Apple Search Ads Strategies of Shopping Apps

In this article, we are going to be taking a deep dive into the top 3 shopping apps we’ve chosen to analyse their Apple Search Ads optimization strategies.

Gizem Bugdayci
April 21, 2021

Online shopping has become one of the daily activities that ease our lives, especially during the pandemic. Since we are all stuck at home and everything has been closed, people got used to utilizing the internet for shopping more since the pandemic has started.

While people can easily purchase their needs via the internet just in seconds, online shopping has become a big habit in our lives. People surf on the shopping apps even if they don’t need anything. This results in shopping apps being used more and more.

Rather than tinkering around the stores and getting tired physically, people can do shopping online from their mobile phones while drinking their coffee. Even when the pandemic is over, people will most likely keep using these apps as they are used to them.

In this article, we are going to be taking a deep dive into the top 3 shopping apps we’ve chosen to analyse their Apple Search Ads optimization strategies Shein, Klarna, and Amazon! These apps were chosen by looking at their visibility scores.

shopping apps

1- Shein-Fashion Shopping Online

First of all, let us remind you of the meanings of the important terms here:

Active Countries: The countries they are actively running ads on Apple Search Ads.

Total Paid Keywords: Total number of the keywords they are bidding on in the selected country.

Search Ads Visibility Score: It is calculated by using impression shares of an app on each keyword with their popularity score. It’s calculated weekly and scaled with the highest score of the week (out of 100).

Visibility Score: How visible the app is according to organic impressions.

Organic Keyword Rank: The app’s organic ranking for the keyword.

Popularity: The number of times a keyword is searched for in the App Store.

Total Apps: Total number of apps ranking organically with the keyword.

Shein is actively running Apple Search Ads in 35 different countries with more than 10K paid keywords in the US.

We set the impression share between 60 and 100 and popularity between 60 and 100 to see what keywords bring them the most impressions and what keywords are handy to use. 

It seems like their brand keyword “shein” and the competitor keywords are bringing them the most impressions such as “american eagle” and “forever 21” and “old navy”. 

The reason why Shein gets the greatest impressions is that it is leveraging the absence of the American Eagle and Old Navy as they are not running Apple Search Ads. Even though Forever 21 runs ads on their brand keywords, Shein’s ASO strategies are way stronger than Forever 21 so Apple’s algorithm thinks that Shein is more relevant to that search term.

Let’s see what’s going on with their brand keyword “shein”. There are 23 apps running ads on this keyword and 261 apps ranking with this keyword either organically or paid. The chance of being ranked in the top 10 with this keyword is 38% while the search popularity score (search volume) is 80 which is quite high.

Shein gets the most impressions from their brand keyword. It seems like boohoo, bohooMAN, and ModeSense try to get impressions from their competitor’s keywords but their percentages are quite low by 3.5%, 1.7%, and 1.7% respectively.

2- Klarna| Shop now. Pay later

Klarna is running ads on Apple Search Ads in 12 countries and ranking with more than 16.6K paid keywords in the US. Let’s apply the same process for Klarna. We set the impression share between 60 and 100 and the popularity between 60 and 100. 

The result is not surprising. What we see again is that they are getting quite satisfying impressions from their brand keyword as well as their competitor’s brand keywords “affirm” and “quadpay”. This tells us protecting your brand is an important move for not to lose potential users.

And even Affirm and Quadpay, themselves couldn’t manage to get more impressions from their own brand keywords. Let’s check what is happening with them. 

Klarna would be giving way higher bid amounts and supporting Apple Search Ads activities with being strong on ASO as well so the algorithm doesn’t show Affirm and Quadpay at the top.

3- Amazon Shopping

Amazon is active in 6 countries such as the US, Canada, Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Mexico ranking with more than 16.6K paid keywords in the US. 

We started analysing with a generic keyword “shopping app”. Even though it is supposed to be one of the most important generic keywords for Amazon Shopping, it brings low impressions to Amazon. 

How do they shape their strategies on Apple Search Ads? Primarily, we didn’t set any impression or popularity filter but set filters for the keywords including “amazon” in it. It seems like they are protecting their brand from the other competitors as once we look at the impressions of their competitors for this keyword is way lower.

Let’s see if they are balancing their Apple Search Ads activities with App Store Optimization. They are ranking 1st for 324 keywords which is quite satisfying for any app. These keywords are mostly their brand keywords and generic keywords in the ordinary way.

In my previous blog post, I mentioned how can you use the keyword auction insights. Now I’m going to be showing you briefly how you can utilize the Organic Keyword Hunt tool on SearchAds.com: 

  1. Decide what keywords are relevant for you by considering their popularity, chance and rankings.
  2. Click on the plus sign located on the left hand side to add them and run ads
  3. Change the necessary metrics and add negatives to the ones that has low popularity, low chance and high rank 

4.The system warns you in the Check Keyword Issues step whether you already have these keywords in the ad groups or negate them. So you won’t be facing any duplicate issues.

Don’t forget to schedule a demo with our dedicated Apple Search Ads experts specialized in your genre to find out how you can shape your Apple Search Ads campaigns by looking at your competitors' keyword strategies!

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