At the end of last year, Apple announced that it was expanding App Store search ads beyond the single promoted placement at the top of the results. Instead, developer paying for promotion in App Store search can now have their apps appear further down the search results list, mixed in with the usual stream of organic results.

Apple has now confirmed that this will go into effect beginning March 3, starting the UK and Japan, with a rollout across all Apple Ads markets by the end of the month.

App Store search results with multiple ad placements will be available on iPhones running iOS 16.2, and iPads running 26.2, and later.

As an advertiser, you don’t have to do anything special to appear further down the search results list. Apple will automatically start showing ad campaigns targeting App Store search in more places in the search results list, no longer limited to the top position only for a given search query. Advertisers actually cannot bid for a specific spot; the Apple algorithm chooses the ordering.

As well as in search results, ads will also continue to appear in the Today tab, at the bottom of apps’ product pages, and in the suggested list in the Search tab seen before user enters a query.

The App Store search ads program make up a large percentage of Apple’s growing advertising division inside its Services unit, with analysts estimating several billions of dollars per year in participating advertiser spend.

Source: 9to5mac