Advanced | Campaign Management

Use Recommendations

Apple Search Ads Advanced includes customized recommendations designed to help improve the performance of your search results campaigns. You can easily apply recommendations for keywords, bids, and daily cap.

You may see recommendations for:

Keywords: Relevant terms people are using to search for apps like yours on the App Store. Adding these can help boost discovery of your app. Keyword recommendations also include recommended max CPT bids.

Bids: Recommended adjustments to your max CPT bids for high-opportunity keywords. Applying these can increase the likelihood of your ad showing.

Daily Cap: Suggestions to help increase opportunities for app downloads.

Note that you may not always see recommendations for your campaigns, but we encourage you to check back often. Recommendations are available for search results campaigns only, not for Search tab campaigns.

To help you better understand your current performance and why we’re suggesting specific bids and keywords, you can also view key metrics on the individual Recommendations pages. Impression share, rank, average cost-per-tap (CPT), tap-through rate (TTR), and more give context to our bid recommendations. And we display search popularity with new keyword recommendations and keyword bid suggestions to help you better assess opportunities.

Find the Recommendations link

The Recommendations link can be found in the upper-right corner of the Campaigns, Ad Groups, All Keywords, or Ad Group Keywords dashboard. It’s located next to the Custom Reports link.

How to view your recommendations

Click the Recommendations link.
On the Recommendations page, you’ll see totals of the available, dismissed, and applied recommendations for each app that’s actively running campaigns in your campaign group. Recommendations are organized by category: Keywords, Bids, and Daily Cap.
Within each category, click the number next to an app name to view the recommendations for that specific app. Keyword and bid recommendations are ordered from most to least relevant, and daily cap recommendations are presented alphabetically by campaign name. You can adjust the metrics you see within the bid recommendations tables by clicking the Edit Columns link in the upper right.
You can apply, edit, or dismiss recommendations individually or in bulk.

Apply or dismiss recommendations individually

From the row of the recommendation you’d like to apply or dismiss, go to the Actions column. Click the “✓” symbol to apply the recommendation, or click the “—“ symbol to dismiss it.

Apply or dismiss recommendations in bulk

If you’d like to apply or dismiss all available recommendations, select the checkbox at the top left of the recommendations table in the header row. If you’d like to bulk apply or dismiss specific recommendations, select the checkboxes to the left of each recommendation. Then click the Apply or Dismiss button in the lower right.

Understand impression share metrics

In the keyword recommendations table, you’ll see the following metric for each exact match keyword suggestion:

Search Popularity: The popularity of a keyword, based on App Store searches. Search popularity is displayed as numbers from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most popular.

Search popularity can help you identify which keywords may present the greatest opportunities to drive campaign performance.

The bid recommendations table also displays search popularity for exact match keywords and their suggested bids, along with the following:

Impression Share: The share of impressions your ad(s) received from the total impressions served on the same keywords, in the same countries and regions. Impression share is displayed as a percentage range, such as 0‑10%, 11‑20%, and so on.
Rank: How your app ranks in terms of impression share compared to other apps in the same countries and regions. Rank is displayed as numbers from 1 to 5 or 5+, with 1 being the highest rank.

Reviewing impression share and rank metrics can help you better understand the opportunities that specific keywords present. If a term is particularly important to your brand, monitoring impression share can help you evaluate whether there’s room to grow its impact. It often helps to have an impression share target in mind and adjust your bids accordingly to reach it.

Another way to potentially increase impression share is to raise your daily caps. Doing so can help create more opportunities for your ad to show in search results. Removing an ad group’s audience refinements can also help boost opportunities for your ad to show to a broader audience.

There may be cases when your impression share is only, say, 11‑20% but your rank is high. That means the keyword may have lots of advertisers bidding on it. Using impression share and rank metrics together can help you determine how much opportunity there is to gain in share.

While practices like raising your bid or daily cap can help your chances of winning more auctions, remember that our recommendations don’t guarantee improved performance, and may vary over time.

How to edit a recommendation before applying it

Edit a recommended keyword’s bid

Click the amount in the Recommended Max CPT Bid column.
Make your edit and click the Update button.
Click the “✓” symbol in the Actions column to apply the recommendation.

Edit the destination ad group for a recommended keyword

In the Ad Group Name column, click the Choose Ad Group link. Or, if there’s an ad group listed in the Ad Group Name column, hover over it, then click the Edit link that appears.
Within the Choose Ad Group or Edit Ad Group window, choose an ad group from the menu.
Click Save.

Edit the ad group for multiple recommended keywords

Click the Edit Ad Groups link in the upper right.
Within the Edit Ad Groups window, choose a country or region from the menu to see a list of the recommended keywords for that country or region. You may also choose a grouping of countries and regions, but this will display only those recommended keywords that apply across that grouping of countries and regions.
From the list of keywords that appears, deselect any terms you don’t want to add to the ad group. If you deselect a keyword and want to re-add it, use the menu to choose that keyword again.
From the Ad Group Name menu, choose the ad group where you’d like to add the keywords. The ad group must be active, promoting the same app, and running in the same countries or regions as the recommendations.
Click Save.

On the Keyword Recommendations page, you’ll see your edited ad group in the Ad Group Name column next to your selected keywords. You can then choose to apply your updated recommendations individually or in bulk.

Edit a bid or daily cap recommendation

Click the amount in the Recommended Max CPT Bid or Recommended Daily Cap column.
Make your edit and click the Update button.
Click the “✓” symbol in the Actions column to apply the recommendation.