The Game-Changers in UA: New Ad Placements

The App Store is a global platform with over 600 million weekly visitors. While 70% of the App Store visitors use search to find their next app, 65% of all downloads happen after these searches. Also, the average conversion rate for search results ads is more than 50%.

Considering these numbers above, and the $500M ad revenue of Apple in 2019 and $4B estimated for 2022, it is evident that Apple will be seeking ways to expand its ad business significantly in the upcoming years.

As a part of this growth process, Apple has recently expanded its Apple Search Ads inventory with new ad placements – on the Today tab and “You Might Also Like” list of an app’s product page on the App Store.

New Opportunities to Promote your app on the App Store

By now, the Search tab and search results placements have been available for advertisers with Apple Search Ads on the App Store.

Now, Apple offers two new ad opportunities to help developers and advertisers reach users across their entire App Store journey to drive discovery and downloads of their app.

In this blog, we’ll dive deep into the details of these new ad placements and provide you with a complete guideline to leverage them into your user acquisition funnel.

Today tab Ads

This new ad placement will appear on the Today tab on the App Store.

This ad placement will be clearly marked as an ad with the same blue banner as Search tab ads and search results ads. And it’ll be working with Cost-per-Tab (CPT) model.

Considering it’s right on the page visitors see first when they open the App Store, this will undoubtedly be a very valuable ad placement for developers.

A Complete Guideline for the Today tab Ads

The Today tab ad placements must be a custom product page with at least four portrait or five landscape images. And this page will be approved by App Store Connect and Apple Search Ads, respectively. Custom product pages can also be submitted for approval independently of an app update in App Store Connect.

After the App Store approves a custom product page, it’ll appear on Apple Search Ads to create a Today tab campaign. Once a Today tab campaign is created, the ad will need to go through Apple Search Ads ad review.

The Today tab ad placements must correspond to the guidelines below:

• The promotional messaging in each ad creative asset must contain at most 50 characters or 3 lines of text. This excludes the text within the screenshot.
• All ad creative assets must include screenshots from the app you’re promoting. These assets can’t contain promotional, lifestyle, or other images.
• The app screenshots within the ad creative assets must be prominent and undistorted. App screenshots must also fill up at least 2/3 of each ad creative asset.
• No pricing, offers, or ranking claims are allowed in ad creative assets.
• No font styling, similar to the App Store Today Card, is allowed. The phrases “Game of the Day” and “App of the Day” can’t be used in the ad creative, as well.
• The language used in the ad creative must match the language selected in the App Store Connect.
• If an image mocks a device and contains a bezel, the bezel must be accurate to the latest Apple devices.
• The ad creative can’t feature images considered violent, sexually explicit, or otherwise inappropriate.
• The ad creative must comply with Apple Advertising Policies.

Similar to the Search tab, the Today tab ad placements offer you two audience options; reach all eligible users and choose specific audiences.

Available targeting parameters include devices, customer types, demographics such as gender and age, and locations.

Once you select “Choose specific audiences” and add other targeting parameters, you will narrow your audiences and drastically limit your impressions. The main reason is the users with Personalized Ads turned off cannot be exposed to your ad.

On the other hand, if you select “Reach all eligible users”, your ad can be delivered even to the users with Personalized Ads turned off. Therefore, to reach the broadest audience and maximize your impressions, you should go for the “Reach all eligible users” option.

Owing to their high visibility, the Today tab ad placements have the potential to be exceptionally worthwhile for Apple Search Ads. These ads can be visible to all users as soon as they open the App Store, so it is anticipated that they will considerably impact this fierce competition in the app marketing ecosystem.

Product Page Ads

The second new ad placement in the App Store will be coming directly to the product pages themselves. While scrolling down to the bottom of product pages, you can see the “You Might Also Like” section. Advertisers will be able to place ads under this section.

You can run your ads across all relevant app categories or refine the categories.

You cannot target a particular app.

You can only run your ads on the product pages of relevant apps. As a result, you will most likely encounter ads for direct competitors on different apps’ product pages.

Unlike Today tab ads requiring custom product pages, product page ads are created with the assets already uploaded on your App Store product page.

Key Takeaways

It’s no doubt that these new ad placements are golden opportunities for developers and marketers of all sizes to grow their businesses. The sooner you leverage these new ad placements into your user acquisition funnel, the better your app or game’s visibility can be.

Sign up free now to improve your app’s visibility and attract more attention to your app across the App Store.

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