Modify audience settings

Make optional adjustments to define who can see your ads

When you create an Apple Search Ads Advanced campaign or ad group, audience settings are automatically optimized to help you reach the most App Store customers. If you’d prefer to drive app downloads or reacquisition among specific audiences, you can adjust your audience settings. Keep in mind that modifying your audience settings will narrow your audience and reduce the number of impressions your ad receives.

If you’re going to modify audience settings in any of your campaigns, it’s a good idea to also create a campaign that will reach all eligible users. This will allow your ads to appear to a broader set of users who may also be interested in your app, but may fall outside of your modified settings.

Device type settings

Apple Search Ads Advanced defaults to show your ads to customers who use device types that are compatible with your app. You can also choose to show your ads only on iPad or iPhone, or set different bids and audience criteria by device. Note that if you choose to serve your ad on iPhone, it may also show on iPod touch devices.

Location settings

By default, ad groups are set to reach all users in the countries or regions you choose for your campaign. However, Apple Search Ads Advanced supports location refinement within certain countries and regions. If your app serves specific areas only, this feature ensures you don’t use your budget to show ads for searches occurring outside those areas.

Note that location refinement capabilities are currently available in the following countries and regions only:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China mainland, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, and U.S.

Location refinements can’t be set within campaigns that are running in multiple countries and regions.

All users

This is the default customer type when you create a new ad group. To provide your ads with the maximum reach for relevant App Store searches, it includes all prospective, former, and current customers of your app.

New users

This customer type maximizes the number of your conversions that will come from first-time downloaders of your app.

Returning users

This customer type enables you to reacquire customers who have previously downloaded your app. The customers who see your ad may have had the app in the past but have since deleted it, may have it downloaded on another one of their devices, or may have it currently on a device. Downloads in the first two scenarios would show up as redownloads in your reporting. If customers already have the app, they’ll see an Open button. If the app isn’t present on the specific device they’re using, they’ll see a redownload icon.

App redownloaders can be a valuable audience to target. Setting up your Apple Search Ads campaigns to include Returning users can help you optimize potential for both downloads and in-app spend.

Users of my other apps

Use this customer type to cross-promote your app to users of other apps you own.

Audience volume minimum

For ads with specified audience criteria to run, audiences must have more than 5000 customers. If the audience minimum isn’t yet reached, you’ll see your ad group on hold and a message informing you that the audience is below the threshold. Once the minimum audience size is attained, your ad group will automatically start running.

For Campaign Management API users, the New Downloads and Redownloads install data fields are available in the Campaign Management API via the reporting endpoint.

Demographics settings

Apple Search Ads Advanced optimizes your ad groups to reach customers across demographics, but you can refine your settings by age and gender if preferred. Keep in mind that no ads will be shown to customers whose Apple Accounts are registered to minors under 13 years of age or whose accounts are registered as Managed Apple Accounts. The youngest audience age you can target in the countries and regions where Apple Search Ads is available, including the U.S., in Europe, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, is 18. In Algeria, Canada, and South Korea, it’s 19. In Burkina Faso, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, it’s 20. It’s 21 in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Madagascar, Malawi, Montserrat, Namibia, Niger, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and United Arab Emirates.

If you run a campaign across multiple countries and regions, you’ll see 18 as the youngest targetable age, but ads will only serve to customers who are the appropriate age as defined by their country or region, as specified above. Ads for apps with a 17+ rating will automatically serve to users age 18 or older only — or as defined by their country or region — even if you don’t set any age refinements.

For other apps, if you select All Ages, you may reach users under 18 years old. However, Apple Search Ads doesn’t target only users under 18 years old. Again, no ads will be shown to customers whose Apple Accounts are registered to minors under 13 years of age or whose accounts are registered as Managed Apple Accounts.

Note that when you apply age or gender refinements, you automatically exclude customers with Personalized Ads turned Off.