Ad group
The ad group is where most of the day-to-day work in Apple Ads happens. Campaigns decide where and how much you spend; ad groups decide which searches you bid on, for whom, at what price and with which ad.
Updated
Apple Ads organizes an account as a hierarchy: campaigns contain ad groups, and ad groups contain keywords and ads. Knowing what belongs at each level is the difference between an account you can read at a glance and one where spend, bids and results are tangled together.
Where the ad group sits in the hierarchy
- Campaign. Sets the placement (for example search results), the countries or regions, and the budget. Everything below inherits these.
- Ad group. Groups keywords that share an intent and a bidding approach, and holds the audience, bid and ad settings for them.
- Keywords and ads. Keywords decide which searches can trigger the ad; ads decide which product page the user sees after the tap.
Because budget and geography live at campaign level, splitting by country or by strategy is a campaign decision. Splitting by intent or theme inside one country and strategy is an ad group decision.
What is set at ad group level
- Keywords. The search terms the group bids on, each with its own optional bid.
- Match types. Whether each keyword runs as broad or exact match, which controls how widely it can match user searches.
- Negative keywords. Searches the group should never show for, in addition to any campaign-level negatives.
- Search Match. An optional setting that lets Apple match the ad to relevant searches automatically, without keywords you added.
- Audience. Refinements such as customer type (new users, returning users), device, age, gender and location within the campaign’s countries.
- Default max CPT bid. The bid used for any keyword in the group that has no bid of its own.
- Ads. The default product page or a custom product page variation shown to users who tap the ad.
- Schedule. Optional start and end dates or dayparting for the group.
How to structure ad groups
A common structure separates campaigns by intent (brand, category, competitor, discovery) and then uses ad groups inside each campaign to cluster keywords that share a theme and a match type. The goal is that every ad group answers one question, such as “how do exact-match category terms for meditation perform in the US?”
- Keep one match type per ad group. Mixing broad and exact keywords in the same group makes it hard to tell which is driving results and which needs a different bid.
- Group by intent, not by volume. Keywords that lead to the same user need belong together, because they should see the same product page and paywall.
- Match the ad to the group. If an ad group targets a specific use case, point it at a custom product page built for that use case.
- Avoid overlap. Use negative keywords so discovery groups do not compete with exact groups for the same searches.
Measuring ad groups in a subscription app
Apple Ads reports taps, downloads and spend per ad group. For a subscription app that stops short of what matters: whether the users an ad group brought in started trials, converted to paid and generated revenue. Judging ad groups on cost per download alone rewards the groups that attract cheap, low-intent installs.
Attaching in-app outcomes to each ad group turns it into a unit you can budget on. With cost per trial, cost per subscription and cohort ROAS per ad group, you can see which intent clusters pay back, raise bids there and pause the rest.