TL;DR. Apple Ads no longer supports Creative Sets in search results campaigns — any you built are marked “Unsupported” on your Ads dashboard and cannot run, though you can still see their historical data. The only way to create an ad variation now is to base it on a Custom Product Page from App Store Connect. Only one custom ad variation can be Active per ad group at a time (activating a new one pauses the old one), the cap is 70 custom ads per ad group, and the default ad keeps serving on iOS versions before 15.2 regardless.

If you set up Apple Search Ads creative variations before Custom Product Pages existed, there’s a decent chance your Ads dashboard still lists a Creative Set from that era. It looks like it’s part of your live campaign. It isn’t.

Are Apple Ads Creative Sets still supported?

No. Apple’s own ad variations help page states plainly that “Creative Sets ad variations are no longer supported by Apple Ads in search results campaigns. Though you may see these ads listed on your Ads dashboard, they can’t run on the App Store.” Their status shows as Unsupported, you can view historical performance data, and the only action available on them is removal — you can’t edit them or change their status back to active.

If you’ve been assuming a Creative Set is still contributing impressions, check its status column today. An “Unsupported” ad variation is not paused and waiting — it’s dead and reporting nothing new.

How do you create an ad variation now?

Every new ad variation in a search results ad group has to be built from a Custom Product Page you’ve already created and had approved in App Store Connect. There’s no separate ad-creative tool anymore — the CPP supplies the screenshots, app preview, and deep link, and the ad variation just points at it. If you haven’t created any CPPs yet, or the one you’re trying to use hasn’t been approved, Apple Ads will tell you no custom product pages are available and send you back to App Store Connect to fix that first.

This is a deliberate merge: your organic-search CPP work and your paid-ad creative work now run through the same App Store Connect object, not two parallel systems. If you’re already building Custom Product Pages for organic keyword clusters, the same pages are what your Apple Ads ad variations draw from.

How many ad variations can I run, and can more than one be active at once?

Within a single ad group, you can create up to 70 custom ad variations before Apple Ads blocks new ones — Apple’s troubleshooting page is explicit that this limit is what triggers the “can’t create another ad variation” message. But only one custom ad can be Active per ad group at any time: activating a new one automatically pauses whichever custom ad was previously active. Your default ad (the one using your standard product page) still shows as active in the dashboard alongside it, and it’s what actually serves to any device on iOS versions earlier than 15.2, or whenever your custom ad is paused or placed on hold.

Practically: you’re not running a multivariate test across several custom creatives simultaneously inside one ad group. You’re swapping which single CPP-based variation is live, one at a time, plus the always-available default as a fallback.

Why would an ad variation stop running even if I didn’t touch it?

Six statuses can show up on an ad variation, and only one of them means it’s actually serving: Active. The rest — Paused, Incompatible, Disabled, On hold, Unsupported, and Deleted — all mean it isn’t. The two worth watching if you didn’t intentionally pause anything:

  • Incompatible: the CPP behind the ad has assets that don’t match the ad group’s targeted country, region, or device. Fix the CPP’s assets in App Store Connect, then you’ll need to manually reactivate the ad — it doesn’t resume automatically once corrected.
  • Disabled: the CPP itself was disabled in App Store Connect. Same fix, same manual reactivation step.

If you’re running ads targeting mainland China, there’s a seventh wrinkle: the ad variation also needs creative authorization documentation approved, and a rejected document leaves it on hold indefinitely until resubmitted.

What should I check today?

  1. Open every active search results campaign’s Ads dashboard and look for any ad variation still labeled from a Creative Set. If its status reads Unsupported, remove it — it’s not contributing data or impressions, just clutter.
  2. Confirm you have at least one approved Custom Product Page per ad group where you want a custom ad variation running, since that’s the only path to creating one now.
  3. If you’re relying on a specific custom ad variation to be live, check its status is actually Active, not Paused or On hold from an incompatible or disabled CPP.
  4. If you use CPP deep links to route ad taps to a specific screen, verify you haven’t applied gender or age targeting at the ad group level — Apple disables deep links automatically when those settings are present.