Competitor targeting is the most expensive and the most valuable Apple Search Ads inventory. It is also the easiest place to waste money if your competitor terms share an ad group with your generic ones. SearchAd AI keeps them separate by default, so the data stays honest.
A user searching "Bear notes" already knows what they want. They are expensive to reach, less likely to convert to your app, and they raise your blended CPT in a way that obscures how well your generic keywords are actually doing. Mixing them in one ad group is how a profitable campaign starts looking unprofitable on paper.
| Ad group | Match | Search Match | Default CPT | Typical CVR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exact | EXACT | OFF | tier-based | healthy |
| Competitors | EXACT | OFF | ≈ 1.6× Exact | noticeably lower |
The bid premium and the conversion drag move together. Isolating them lets you pay for the truth instead of an average.
When you describe your app, name the rivals you care about. The planner will draft variations on each: the brand alone, brand plus category, common misspellings, transliterations in non-Latin markets, and the most-searched longtail combinations. All of them land in the Competitors ad group, with EXACT match.
Later, when you read the ROAS dashboard and see that competitor traffic from Germany is unprofitable but competitor traffic from Japan is your highest-LTV cohort, you can ask the AI to pause Germany's competitor group and double Japan's, without touching either market's generic keywords.
Yes. Apple Search Ads allows bidding on competitor brand keywords. The competitors themselves are also bidding on theirs. The auction is a level playing field.
Competitor terms have different CPT, conversion, and fair bid than generic keywords. Mixing them produces a misleading blended CPT that wrecks optimization. A separate ad group keeps the signals clean.
You name them in chat. The planner localizes the spelling per market (transliterations, common misspellings, branded longtail variations) and drops them into the Competitors group.
Yes. Because Competitors is its own ad group inside each campaign, you can pause it, lower its bid, or expand it independently. Ask the AI: "pause competitor targeting in Germany" and the change is staged for your approval.
Every plan ships with the Competitors ad group built in. Approve, decline, or scope it down.