Keyword research is a cornerstone of Apple Ads success. AppTweak’s Campaign Manager provides comprehensive insights to help you find and refine the best keywords for your campaigns.
🎥 Watch this video to learn more:
Finding new keywords to expand your reach
To find and analyze keywords, first navigate to a campaign, then select an ad group. AppTweak offers 12+ keyword discovery tools to help you uncover new opportunities in any country or language.
App Keywords
With App Keywords, you can explore keywords specific to your app's organic performance, helping you identify high-potential keywords for Apple Ads. For example, you can:
Explore all the keywords on which you rank organically. Keywords where you don't rank in #1 position can be prime candidates for your bids.
Select keywords based on your organic installs performance.
Import keywords from ASO lists to align with your ASO team.
And more
AI Keywords
Powered by Atlas, our proprietary AI trained on 10+ years of App Store data, AI Keywords provide:
AI-generated keyword suggestions to find new ideas in seconds.
Keyword clusters that reveal semantically related terms.
Relevant keywords for your AppDNA, AppTweak’s granular taxonomy of app and game subcategories.
And more
💡 Keyword Clusters reveal themes closely related to your app in the eyes of the App Store. They not only help expand your keyword list but also provide great ideas for custom product pages.
App Store Keywords
Finally, our App Store Keywords return market-driven keyword opportunities based on:
Top growth in Search Popularity
Apple’s auto-suggestions in App Store search
And more
Selecting and adding keywords
Clicking a keyword adds it to the table below, but it is not immediately added to your campaign. You start bidding on the selected keywords after you click click "Publish Changes"—allowing you to review their potential before committing budget.
Exact Discovery Experiments
Looking for a more controlled way to find new keywords? Automate your keyword discovery by launching exact match discovery experiments in just a few clicks. Learn how in this article.
Analyzing keyword performance
Each keyword is accompanied by detailed performance metrics, helping you evaluate its impact.
💡 ASO metrics are only displayed if the keyword has driven at least one impression within the past 30 days to ensure data relevance.
We provide the following metrics to give you a holistic view of keyword performance:
Apple Ads metrics
Average CPA, installs, spend, tap-through rate, etc.
Impression Share, a metric provided by Apple Ads in Custom Reports at the country level, that we automatically match to each keyword across ad groups.
Historical max CPT bids. While CPT bid is a user-defined parameter rather than a metric, AppTweak provides a historical view of your bid changes, which is not available in the Apple Ads console.
AppTweak metrics
Maximum reach (estimated max impressions)
Organic installs & organic rank
Keyword relevancy score
Competitor impression share (percentage of total impressions you and competitors receive for a keyword)
And more
MMP metrics (AppsFlyer, Adjust)
By connecting your AppsFlyer or Adjust account, you can gain a deeper understanding of keyword performance based on standard and custom in-app events.
Tracking historical keyword data
AppTweak’s historical charts let you track keyword trends over time. Click the graph icon next to a metric to visualize its evolution.
You can also compare ASO and Apple Ads metrics side-by-side to determine:
✔️ Whether increasing ad spend on a keyword improves its organic ranking
✔️ If seasonality affects keyword performance (search volume fluctuations over time)
✔️ And more
Analyze performance for a single keyword
You can also get detailed insights into how a single keyword performs by clicking any term in Campaign Manager:
Compare multiple Apple Ads metrics on the same chart
Analyze the impact of your bid updates on other metrics
See all the search terms a keyword appears on
Search terms vs. keywords
Search terms represent actual user queries that triggered your ad—either directly or via Apple Ad’s automated matching.
💡 Search terms cannot be controlled directly like keywords. They depend on:
Your targeted keywords (exact match vs. broad match)
Whether Search Match is enabled at the ad group level
Since search terms often include variations, synonyms, or low-volume queries, they offer additional insights into how users search.
Using negative keywords
Negative keywords prevent your Apple Ads campaigns from showing ads for specific search terms, helping you spend budget efficiently.
How to add negative keywords
Select the keyword(s) you want to exclude and click "Add as negative."
Assign the negative keyword to:
A single campaign
A specific ad group
All active campaigns in the same country
💡 Negative keywords appear with an "N" tag, indicating they are excluded from the selected scope. You can also manually add negative keywords via the dedicated input panel.
Why use negative keywords?
✅ Reduce wasted spend: Exclude irrelevant queries that don't convert.
✅ Improve relevance: Focus budget on high-intent searches.
✅ Streamline campaign management: Avoid clutter in reporting by filtering out noise.