What is Search Match in Apple Ads?

Search Match is Apple Ads' automatic targeting system for search-results campaigns. In theory it uses your App Store metadata, information about similar apps, and other search signals to find relevant queries without requiring you to add every keyword yourself. In practice, you'll find it shows your ads in all sorts of terrible, unrelated results, and you'll pay dearly for it all.

If you can get it right – and that's a gigantic if! – its best role is discovery. Inspect the search terms that produce impressions, taps, and installs, add strong terms as managed keywords, and use negatives to remove bad matches. Automation finds the possibilities, and your performance data decides what stays.

Kickstart brings Search Match discovery into the same Apple Ads workspace as managed keywords and performance, so useful queries can become deliberate tests instead of disappearing into campaign totals.