• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 26, 2018

Apple expanded Search Ads this week to markets in Asia such as Japan and South Korea, and across Europe in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The move increases the total number of countries to thirteen.

Search Ads, which target the keyword searches of site visitors, was initially introduced in the U.S app store in June 2016. Then in December 2017, the company introduced Search Ads Basic, a pay-per-install model, aimed at smaller app developers.

Recent survey data estimates 70% of App Store visitors use search to discover apps, and App store searches drive 65% of all app reinstalls.

Search Ads became available to developers and marketers in the newly supported countries on Wednesday, but those campaigns will not begin running in the App Store until August 1.

In May, mobile marketing startup Tune announced a partnership with Apple to measure, access and share data abou the difference between new and returning app users known as reinstalls. As part of the expanded partnership, Tune integrated the Apple Search Ads Attribution API. The move allows Tune to give its advertisers and developers more information about mobile app conversions.

A recent Tune report found that by analyzing 3.1 billion global app installs from November 2017 to May 2018, brands boosted app reinstalls via Search Ads by 42% on average.

One social app experienced 367% more installs from reinstalls. In this particular case, while Search Ads drove tens of thousands of fresh first-time installs, the same Search Ads drove more than a hundred thousand re-downloads, according to Tune.