Discovery campaign
A discovery campaign is your account’s research budget. It pays for traffic on searches you have not chosen yet, so the rest of the account can bid precisely on the ones that turn out to pay back.
Updated
No keyword list is complete on day one. Users search in ways you do not predict, and new terms appear as markets and competitors change. A discovery campaign exists to catch those searches, report them back to you, and feed the best ones into campaigns where you control each bid.
Where discovery fits in the account
A common Apple Ads structure splits search results campaigns by intent, so each has its own budget, bids and reporting.
| Campaign | Keywords | Match type | Job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Your app and company name, with variations | Exact | Protect searches from people who already want your app |
| Category | Generic terms that describe what your app does | Exact | Win high-intent generic searches |
| Competitor | Names of competing apps | Exact | Test whether competitors’ searchers convert for you |
| Discovery | Broad match seeds plus Search Match | Broad and Search Match | Find new terms to move into the other campaigns |
How to set up a discovery campaign
- Create a separate search results campaign with its own daily budget, so exploration never starves brand or category campaigns.
- Add a broad match ad group seeded with keywords from your brand, category and competitor lists. Broad match reaches related searches and variations around each seed.
- Add a second ad group with no keywords and Search Match turned on, so Apple matches your ad from your app metadata.
- Keep bids moderate. The goal is to learn which searches convert, not to win every auction.
- Review the search terms report on a regular schedule and harvest winners into exact-match campaigns.
Negative keywords to avoid overlap
Without negatives, a discovery campaign will bid on the same searches as your exact-match campaigns, and you lose control of which campaign serves the ad and which bid applies.
- Add every exact keyword from your brand, category and competitor campaigns as an exact-match negative in the discovery campaign.
- When you harvest a new term, add it as an exact keyword in the right campaign and as an exact negative in discovery in the same step.
- In the Search Match ad group, also negate the broad match seeds, so the two discovery ad groups report cleanly on different traffic.
- Add irrelevant or non-converting search terms as negatives, so discovery stops paying for them.
Measuring a discovery campaign
For a subscription app, look past installs. Track which search terms led to trials and subscriptions, and what they cost per trial and per subscriber, over a window long enough to include trial conversion. A discovery campaign earns its budget when it keeps finding terms that pay back once moved into exact-match campaigns.
- Keepers found: how many search terms were promoted to exact-match campaigns in the period, and how those keywords performed afterward.
- Cost per trial and cost per subscription on discovery traffic, compared with your exact-match campaigns, to see what exploration costs.
- Share of spend on terms later negated, which shows how much of the budget went to searches that did not fit.
Related terms: Search Match, broad match, search popularity and share of voice.