Apple Search Ads management for rare, high-value events

Apple Ads is the only paid channel left where you buy a named intent, and on apps with a rare qualifying event that is where the paying users come from. In accounts I inherit, brand terms plus somewhere between ten and thirty non-brand exact keywords produce almost all of the registrations, while Search Match and broad match produce the tap volume that makes the cost per install look reasonable and converts at a rate nobody wants printed in a board pack. So the first change is nearly always the same one: Search Match comes out of every ad group carrying a bid worth defending and goes into a single discovery campaign with a budget I am willing to write off, whose only job is to feed proven terms back into the exact-match structure. How the account is built: One placement per campaign, because keyword-level attribution exists only on Search Results. The AdServices token returns a keyword identifier there and nowhere else; Today tab and Search tab report at campaign level, so mixing placements inside one campaign destroys the only granular read you have. Ad groups hold one theme each, and a term moves into its own ad group once it has carried a week of qualifying events. Negative lists sit at campaign level for category-wide exclusions and at ad group level to stop themes cannibalising each other. Custom product pages: Apple allows 35 per app. I usually build four to eight, each tied to a term cluster, and judge them on taps-to-qualifying-event rather than tap-through rate, which rewards the wrong screenshot. The first two screenshots carry the claim the searcher typed. A page that has not beaten the default page on the downstream event within four weeks gets retired instead of iterated forever. Measurement, because Apple gives you none: There is no conversion import in Apple Ads. Your registration, deposit or signed retainer will never appear in Apple's dashboard, and anyone quoting a keyword-level cost per acquisition from that dashboard is quoting installs. Bids come from a weekly export out of your MMP joined on campaign and keyword identifier, so the standing requirement is that AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular or Branch is receiving the Apple Ads attribution token and that raw install data is exportable. Where that is not in place, fixing it is the first fortnight of the engagement and I say so before you buy a single tap. What I refuse: Bidding to a cost-per-install target. Reporting installs as a result. Managing an account where the downstream event is invisible to me, because that is guessing with your money under another name. Bid edits more than twice a week, which is noise-chasing on a channel where a keyword needs a fortnight to say anything at all. And I do not take a percentage of spend, since it pays me to argue for a budget larger than the account can absorb. Not for you if: Nobody searches your category by name yet, in which case Apple Ads will spend efficiently on your own brand and teach you nothing you did not already know. Your app is not live in the storefront you want traffic from, which is the usual dead end for licensed operators opening a new market. You need volume this month. Or the app is pre-launch, where there is no downstream data to bid against and the honest answer is to wait two months and spend the money on retention. Working languages are English and Ukrainian. Reporting is written and monthly, and it includes the terms I stopped buying and the reason each one was dropped.