AdSitter

How much to spendon Apple Ads when you start.

Start with a monthly amount you could lose while you learn, without it hurting. Spend is set per campaign with a daily budget, and each month is capped at 30.4 times that budget. AdSitter’s rule of thumb is to give each campaign enough for at least two taps a day, and to start with a few campaigns rather than many thin ones.

Last updated Part of the AdSitter guides

What does a tap cost?

Apple Ads has been the name since April 2025 for what used to be called Apple Search Ads. The ads sit at the top of App Store search results.

A tap is when someone taps your ad. With Apple Ads Advanced, the version where you choose your own keywords, you pay only when someone taps your ad, up to a maximum price you choose. That maximum is your bid. Its full name is the max cost-per-tap bid, or max CPT bid.

There is no fixed price. Each search runs an auction. Your bid is a ceiling: you never pay more than it, and you may pay less. What you actually pay depends on how relevant your ad is, your bid, other advertisers’ bids, any minimum price set for that auction, and other factors. General keywords “can be more popular and competitive” than specific ones.

So nobody can tell you in advance what a tap will cost for your app. Apple suggests working backwards from what a new customer is worth to you. For example, if you can afford $2.50 per customer and expect 40% of people who tap to download, you can pay up to $1.00 a tap. One practical limit: a bid must be less than the campaign’s daily budget.

To run that math on your own price and paying share, use the free Apple Ads budget and bid calculator. It also sizes a first test.

There is also Apple Ads Basic, which charges per install instead of per tap, for up to $10,000 a month per app. This guide is about Advanced, where you pick the keywords and set the bids.

How do the daily and monthly budgets work?

Each campaign has a daily budget. It works as the average you want to spend per day over a month, not a hard stop each day. On days with more chances to get downloads, a campaign can spend more than its daily budget.

The month is capped. A campaign won’t spend more in a month than its daily budget times 30.4, the average number of days in a month. So a $100 daily budget means no more than $3,040 in a month.

  • Changing it mid-month. The cap for the rest of the month is 30.4 × (days left ÷ days in the month) × the new budget. Raising a budget to $200 with 15 of 30 days left gives 30.4 × (15 ÷ 30) × $200 = $3,040.
  • It keeps going. A campaign spends every month until you pause it, remove it or give it an end date.
  • Cutting it hard stops it for the day. A budget change usually takes effect the same day. Lower it below what the campaign has already spent today and it stops showing until tomorrow.

Budgets live on each campaign, so your real monthly ceiling is the sum of every campaign’s cap.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Plan from the month, not the day. Take the most you want to spend in a month, divide by 30.4, and split that across your campaigns. Expect some days to run over. That is how the budget works, not a mistake.

How much should I start with?

Apple’s help pages don’t name a starting amount, so this part is our own judgment, labelled as such.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Pick a monthly amount you could lose while you learn, without it hurting. Then check that each campaign can buy at least two taps a day. Below that, a campaign takes weeks to show you anything, and a single tap can use up its whole day. A small limit is better spent on a few campaigns than spread thin across many.

The daily column follows the monthly cap of 30.4 times the daily budget. The $1 tap is a made-up round number. The last column is AdSitter’s rule of thumb, not Apple’s.
Monthly limitDaily budget, all campaignsTaps a day if a tap costs $1AdSitter’s starting plan
$50$1.64about 1.6One campaign. Your app's name plus 3 to 5 searches that describe your app. No Search Match yet. Expect slow learning.
$150$4.93about 4.9Your app's name at about $1 a day, descriptive searches at about $3, and Search Match at about $1 on the lowest bid.
$500$16.45about 16.4All four campaign types. Your name at about $2 a day, then roughly 55% on descriptive searches, 15% on discovery and 20% on other apps' names.
$2,500$82.24about 82.2All four campaign types, with room to try automatic bidding on discovery, or a second country.

At $50 a month, even one campaign falls short of two taps a day if taps cost $1. It can still work, it just learns slowly. The four campaign types are explained in how campaigns are set up.

Example, with made-up round numbers

You pick $150 a month. $150 ÷ 30.4 = $4.93 a day across all campaigns. If a tap costs $1, that is about 5 taps a day. If 1 in 2 people who tap download your app, that is 2 to 3 downloads a day, about 75 in a month.

How long before I know if it works?

Longer than most people expect, for three reasons.

  • Data takes a day or two. Performance data can take 24 to 48 hours to show once a new campaign starts. Apple recommends letting it run for several days before making major changes.
  • Downloads keep arriving. A download counts as coming from an ad if it happens within 30 days of the tap. Charges can take up to 10 days to be processed and show in your dashboard.
  • Bid changes lag. A new bid may not take effect right away.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Give a new campaign at least two weeks before you judge it. Don’t judge a keyword on its last 7 days of downloads, because some are still coming in. If your app has a free trial, wait for the trial to end plus a week before judging whether the people from ads pay.

What should I spend it on first?

Apple’s advice is to start with keywords like your app’s name and words that describe what your app does. A keyword is a search you choose to bid on.

Search Match is the automatic option. It matches your ad to searches for you, using your App Store listing, similar apps and other search data. The next step is to check which searches work well there and add them as exact match keywords at a higher bid. An exact match keyword shows your ad for that search and close variants of it.

Apple also recommends splitting campaigns by theme: your brand, your category, competitors and discovery. On a small budget, the order you fund them matters more than the split.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

  1. Your app’s own name first. It is usually cheap, but small, because only so many people search for it.
  2. Then searches that describe what your app does.
  3. Then 10 to 20% on Search Match, to find searches you didn’t think of.
  4. Other apps’ names last, once your descriptive searches have a known cost per download, because they are the least certain.

One setting to leave alone: age and gender targeting. Apple stops sending download attribution (the data that ties a download to your ad) for ad groups that use it.

What stops ads without warning?

Most surprise stops are about money, not about your ads.

  • A declined card. Apple may pause your ads and tries the same card again within 24 hours. A new card is charged within 24 hours, and a charge can’t be run on request.
  • A card that isn’t accepted. Prepaid cards, gift cards, ATM cards, PayPal and Venmo aren’t accepted, and a campaign won’t run until the account has a valid payment method.
  • A charge bigger than your card allows. You’re usually charged each time you’ve spent $500, or every seven days, whichever comes first. A debit card’s daily spending limit must be able to cover those charges.
  • A budget cut below today’s spend. The campaign stops until tomorrow.
  • The monthly cap. Once a campaign reaches 30.4 times its daily budget, it won’t spend more that month.

A paused campaign isn’t charged until you turn it back on. Every cause, with how to tell and how to fix it, is in why did my Apple Ads stop showing.

Questions

Is Apple Ads the same as Apple Search Ads?

Yes. Apple renamed Apple Search Ads to Apple Ads on April 14, 2025, saying its ads had grown beyond search.

Can one day spend more than my daily budget?

Yes. The daily budget works as an average over the month, so a busy day can go over. The month as a whole won’t pass 30.4 times the daily budget.

Do I pay when people only see my ad?

Not with Apple Ads Advanced. You pay only when someone taps your ad. Apple Ads Basic charges per install instead.

Can I pay for Apple Ads with a prepaid card or PayPal?

No. Apple Ads accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express, and some debit cards. It doesn’t accept prepaid cards, gift cards, ATM cards, PayPal or Venmo.

How often does Apple charge me for ads?

Usually each time you’ve spent $500, or every seven days, whichever comes first.

Should I use Maximize Conversions from day one?

Apple recommends a daily budget that allows at least five conversions a day, and at least two weeks before judging it. For example, with a made-up $4 per download, that is $20 a day, about $608 a month for one campaign. Below that, AdSitter’s rule of thumb is to set bids by hand. More in manual bids or Maximize Conversions.

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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