Two years on from their launch, Rory Mudie, CEO of  Redbox Mobile, considers how Apple Search Ads might evolve in the future. 

Earlier this month, Apple celebrated the two-year anniversary of Apple Search Ads. Working in a similar way to Google AdWords on the web, Apple Search Ads enables app owners to bid on keywords that will place their app at the top of App Store search results, according to what the user is looking for.

With Apple saying that over 65 per cent of downloads come from search, Search Ads have given app owners a valuable new channel to promote their apps to target consumers. This is because, until the launch of Search Ads, app owners had been entirely reliant upon ASO (App Store Optimisation) to try and boost their app’s appearance. Despite its growth as an advertising medium, Apple Search is still in its infancy and has a way to go until it can match the sophistication of web-based paid search.

Here are five predictions as to how Apple Search will likely evolve in the coming years to become an even stronger channel for advertisers.

1. The evolution of Siri
The popularity of AI-based assistants is exploding, with Amazon, Google and Apple vying for supremacy in this space. As well as improving the overall intelligence of the platform, Apple has integrated Siri into more and more place, including Mac OS, iPhone, iPad, Homepod and Airpods. Just as many people are heralding voice search as the new frontier in web-based search marketing, we are likely to see a parallel increase in voice search for the App Store.

The only problem is that we presently cannot see attribution for voice search in App Store search campaigns, and so we anticipate that this will be provided by Apple in due course to enable greater search accuracy. We also expect to see the evolution of natural language search in the form of questions and more intelligent integration with apps on the App Store.

2. More data and insight for advertisers
There is still a significant opportunity for Apple to provide more granular information and metrics around its Search Ads. Once again, if we look at the web, traditional search advertising professionals have access to a range of tools that help them with paid and organic campaigns.

Free and paid web-based tools such as Google Analytics, SEMRush and Moz Pro provide search professionals with a wealth of insight into user behaviour, keywords, competitor rankings and more. It is hoped and envisaged that more third-party tools around Search Ads will appear in the future to give advertisers and app owners greater insight and enable the, to drive even better campaign success.

3. Intelligent app indexing and deep linking
Several years ago, Google enabled deep app indexing, meaning that its web search engine could crawl the contents of an app. In turn, Google would then suggest apps in search results where the apps’ content related to the search term. This kind of deep linking is still something that Apple will need to develop for its App Store if its going to provide increasingly relevant search results. This will likely go one step further and include dynamic search indexing to understand real-time results and provide hyper-relevance.

Say you’re looking for a new article that the BBC has just posted. The ideal case would be that the App Store would know that and offer apps that fulfil that need. This same logic could then be applied to other apps that have dynamic real-time content, such as travel apps. We can expect to see real-time intelligent app indexing with deep-linking integration on the App Store in the coming years if advertising is to become even more contextually relevant. This can also be extended to other indicators such as location-based search results, as your mobile devices are almost always constantly aware of where you are.

4. Better and more plentiful paid search results
The small real-estate that the App Store occupies on the average mobile phone means that the current App search results are relatively limited – to one per search result at the moment. Even though screen sizes are getting larger, there is a limit to how big they can realistically get. Apple will likely continue to develop the space it allocates on the App Store to provide users with more search choices. We have seen Google continually adjusting the area that it utilises for sponsored search ads on the web and so it stands to reason that we can expect this to develop on the App Store as well.

5. App store paid search will become an integral part of any app marketing campaign
Despite the existence of Search Ads for the last two years, it is still an evolving medium. Whereas traditional mobile advertising has become very commonplace, with many developers still relying on Facebook as a primary user acquisition source, there is still a way to go for Search Ads to be front of mind for the average advertiser. This is mostly due to the relative newness of the medium, the apparent lack of published results and ROI, plus the necessity for an agency to learn an entirely new system based on a combination of keyword analysis and ASO.