Why use automation for Apple Ads?
Managing Apple Ads campaigns manually—across multiple countries and regions, ad placements, and performance metrics—can take a lot of time, especially at scale. Automation helps streamline campaign management, optimize bids, and monitor performance with less effort and often greater impact.
Based on audits of numerous Apple Ads campaigns, our Data Science team has found that automation makes it easier to apply key optimization strategies consistently—whether it’s adjusting bids, managing budgets, or identifying new opportunities to enhance performance.
🎥 Watch the replay of our Office Hours webinar for a deep dive into scaling Apple Ads with automation:
There are two ways to create an automation rule in AppTweak:
From the Campaign Manager: The easiest way is to first select the campaigns, ad groups, or keywords you want to automate.
From the Automation page: Set up automation rules first, then assign them to campaigns, ad groups, or keywords via the Campaign Manager.
How to create automation rules from the Campaign Manager
1. Select the target
First, choose the campaigns, ad groups, or keywords where you want the rule to apply. To note: if a keyword rule is applied to an entire campaign, that rule will apply to all keywords in that campaign.
2. Click "Automate"
You will then be able to create a new rule, assign an existing rule, or unassign an active automation rule.
The automation tag indicates whether a campaign, ad group, or keyword has an active rule running.
Then, choose whether you would like to apply an Automation Preset or create a custom rule.
3. Set conditions based on Apple Ads or MMP metrics
For custom automation rules, you'll need to define conditions like:
If the keyword’s average CPA exceeds $10 (then, lower the bid).
If the keyword’s impression share drops below 60% (then, increase the bid).
If the campaign’s daily budget exceeds a threshold (then, pause the campaign).
💡 Pro tip: It's important to ensure enough data is collected before your automation rule takes action. For this, we recommend adding the condition “if taps [in the same time period] > 20” before adjusting bids.
By connecting your AppsFlyer or Adjust account, you can also create automation rules based on in-app performance metrics, such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), revenue per install, or retention rates.
For example:
Increase bids for high-value keywords: If a keyword has ROAS > X% over the last 7 days, increase bids to prioritize budget for keywords driving users with higher lifetime value (LTV).
Pause low-performing keywords that don’t generate revenue: If a keyword has spent more than $Y but resulted in 0 in-app purchases, pause or decrease bids to reduce spend on keywords that drive clicks but not paying users.
For further customization, you can also set conditions based on other Apple Ads or MMP metrics. For example, you may want to trigger an automation rule when you exceed 2x your average CPA over the last month:
💡 Wondering which duration you should set for your conditions? It depends on the action:
If you simply want to monitor when the condition is met, we recommend computing your conditions every day to track changes in real time.
If you want to take actions (like changing your bids), we recommend computing your conditions over a larger time period (e.g., the last 7 days) to make decisions based on more stable trends and avoid excessive volatility.
4. Define actions
Next, choose what happens when conditions are met:
Change bids (keywords) or daily budgets (campaigns): Increase or decrease bids/budgets by a percentage or specific amount.
Transfer keywords: Move keywords to another ad group or mark them as negative keywords.
Change status: Pause or resume campaigns, ad groups, or keywords.
Monitor activity: No automated changes, you’ll simply get notified when the conditions are met.
5. Adjust rule frequency
Finally, decide how often you want the rule to be triggered.
Monitor-only rules: Apply daily to track trends.
Action rules (e.g., bid adjustments): Apply weekly (on the best day for you) to avoid excessive changes.
💡 Final step: Name your rule for easy reference and click “Save”. If you created it from the Automation tab, don’t forget to assign it in Campaign Manager. To do this, select the target items and click “Automate” > “Assign a rule”.
Once assigned, automation rules run automatically and can be monitored in the Monitoring section.
Automation Presets in AppTweak
Want to scale your campaigns but not sure where to start? AppTweak offers ready-to-use automation presets based on industry best practices:
Optimize: Improve campaign efficiency.
Protect: Defend key search terms.
Monitor: Track performance without making changes.
You should be able to apply at least one automation preset to one of your campaigns or keywords—but the best strategies happen when you combine multiple rules together.
💡 The two rules below optimize performance based on CPA. They work best when used together for any keywords you don’t want to manage manually, ensuring cost efficiency while scaling performance:
Optimize - Decrease bids for high-cost keywords: Reduces keyword bids by 10% if the keyword’s CPA significantly exceeds the campaign average.
Why use it? This rule helps avoid skewing your budget to a handful of keywords that cost too much.
Optimize - Increase bids for high-potential keywords: Increases keyword bids by 10% for cost-efficient keywords with strong potential for visibility (impression share) growth.
Why use it? This rule helps scale your campaigns by increasing investment in high-opportunity keywords.
💡 The two rules below optimize performance based on impression share. They work best when combined for your brand keywords or critical terms, ensuring you pay the optimal price while maintaining strong visibility:
Optimize - Decrease bids for saturated SOV keywords: Reduces bids on keywords where your impression share is already above 90%.
Why use it? Prevents overspending on keywords where you already dominate impression share, freeing up more budget for new keyword discovery.
Protect - Increase bids if top performers lose visibility: Ensures your impression share on important keywords remains above 90% by gradually increasing bids if your share drops below that threshold.
Why use it? Protects key search terms—like your brand name—to avoid competitors outbidding you and taking your top spot.
💡 A simple, risk-free way to start with automation is by applying our two Monitor presets to all active campaigns. These rules don’t take any action—they simply notify you if any undesired behavior occurs:
Monitor - Track campaign budget saturation: Notifies you when your campaign reaches its daily budget, allowing you to adjust budgets before performance is impacted.
Why use it? When your campaign is saturated, high-performing keywords are not exploited to their full potential. This rule helps you monitor budget saturation to reach the full potential of your campaigns.
Monitor - Track campaign CPA: Notifies you when campaign CPA rises beyond a certain threshold (i.e., double the campaign average over the last 30 days), so you can take action before costs spiral.
Why use it? If you don’t want to use automated systems to update bids, you certainly want to be notified when your performance is dropping. Monitoring CPA across multiple campaigns takes time, so this rule helps you track performance efficiently and take action when needed.
By strategically combining our Optimize, Protect, and Monitor automation presets, you can create a balanced strategy that scales performance efficiently while ensuring strong visibility for your most important keywords.
What is the Robust CPA?
When optimizing Apple Ads campaigns, Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a key metric to measure efficiency. The standard CPA is computed based on spend/installs over a given date range. However, this comes with a trade-off:
CPA varies significantly based on short-term data, making it sensitive to daily fluctuations in performance.
A short date range reflects market trends well but may not have enough data, while a longer date range includes more data but mixes old and recent trends, making it harder to react to market shifts.
To solve this, AppTweak calculates a more stable metric: Robust CPA, which is used in our automation presets to make better-informed bidding decisions:
The Robust CPA is calculated as CPT (Cost Per Tap) ÷ CVR (Conversion Rate). This approach allows CPT and CVR to be computed over different timeframes, ensuring a balance between accuracy and stability:
CPT is calculated over a short date range: Reflects the latest market conditions with minimal delay.
CVR is calculated over a longer date range: Ensures stability by using a larger dataset, reducing the impact of daily fluctuations.
With the Robust CPA, our automation presets ensure more reliable and strategic bid adjustments, helping you scale Apple Ads campaigns without considering volatile bid fluctuations.
Monitoring and adjusting automation rules
Automation isn’t a “set it and forget it" tool. It’s essential to review and fine-tune your automation rules regularly.
Monitoring feed
The Monitoring tab provides a detailed log of all automation actions, including:
Which rules were triggered and when.
What changes were made.
The affected campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.
💡 If you apply a rule every Wednesday (for example), check the Monitoring section every Thursday to review adjustments. Also, keep in mind our recommendations for rule frequency to know how often you should check on your rules:
Monitor-only rules: Apply daily to track trends.
Action rules (e.g., bid adjustments): Apply weekly (on the best day for you) to avoid excessive changes.
Email notifications
For Monitor-only rules, you can receive email alerts when automation rules are met (e.g., campaign budget is fully spent or CPA exceeding the set threshold).
💡 Stay informed and take quick actions by reviewing alerts regularly.