Search Ads are now live in the App Store

searchads

As promised, Apple on Wednesday officially launched Search Ads in the App Store. You’ll notice them at the top of select App Store search results, denoted by a light blue background and a clear ‘Ad’ placed just below the app’s name.

In our few quick tests, we saw Search Ads for generic terms like ’email,’ ‘weather,’ and ‘calendar,’ as well as for specific app names like ‘Uber.’ Sometimes the ad matched our search term, and sometimes it showed a competing product.

We also noticed that Apple doesn’t like to show you the same advertisement in back-to-back searches, and ads can vary in sizes. For instance, some just show a single descriptive sentence, and others are big enough to show full screenshots.

Search Ads was designed to be effortless for small and independent developers. Invest as much or as little time as you have and still get results. We create your ads and match them to relevant searches. You can refine who sees your ad with optional keyword, audience and location features, and you only pay when a customer taps on your ad. 

I think the ads are going to prove annoying for some users at first, but in my opinion they aren’t at all intrusive. Plus, you don’t have to worry about Apple harvesting a bunch of tracking data from you and selling it to other companies.