Category Campaign (Apple Search Ads)
A Category campaign is an Apple Search Ads campaign that bids Exact Match on the non-branded genre terms describing what your app does, aimed at users actively searching for that type of app.
Where a Brand campaign defends a name, a Category campaign competes for generic demand: 'habit tracker', 'budget planner', 'meditation timer'. These are the same terms organic keyword research already scores for popularity and difficulty — a Category campaign puts money behind the ones with the best paid economics.
Because Category terms sit in the open market, cost per tap and conversion vary widely by how crowded the category is. The same popularity and difficulty numbers used for organic keyword selection are a reasonable starting filter for which category terms are worth bidding on at all.
Category campaigns are also a practical feedback loop for organic ASO: a term that converts well and cheaply as a paid keyword is a strong signal it belongs in your title, subtitle, or keyword field for the organic ranking it will eventually earn once the paid spend stops.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a Category campaign different from organic keyword targeting?
- Same terms, different mechanism. Organic keyword targeting puts the term in your metadata and earns rank over time through relevance and engagement. A Category campaign pays for placement on that term immediately, independent of your organic rank.
- Should I only bid on category terms I already rank for organically?
- Not necessarily. Bidding on terms you don't yet rank for organically can generate installs while your organic position builds, and the resulting engagement data can inform which of those terms are worth prioritizing in your next metadata update.
Related terms
- Brand Campaign (Apple Search Ads)A Brand campaign is an Apple Search Ads campaign that bids Exact Match on your own app and company name terms, defending them from competitors at the lowest cost per tap of any campaign type.
- Discovery CampaignA Discovery campaign is an Apple Search Ads campaign type built to surface new, unknown keywords by running Broad Match and Search Match against a wide audience rather than a fixed keyword list.
- Keyword DifficultyKeyword difficulty is a 0–100 score estimating how hard it is to break into the top-ranking positions for a given App Store keyword, based on the strength of apps currently holding those positions.
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Put this into practice
Score App Store keywords by popularity and difficulty across 109 storefronts — the numbers behind category campaign (apple search ads).
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