How *brand*, category and rival terms split the account

Three jobs, three campaigns#

Every keyword in the account answers one of three questions: is the shopper asking for us, for the job we do, or for a named rival. Brand terms defend your own name at high conversion rates, category phrases capture open demand at variable cost, and competitor terms rent attention from shoppers mid comparison. Mixing them in one campaign blends three different maths into one unreadable average.

Apple own structure guidance builds separate brand, category and competitor campaigns before discovery even enters the picture. Our exact match guide shows the bracket discipline each of the three runs on.

Brand defence first#

Bid your own name on exact match before anything else, because the top search result for your brand should be you, not a rival renting your reputation. Brand taps convert at the best rates in the account, which justifies confident bids even where you rank first organically; paid owns the top slot outright while organic merely contests it. Include misspellings and close variants of the name as exact terms too, since shoppers type fast and rivals bid on your typos.

Bean counters question paying for your own name; answer with the conquest screenshots of rivals sitting above your listing. Keep brand fenced from discovery with exact negatives, as our negatives guide details, and read harvesting for how new brand variants graduate.

Category capture at scale#

Category keywords are the open ocean: high volume, mixed intent, honest competition. Buy them on exact match once proven, mine them on broad match while learning, and judge them on cost per install rather than tap volume, because category browsers tap freely and install selectively. Split category ad groups by intent fork the moment one theme clearly contains two different shoppers.

Popularity scores help prioritise which category phrases deserve budget first. Our popularity guide reads the 1 to 5 scale, and relevancy explains why only fitting category terms earn the right to spend.

Competitor conquest, priced honestly#

Bidding named rivals buys shoppers mid comparison at premium prices and mixed conversion rates, so treat conquest as a measured experiment rather than a standing grudge. Cap its budget separately, read its downstream actions rather than its taps, and kill it the month it stops paying. Never imply endorsement or impersonate the rival in creative; bid the keyword, keep your own name on the ad.

Conquest also invites retaliation, so weigh the margin before opening a front you must then defend. Apple own keyword help lists competitor terms among the standard keyword families to plan for. Our broad match guide warns how discovery leaks into rival names unfenced.

Fences between the three#

Each campaign negates the other two's ground: discovery carries all three families as exact negatives, category carries brand terms it might otherwise catch, and conquest stays quarantined so its premium costs never pollute brand averages. Without fences, reports overlap, bids fight themselves, and harvesting promotes queries into campaigns that already owned them.

Review fence membership monthly as promotions graduate new terms into controlled ground. Our Search Match guide shows the automation fence in detail.

Bids per job, reviewed per job#

Brand bids defend a slot worth more than its taps suggest, category bids track measured cost per install per theme, and conquest bids answer only to incremental profit after retaliation risk. One bid rule across all three guarantees two of them are wrong. Report the three separately to stakeholders too, since blended averages hide both the defence value and the conquest cost.

Start at the Apple Ads hub for the account wide layout, and ask our team for a structure audit when one campaign's averages stop making sense.

Frequently asked questions#