AdSitter

Should you bid onyour own app's name?

Usually yes, at a low bid, but count those downloads separately. Other apps can bid on your name, and Apple lists a brand campaign first among its recommended types. In AdSitter’s view, many people searching your name would download anyway, so brand ads mostly protect the top spot. A short pause test shows which is true for you.

Last updated Part of the AdSitter guides

What is a brand search?

A brand search is someone typing your app’s name, or your company’s name, into the App Store. A campaign that bids on those searches is a brand campaign. It is the first of the four recommended campaign types, with every keyword set to exact match. Exact match means your ad shows for that search and close variants of it, like a typo.

The four types are explained in how campaigns are set up.

Why can other apps bid on my name?

Advertisers choose their own keywords, and Apple’s own advice includes other apps’ names:“Consider adding other popular brand names that provide services similar to yours”. A competitor campaign, aimed at people searching for similar apps, is one of the four recommended types.

In the App Store, an ad can appear at the top of the search results or further down the page. Which ad shows depends on how relevant the app is to the search and how much each advertiser bids. An app that isn’t relevant to the search won’t be shown, whatever it bids, and nobody can buy a specific position.

So if another app bids on your name and you don’t, the top result for your own name can be their ad. Their ad itself has limits: under the Apple Ads policies, ad content may not violate anyone else’s intellectual property.

What is the case for bidding on your own name?

  • You keep the top spot. Someone who searched for you by name sees your app first, not a rival’s ad.
  • It is usually cheap. Relevance is one of the factors in what you pay for a tap, and nothing is more relevant to a search for your name than your own app. That last part is our reasoning, not Apple’s words.
  • The searches are a close fit. Exact match keywords may get higher tap and download rates, because the people searching are closer to what you bid on. A search for your own name is as close as it gets.

What is the case against it?

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Many people who search for your app by name would have downloaded it anyway, from the normal result under the ad. When you pay for their tap, you may be paying for a download you would have had for free. That is why brand downloads look so cheap: some of them aren’t really bought.

So AdSitter reports name searches apart from everything else, in every update and on the dashboard. If brand downloads are mixed in with the rest, a small app’s results can look far better than the ads really are, because brand is often where most of the cheap downloads come from.

Neither side is always right. It depends on whether anyone else is bidding on your name, and on how many of those downloads you would lose without the ad. The only way to know the second is to test it.

How do I test it honestly?

The test is simple: stop the brand ads for a while and see whether your total downloads from search drop. The method is our rule of thumb. The facts it relies on are Apple’s.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

  1. Pick a quiet stretch. No launch, no big update, no holiday, no press. Anything else that moves downloads will spoil the comparison.
  2. Write down the baseline. Take the last two weeks of downloads from the source called App Store search in App Store Connect Analytics, plus your brand campaign’s downloads and spend.
  3. Pause only the brand campaign, for about two weeks. Make sure your own name is an exact negative keyword in any discovery campaign, so Search Match doesn’t quietly show your ad for your name instead.
  4. Compare total search downloads. If they barely moved, most brand-ad downloads would have come anyway. If they fell by about as many as the brand ads used to bring, the ads were protecting real downloads.
  5. Repeat it once if you can. One test on a small app can be luck.

Caveats, from how Apple counts things:

  • App Store search in App Store Connect includes downloads from search ads. That is why you compare the total, not the ads alone.
  • A download is credited to an ad if it happens within 30 days of the tap, so the brand campaign keeps collecting downloads for a while after you pause it.
  • A paused campaign may still show some ads for a few hours.
  • Search Match uses your App Store listing to match searches, which is why step 3 matters. Adding your other keywords as exact negatives in discovery is already the standard advice.
  • A rival may start or stop bidding on your name during the test. Look at your name’s search results before and after.

Example, with made-up round numbers

Before the pause: 300 downloads from App Store search in two weeks, 120 of them from brand ads that cost $60. During the pause: 270. So about 30 of the 120 were downloads you would have lost. The brand ads looked like $0.50 a download, but each download they really added cost about $2.

What does AdSitter do by default?

This is how AdSitter is built to handle your name. It is our playbook, not Apple’s.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

  • Runs a brand campaign on your name, exact match, at a low bid.
  • Aims to show for about 90% of searches for your name, not 100%. Impression share is how often your ad showed out of all the searches for that term. The last few percent tend to cost the most.
  • Funds your name before any other campaign, so it doesn’t run out of budget.
  • Shows brand downloads and spend apart from everything else, every time.
  • If another app starts bidding on your name, it tells you, and raises your bid in small steps only while each download stays within your target cost. No bidding war.
  • Never pauses your brand campaign to run the test on its own. It can suggest the test, for example when brand has been more than half of your spend for two months, and runs it only if you say yes.

A new app has few people searching its name yet, so the brand campaign usually spends very little at first. See how much to spend when you start.

Questions

Can another app advertise on my app's name?

Yes. Advertisers choose their keywords, and Apple’s own advice suggests other apps’ names. Their ad only shows if Apple judges it relevant to the search.

Can I pay to be the first ad for my name?

No. Your ad can be shown in any of the available positions, and you can’t pick or bid for one. Relevance and your bid decide whether it shows.

How much should I bid on my own name?

Low. AdSitter’s rule of thumb is to aim for about 90% impression share on your name, meaning your ad shows for about 9 in 10 of those searches, and to raise the bid in small steps only if a rival shows up.

How long should a brand pause test run?

About two weeks, in a quiet stretch, compared with the two weeks before. That is our rule of thumb. Keep in mind that downloads are credited up to 30 days after a tap, so ad numbers keep changing after the pause starts.

Will AdSitter pause my brand campaign to test it?

Not on its own. It can suggest the test, and runs it only if you agree.

Sources

Facts about how Apple Ads works come from Apple’s own pages, listed below. We read them on . Apple changes them, so check the page itself before a big decision. Anything marked as AdSitter’s rule of thumb is our own judgment, not Apple’s.

Rather not do this by hand?AdSitter can run it for you.

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