How to Use Apple Search Ads Creative Sets to Improve Ad Performance?

Keywords are not the only way to utilize Apple Search Ads. You can find how to use Apple Search Ads creative sets to improve ad performance in our article.

Zehra Cetinel
January 8, 2021

As most of you should know, keywords are not the only way to utilize Apple Search Ads. There are many other ways you can do to boost your app. Even you create the best campaigns and set up the optimal structure in Apple Search Ads, there is still a chance for you to increase your conversion rate, and one of the things you can look for is called Creative Sets.

portrait creative set from app store

Portrait Creative Set Visuals from App Store
landscape creative set from app store
Landscape Creative Set Visual from App Store

Creative Sets are basically a pack of screenshots and visuals are being used to improve the performance of ads. You can either choose to show 1 landscape visual or 3 portrait visuals and for each app, you can create up to ten creative sets. You can have up to 20 ad variations per ad group with Creative Sets. These will run in addition to the current image and text ads that Apple Search Ads automatically creates for your app and enables you to leverage additional App Store assets to create more ad variations. It helps app owners to combine visuals with ad group keywords according to the needs of different audience segments such as different age groups, different genders, and different countries.

How to Use Creative Sets?

As mentioned above, Creative Sets are really helpful for app owners to gain more taps, but they might be used in several different ways for many different purposes as mentioned below:

1. Use Creative Sets to Reach the Potential User in the Most Effective Way

Creative Sets is the perfect tool for customization and to reach directly to your target audience. You can target a specific age group, gender, or even a specific time zone for a specific time period. Sets can be customized for different keywords as well. Let’s look at some examples from different applications:

Headspace offers both a stress-free day and a better sleep experience at the same time. But for the morning and night ads, using different creative sets can lead to an increase in the Tap Through Rate (TTR)’s. So the relevant timing for different creatives can improve ad performance. 

Possible morning time or morning related keyword Creative Set for Headspace:

app store creative sets day example

Possible night time or night related keyword Creative Set for Headspace:

app store creative sets night example

If you are segmenting demographically different audience groups, you can also use Creative Sets to attract their interest.

For instance, Nike training targets both women and men at the same time as a fitness app. However, when the visuals of women are shown to women audiences, it is more likely to have a positive impact on the ad performance itself.

Let’s consider Nike Training has 6 portrait visuals in total in the app store:

app store creative sets example

Using A-B-C combination for targeting the female audience and using D-E-F combination for targeting the male audience can result in better ROI’s.

2. Use Creative Sets to Test New Features

Suppose you want to add a new feature to your app. But you don’t know what kind of outcome you will face. Creative Sets can become the most effective tool for you to test your target audience.

You can simply add new feature related visuals to your Sets and measure whether your impressions decrease or increase. If the performance of your ads increased, that means the new feature will improve your visibility but if vice versa, you should not add that new feature to your app which will make your audience unhappy.

3. Find the Best Performing Creative Sets and Use Them for Similar Audience Groups

Learning from your tests is crucial for creating the best performing sets. In the platform of Apple Search Ads, you can see overall and one by one performance of your Creative Sets in the chosen time period.

Overall, you can see your impression and tap changes within the graph, and also you are able to see how many new downloads, redownloads, and the impressions you gained in the return of your spend in a nutshell:

creative sets dashboard overview

Moreover, you can also see one by one performance of your Creatives as a list format or as a funnel format. You can customize your funnel view and you can arrange your optimal view by using the “edit columns” feature that is provided in SearchAds.com.

creative sets one by one performance
creative sets one by one performance funnel view

Last but not least, with the “duplicate creative set” feature, you can duplicate your best performing Creative Sets for your similar ad groups without spending time. In order to get more information about duplicate creative set features and search ads Creative Sets, visit Creative Sets: Target Your Audience Visually.

If you want to know more about how to increase your impressions, book a product tour and take a look at success stories to see how we helped our customers to improve their performance.

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