Co-pilot is the all-in-one hub for managing Apple Search Ads campaigns. It integrates seven powerful tools that can work in tandem to help you automate, optimize, and enhance your ad campaigns, making sophisticated campaign management accessible and driving user acquisition and app growth.

Co-pilot is designed to serve as an Apple Search Ads optimization hub, offering smart campaign automation and optimization tools. Its dashboard consolidates the key tools provided by SearchAds.com into a single board, providing actionable insights for immediate campaign improvements. Co-pilot addresses the complexities of Apple Search Ads campaigns such as figuring out your app marketing performance, campaign setup, bid optimization or distributing the budget to the correct campaign. It offers targeted recommendations for keyword adjustments, bid strategies, and budget allocation.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the smart tools and how you can use them for your Apple Search Ads campaigns.

Spotlight is the first tool under Co-pilot and it is the landing page for the rest of the tools. It gathers all of the tool’s highlights on one page. To start, you need to select your app from the upper right-hand side. If you have only one integrated app, you can skip this part as the platform will select the app automatically for you.

1: The first part is your app’s Audit score, which is an overall score for your campaign management platform. Audit works as a pitstop for you to check and understand how well you’re performing at that moment. When you click the “Explore” button, you can access a detailed performance analysis on the Audit page.

2: The second part is your Insights Center, which provides insights into your campaign management performance. Next to these insights are recommended Co-pilot tools that can help you fix any issues you are facing. When you click the “See Details” button, you'll see a detailed version of that specific insight.

3: The third section is your overall metrics. You can see your Spend/Daily Budget ratio, your CPA and category benchmark just below, your TTR and the category benchmark just below again, your Impression Rate, and your Brand Protection Rate. Under each of these, you can see the recommended tools to optimize each metric.

When you click the “Details'' button, you can see a more in-depth explanation of the recommended tools' actions. Click the “Go to …” button in the lower-left corner to go to those tools and take immediate action.

The second part of the Spotlight gives you brief insights and an overview of every tool under Co-pilot. It provides recommendations about the actions you should take to optimize your campaign performance. When you click the “Explore” button, the tool guides you directly to the tool so you can start optimizing your performance according to its recommendations.

Campaign Wizard is the second tool under Co-pilot and it simplifies campaign-building by creating structures validated by experts and recommended by Apple Search Ads. It reduces manual work in keyword discovery and campaign setup, saving time and effort. Here is how to use and benefit from Campaign Wizard.

Start by providing information about your app; the storefront you want to advertise in, your daily budget, and your brand keyword.

Continue by choosing your competitors. In this step, you’ll have two tabs, one giving suggested competitors and the other giving the exclusive competitors, each has a number right next to it, showing the number of apps under the tab. The selected competitors will be added to the box on the right and will be seen with a tick right next to it on the list. You can remove the competitors by clicking on the X on the upper right-side of the app icons. After selecting the competitors, click Next to move to the next step.

Campaign Wizard’s algorithms suggest the most pertinent keywords for your campaigns. Select the ones you want to target from the list provided. The selected keywords will have a tick on the left-hand side. You can also search for keywords in the list by typing down in the search bar. If you click on “All Types” you’ll see a dropdown with the campaign types listed, select the campaign type to see the keywords suggested for it.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, click next to review the structure and click “Create” to complete the process. After your campaign is created, Campaign Wizard allocates your budget accordingly and assigns Max CPT Bids based on category benchmarks. You can customize these settings to suit your strategy.

Tailor your target audience by editing the ad group settings and adjusting to your preferences.

Review your campaign inputs on the Overview page before launching your campaigns. Once set, you’ll be directed to Ads Manager, where you can monitor campaign performance.

This is a brief how-to-use guide for Campaign Wizard, for more information, you can also check Campaign Wizard’s article.

Optimize is the third tool under Co-pilot and it boosts campaign performance with minimal effort by selecting and applying the right actions for your campaign type automatically. It identifies high-performing keywords, scales bids and budgets, and optimizes cost when keywords lose relevance. Here is how to use and benefit from Optimize:

First, navigate to the Campaigns tab and select the campaigns where you want to implement Optimize.

Keep in Mind!

Only campaigns with the placement “Search results” that have the Discovery, Generic or Competitor campaign types are eligible for Optimize

Ensure you've identified the campaign type; Discovery, Generic, or Competitor. Remember, Brand campaigns are excluded.

For Generic or Competitor campaign types, Optimize will:

For Discovery campaign types, Optimize will:

This is a brief how-to-use guide for Optimize; for more information, you can also check Optimize’s article.

Keyword Advisor is the fourth tool under Co-pilot, and it analyzes market landscape and competitor strategies to help discover high-performing keywords. It provides insights into competitor keywords and storefront performances, enhancing ROAS. Here is how to use and benefit from Keyword Advisor:

Choose the app you want to generate keywords for and start by providing information about your app, the storefront you want to advertise in, and your brand keyword. Then click “Next” in the upper right corner.

On the next page, continue with selecting your competitors, you can search and add competitors by clicking the “+” button. In this step, you’ll have two tabs, one giving suggested competitors and the other giving the exclusive competitors, each has a number right next to it, showing the number of apps under the tab. The selected competitors will be added to the box on the right and will be seen with a tick right next to it on the list. You can remove the competitors by clicking on the X on the upper right side of the app icons. This step is important as Keyword Advisor uses your competitors to find the most suitable keywords for you. After choosing them, click the “Next” button again.

In this step, you’ll see the keywords that Keyword Advisor has found for you. Each suggested keyword is accompanied by a "keyword strength" metric, categorized as high, medium, or low. This metric indicates how relevant the keyword is to your app. Choose the most relevant keywords from the list and add them directly to your campaigns by clicking the “+” button. Keyword Advisor suggests which campaign types (generic, brand, competitor) are suitable for each keyword. Select the ones you want to target from the list provided. The selected keywords will have a tick on the left-hand side. You can also search for keywords in the list by typing down in the search bar. If you click on “All Types” you’ll see a dropdown with the campaign types listed, select the campaign type to see the keywords suggested for it.

For the last step, you can click “Generate a new keyword list” to create a new list of the keywords you have found, run ads with the keywords you choose, or download the keywords as a CSV file.

This is a brief how-to-use guide for Keyword Advisor. For information on best practices and use cases, you can also check Keyword Advisor’s article.

Smart Bidding is the next tool under Co-pilot and it refines bidding strategy using machine learning algorithms to optimize bids based on market conditions and KPIs. It adjusts bids dynamically to improve your KPI; be it CPI, CPA, ROAS or a custom goal metric you create and avoid wasteful ad spend. Here is how to use and benefit from Smart Bidding:

Once you navigate to the Smart Bidding section, you'll see all your Smart Bidding activities, categorized by the metric you choose to optimize. On that screen, you'll see all the details of your activities and their corresponding CPA, CPI, CPG and ROAS metrics. You can use Smart Bidding based on different goals. As we mentioned earlier, you can choose to set a CPA, CPI, CPG (Cost per Goal) goal, or a ROAS goal. In the next section, we explain these in more detail.

To create a new Smart Bidding, click “Create New” in the upper right corner and decide whether you want to apply Smart Bidding to your campaign or ad group and click “Continue”.

Select your campaign or ad group. Keep in mind that you can’t choose the ones that you already applied Smart Bidding.

This is a brief how-to guide for Smart Bidding. For more information, you can also check Smart Bidding’s article.

Budget Allocation is the sixth tool under Co-pilot, and it automatically manages campaign budgets using a data-driven algorithm. It distributes the budget to the most profitable campaigns, maximizing returns based on performance metrics. Here is how to use and benefit from Budget Allocation:

This is a brief how-to-use guide for Budget Allocation, for more information you can also check Budget Allocation’s article.

Audit is the seventh and last tool under Co-pilot. It offers an in-depth analysis of your Apple Search Ads account, pinpointing performance issues and opportunities. It identifies performance bottlenecks and potential areas for improvement, optimizing campaign results. Here is how to use and benefit from Audit:

Start by choosing the app you want to audit. If you have more than one app integrated with SearchAds.com, you can choose the app you’d like to get the report for.

The number in the middle is the grade of your Apple Search Ads performance, 100 being the highest.

Get personalized and detailed insights into your performance, these insights include your performance metrics, budget optimization, visibility on the App Store and your impression shares.

See the evaluation of your performance metrics according to search results, search tab or overall performance. In the first graph, you'll see your app’s spend, impressions, taps, installs, CPA, ROAS, TTR and CR. In the graph below, there are the same metrics’ category benchmarks, allowing you to compare your performance against your category’s standards.

When you scroll down, you can see the size of the campaign groups for your selected app. You can also view search results and Search tab performance separately.

When you scroll further, you’ll see an analysis of your campaign performances from different perspectives:

The first graph shows your underutilized campaigns that have hit their daily caps. You can increase their caps to allow these campaigns to spend more for higher revenues. Also, under the graph, there is a “What Does It Mean” section which briefly explains the situation and recommends some tools to fix your problem if there is any.

The second graph shows your Apple Search Ads visibility scores on a map, allowing you to see your geographical performance for each country and region. Below the graph, there are sections titled “What Does It Mean” and “Recommended Action” to define the problem, if there’s any, and guide you to the solution.

The third and fourth graphs show you the TTR performance and TTR values for each campaign. You can see your TTR/CR, the average TTR/CR and your expected TTR/CR. You can read the “What Does It Mean” and “Recommended Action” sections under these graphs as well for detailed explanations.

The fifth part shows whether you are applying Apple Search Ads best practices, such as bidding brand keywords, using negative keywords or using correct match types. The red ones are the ones you failed to do, and the green ones are the ones you are currently doing. For more information, you can find the “What Does It Mean” and “Recommended Action” sections under the graph.

The sixth and final graph shows if you have any duplicated keywords that might cannibalize each other and cause you to spend your budget unnecessarily. You can find the “What Does It Mean” and “Recommended Action” sections under the graphs for details.

This is a brief guide on Audit, for more information you can also check Audit’s article.

When used together, the 7 smart tools under Co-pilot can help you not only save time on your daily tasks but also enhance your performance. Below are some cases where you can double the benefit you receive from Co-pilot.

Mastering Apple Search Ads campaign management is challenging, but Co-pilot makes it easier. From planning and research to strategic bidding and budgeting, each tool in the Co-pilot toolkit is designed to enhance your campaign performance. By providing actionable insights, automating routine tasks, and targeting the most logical opportunities.

Still have questions or need assistance? Don’t hesitate to contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or get in touch with us via Intercom!