the Create Ad Group button.
  2. On the Create Ad Group page, enter a name for your new ad group.
  3. Set a default max CPT bid. If you’re creating a search results ad group, you can also include a CPA cap.
  4. If you’re creating a search results ad group, choose whether you’d like Search Match on or off.
  5. If you’re creating a search results ad group, choose to add keywords and/or negative keywords.
  6. Modify device settings to show ads to iPhone and/or iPad users.
  7. Choose to refine your audience by customer type, demographics, and/or location.
  8. Set a start date and, if you prefer, an end date and/or dayparting.
  9. Click Save.

How to pause or activate ad groups

  1. Start from the Ad Groups dashboard.
  2. Select all the ad groups you want to activate or pause.
  3. From the Actions menu, choose Activate or Pause.

How to remove ad groups

  1. Start from the Ad Groups dashboard.
  2. Select the enabled ad groups you want to remove.
  3. From the Actions menu, choose Remove.

Removing an enabled ad group will permanently stop its ads from running. You can view removed ad groups by selecting the campaign, and toggling between Enabled, Removed, and All on your Ad Groups dashboard View option on the right-hand side of the screen.

Historical reporting data is still available, and you can view and download data for selected ad groups and keywords. Select the ad groups or keywords you want to download, and click Download Data from the Actions menu.

Note that removing an ad group is a permanent action. Once removed, it cannot be restored or modified.