How can the "optimal" CPT per keyword be calculated on Apple Search Ads?

Question

For Apple Search Ads, how can the "optimal" CPT per keyword be calculated once you move keywords from Search to Exact matches? Some options would be to take into account a target CPA / average CPI against CVR, or maybe consider the retention of that same keyword according to the MMP.

Do general best practices exist here?

Answer 1

In my opinion, you can only roughly guesstimate what CPT you will want to input when moving from discovery/search math to exact, maybe based on historical results of other related keywords in that market mostly + the install rate of the search term, and then iterate from there by raising/decreasing bids based on actual data as you collect it.
But you can't exactly determine that CPT bid level precisely when moving from search terms to exact, partly because:

• you don't get MMP details on search terms from the search match campaigns so you never know how this keyword is yeilding post-install. install quality may differ from other terms in the country
• You might want to bid differently if your adgroup is new user/returning/all and LATon/off (I typically bid much lower of LATon groups)
• Competitive environment changes can make those assumptions wrong pretty fast
• You get served below your bid, rarely at it, I'drecommend you bid slightly higher than your target to avoid restricting the inventory
• I would even dare say that the auction works differently when in discovery and when in Exact, but I don't have hard evidence to sustain this point
   

One decent practice would be to move all your search terms into a "probing" campaign before you move them to your exact generic/competition campaign, to get MMP data & iterate a bit without creating too much noise in the other Exact campaigns.
See the process on this blog post for details: https://asostack.com/how-to-set-up-a-systematic-apple-search-ads-campaign-structure-with-5-campaign-types-64a0fa0b21d4