Opening bids matter more than steady-state bids. Get them wrong and you spend two weeks unlearning the data Apple just showed you. SearchAd AI uses an empirical purchasing-power tier table to set the opening MANUAL_CPT for each market, so the first day's auction is anchored in reality instead of a guess.
Defaults below are the opening MANUAL_CPT bids for the Exact ad group, in USD-equivalent. The Competitors group inherits a premium on top (typically around 1.6×). All numbers are editable per market before you approve.
| Tier | Markets (examples) | Exact default | Daily budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| A · Premium | US, JP, UK, AU, CA, DE, NL, SE, CH, NO, DK | $3.50 – $5.00 | $15 – $25 |
| B · Strong | FR, ES, IT, KR, BR, MX, IL, AE, SA, IE | $1.80 – $3.20 | $8 – $15 |
| C · Mid | PL, CZ, PT, TR, ZA, AR, CL, GR, RO, MY | $0.90 – $1.70 | $4 – $8 |
| D · Emerging | ID, VN, EG, NG, PK, BD, TH, PH, IN, KE | $0.30 – $0.80 | $2 – $4 |
Tiers are continuously refined. The table above is a snapshot; the version baked into your plan reflects the latest calibration.
Apple's onboarding flow nudges you toward Search Match, which lets the system pick keywords for you and bid on your behalf. It is fast. It is also expensive. Search Match spend hits long-tail queries no human would have chosen, mixes brand and generic into one cost, and gives you data that is hard to act on later.
SearchAd AI ships every campaign with Search Match OFF and EXACT match keywords, MANUAL_CPT bidding. You pay for the queries you chose. The auction tells you which ones are working. You raise or lower the bid for that exact set of words.
"Raise everything over 2x ROAS by 20%, drop everything under 1x by 25%."
A ROAS-anchored rebalance. AI drafts; you approve.
"Bring Japan to ¥260 across Exact and Competitors."
A market-specific override. Both ad groups, one approval.
"Lower every D-tier country by 30%."
A whole-tier sweep when emerging markets look soft.
Apple Search Ads is a tap auction. MANUAL_CPT gives you direct control over what you pay per tap, which is the only signal Apple's auction actually uses. Cost-per-install on top is a derivative number, not a knob.
An empirical tier table in our codebase, calibrated against an 88-campaign real-money deploy. Tiers correspond to relative purchasing power and observed CPT levels per market, not GDP or population.
Always. Either edit the plan before approving, or tell the AI in chat: "raise Japan to ¥260, drop Indonesia to Rp 2,400". Overrides land in the same draft.
No. Bid changes go through the same approval gate as deploys. You can ask the AI to propose new bids based on ROAS and it will draft the change; nothing applies until you approve.
Defaults that do not embarrass you. Overrides that take one sentence.