Phase 1: Login

1. Go to https://searchads.apple.com/
2. Click Sign in → Advanced
3. Enter your account credentials

Phase 2: Create non-Discovery campaigns

Now we’ll create the non-Discovery campaigns, here’s how.

Note this whole process will need to be repeated in full for every different country. Right now they have the US, Mexico, UK, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand.

1. Click Create Campaign
2. Select the appropriate app by clicking the box
3. Select the country to target (probably the United States)
4. Campaign
   1. a. Campaign name: #{Your Product Name}– Brand
   2. b. Budget: $1 (until it’s approved)
   3. c. Daily Cap: $1 (until it’s approved)
5. Ad Group
   1. a. Name: {{Relevant Keyword Grouping}}
   2. b. Devices: Depending on what the app runs on
   3. c. Default max CPT bid: $2.00
   4. d. Note: Don’t set a CPA Goal as this is a hard maximum and not an algorithmic target like in AdWords. It will only limit data collection.
6. Search Match: Disable it!
7. Keywords:
   1. Use the recommended keywords tool to find keywords that are relevant to the keyword grouping. It will be quite limited.
   2. You should also steal keywords used on AdWords (if you’re running it)
   3. Otherwise rack your brain for relevant terms related to the keyword grouping theme
   4. Make sure that all the keywords are set to Exact Match by clicking the dropdown, or by surrounding it with []’s
      
      

8. Audience

                  1.a. Leave this as it is. Do not change it as this will only hinder data collection! We can optimize this away later

        9. Click Start Campaign

      10. Pause the campaign

      11. Click on the campaign you just created

      12. Click Create Ad Group

      13. Create ad groups for all other remaining relevant keyword groups for the campaign (all competitors, for example).

      14. Repeat steps 1-13 for the other non-Discovery campaigns

Phase 3: Create discovery campaigns

For the Discovery campaign we’re going to create two ad groups. One containing all the keywords we just created, except as broad match and not exact match. And one doing Search Match.

We’re also going to add the exact match keywords as negative keywords for the Discovery campaign so they don’t get triggered. We want to only discover new keywords in this campaign.

Search Match

1. Follow the same steps to create a campaign and ad group as before, with these notes
2. Ad group name: Search Match
3. Search Match: Keep it enabled
4. No keywords
5. That’s it!

Broad Match ad group

1. Follow the same steps to create a campaign and ad group as before, with these two notes
   1. Make double sure you’re not using Search Match
   2. Don’t add any keywords
2. Create the campaign
3. Then you’ll want to go into each of the three campaigns, and download the CSVs of all their keywords
4. You’ll then want to aggregate them into one CSV file
5. You’ll then want to edit the file so that it matches the template for uploading new keywords
   1. Action: CREATE
   2. Keyword ID: blank
   3. Keyword: the keyword as normal
   4. Match Type: BROAD
   5. Status: ACTIVE
   6. Bid: same as before
   7. Campaign ID: The ID of the Discovery campaign
   8. Ad Group ID: The ID of the Broad Match ad group
      1. You can get these by going to the Broad Match ad group and looking at the URL, e.g.: https://app.searchads.apple.com/cm/app/report/campaign/106594467/adgroup/106600669
      2. Campaign ID is after /campaign/ and Ad Group ID is after /adgroup/
6. Once this matches the template, save it, go to the Keyword tab
7. Click Actions → Upload Keywords
8. Upload the CSV
9. Verify they are where they’re supposed to be

Adding negative keywords

1. Now you’ll need to add the Exact Match keywords as negative keywords
2. Go back to that CSV you just created, and change the file to follow this format: https://www.dropbox.com/s/19rgi9ufjid9xji/negative_keywords_template.csv?dl=0
   1. Action: CREATE
   2. Keyword ID: blank
   3. Negative Keyword: keyword as normal
   4. Match Type: EXACT
   5. Campaign ID: ID of the Discovery campaign (see above)
   6. Ad Group ID: blank
3. Once it matches, save CSV, go to the campaign’s Keyword → Negative Keywords tab
4. Click Actions → Upload Keywords
5. Upload the CSV
6. Verify that it worked properly

Phase 4: Set your budget

Set your budget for each campaign: do $2,000 per campaign to start. Volume is generally so low that the upper bound of your budget tends to not matter; you’ll want to pay whatever you can just to get some data.

(Of course, adjust downward if your company can’t afford to spend that much to test and potentially not get a conversion.)

Phase 5: Go live

Turn your ads on and optimize!