u/MuchAge1486

unpopular-ish opinion in indie dev circles: Apple Search Ads is probably the most underrated paid channel for iOS apps right now, and everyone's obsessing over TikTok/Meta instead.

for context - I tried Google UAC/Display for one of my apps and it was a mess, tons of Android traffic somehow converting on an iOS-only app, which is a pretty clear fraud signal once you actually check install data instead of trusting the ad platform's own numbers. pulled the plug on that.

ASA on the other hand has been clean - it's Apple's own inventory, the traffic is people literally searching the App Store, so intent is already there. CPA has been consistently solid for me.

the one annoying part is Apple's dashboard doesn't show you real ROI, just install-level metrics, so I ended up building my own thing on the side to join ad spend with actual revenue per keyword (mostly for myself, wasn't planning on this being a whole project but here we are).

curious if others have had similar experiences with ASA vs the usual suspects - feels like a channel more people should be paying attention to.

Quick context: I ship a few small iOS apps and run Apple Search Ads on them. The thing that bugged me for months is that ASA’s dashboard optimizes you toward cheap installs, but cheap installs are worthless if those users never pay.

I kept finding cases where a keyword looked great on CPI and terrible on actual revenue, and vice versa. Apple’s dashboard simply can’t show you this because it doesn’t have your purchase data.

So I built ASAPilot. It pulls your ASA spend per keyword and ties it to your real revenue (via RevenueCat), then shows true ROAS for every keyword. You can sort by ROAS / revenue / spend / installs, separate brand from generic terms, and pause the keywords that are quietly draining budget, all from your phone.
The pattern that shows up almost every time: one broad keyword eats most of the budget for almost no return, while a couple of cheap specific keywords are doing all the actual revenue work. You can’t see it until revenue is attributed per keyword.

If you wanna try it yourself:
https://apps.apple.com/it/app/asapilot-search-ads-manager/id6773804173?l=en-GB

Like a lot of indie devs, I run Apple Search Ads to drive installs for my apps. The problem with ASA is that Apple’s own dashboard tells you installs and cost per install, but stops there. It has no idea whether those installs ever turned into paying users.

So you end up optimizing for the wrong thing. A keyword can look “cheap” at $1.50 per install and still be a money pit if none of those users convert. Meanwhile a more expensive keyword might be your best performer because the intent is higher. Without revenue data tied back to each keyword, you’re guessing.

The fix

ASAPilot connects your Apple Search Ads account with your actual subscription/purchase data (through RevenueCat) and computes true ROAS at the keyword level. Not installs. Not CPI. Actual revenue divided by actual spend, per keyword.

Once that data is in one place, a few things become obvious that were invisible before:

•	A broad keyword like “calendar” can eat the majority of your budget and return almost nothing, while a cheap long-tail term like “create calendar from photo” quietly returns 100x. You only catch this when revenue is attributed per keyword.    
•	It becomes easy to split brand vs generic keywords and see that your brand terms are doing the heavy lifting at near-zero CPI, while generic terms need much tighter control.    
•	You can sort the whole keyword list by ROAS, revenue, spend, or installs, filter active/paused, and pause the bleeders directly from the app.

Where it’s going

Right now the app surfaces the data and lets you act on it manually. The next step is AI-driven: keyword suggestions, bid recommendations, and automated pause rules based on each keyword’s real ROAS, so the optimization loop runs without you staring at a dashboard every day.

The honest state of things

This is an early indie project. It’s been through the usual App Store review pain, and I’m validating whether other devs feel the same attribution gap I felt. If you run ASA and you’ve ever wondered which keywords are actually making you money (not just installs), I’d love your feedback — both on the problem and on whether the approach makes sense.

What do you currently use to tie ASA spend back to revenue? Curious if people are doing this manually in spreadsheets, ignoring it, or have a tool I haven’t seen.

If you interested: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/asapilot-search-ads-manager/id6773804173?l=en-GB

Sharing a screenshot from ASAPilot, the app I built to manage Apple Search Ads campaigns with AI.

The whole point: most indie devs running ASA fly blind. You set up keywords, throw money at them, and have no easy way to see what’s actually converting into revenue. ASAPilot connects your ASA account with your real revenue data (via RevenueCat) so you get true ROAS per keyword, not just installs.

What you see in the screenshot is the keyword view for one of my own apps. You can:

•	Sort keywords by ROAS, Revenue, Spend, or Installs  
•	Filter by Active / Paused status  
•	See per-keyword metrics at a glance: ROAS, spend, installs, revenue  
•	Group keywords into ad groups (Brand / Generic) to separate what’s actually driving value  
•	Pause or activate keywords directly from the app

The “gold mine” bit: that 101x ROAS keyword is spending $0.72 and pulling $72.98 back. Meanwhile the broad “calendar” keyword is burning $137 for $9.99 in revenue at 0.07x. Without per-keyword ROAS attribution, you’d never catch that the broad term is just bleeding money while a cheap long-tail keyword is the real winner. That’s exactly the kind of decision the app is built to surface fast.

On the roadmap: AI-suggested keyword optimizations and bid recommendations based on this same data.

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s running ASA and fighting the same attribution headaches.

Hello guys, I'm seeing everywhere this kind of screenshots in the appstore using 3d pixar avatar to show the product...

Just a genuine question: do you think that this really converts?
I mean obviously it does capture the attention, but does it work?
Curious to hear from people that already tried to use them in the store

But you can use Lectio, the app I've created.

It transcribes lectures offline and with no errors at all, then you can use some AI features (paying) to generate summaries, quizzes and more.

If you don't want to pay, you can just take your transcriptions and use it somewhere else.

I hope you guys like it, I've built that for my self and it saved my whole semester, hope it can be useful for you too.

If you are curious: www.lectioapp.it

made a thing for people who run apple search ads and im opening early access, wanted to share it here first since this is literally the right crowd.

background: i run ASA for my own apps and the one thing that always killed me is you can't see which keywords actually make money. apple gives you taps and installs and cost but never ties it back to real revenue. so you end up guessing, or fighting a spreadsheet once a month and giving up.

so i built it. its a mobile app - manage your campaigns from your phone, but the main thing is real ROAS per keyword (it matches your spend against your actual revenue) and smart notifications when something's burning budget or spiking.

one thing worth saying here because you'll care: i got approved as an apple ads API partner, so connecting your account is basically one tap, no copy-pasting keys or certificates.

im letting people in slowly in small batches - not a marketing thing, its just that getting each account connected right needs a bit of attention at the start and i dont want people stuck. so its a waitlist, few at a time, and ill actually reply to you when you're in.

link's at the bottom if you wanna get on the list. and genuinely happy to take questions / hate / feedback right here.

https://asapilot.simonegiammy.com

Designing screenshots for every App Store market is a pain — I was doing it by hand for my own apps. ReleaseFrame does it with your own AI keys (one-time, no subscription).

Just shipped a fix for an onboarding bug that was tripping people up, so I’m looking for honest impressions on whether the flow makes sense now
I made a quick demo video showing the flow

Happy to give a free license to anyone who tries it and sends me a real impression / bug report — DM me.

I build apps, and I was sick of making localized App Store screenshots by hand every release — Figma, spreadsheets, copy-pasting translations, re-uploading every locale one by one. So I built the tool I wanted.

It's called ReleaseFrame. A few things that matter for this crowd specifically:

• Native Mac app, not a web wrapper. Runs on macOS 14+.
• Everything stays local — your files, your keys, your generations never leave your machine.
• Bring your own AI key (Claude or Codex/OpenAI). No server in the middle, no token markup, no surprise AI bill.
• Drop in a screenshot or your App Store description → the agent proposes a 4-5 slide carousel, writes the headlines, and localizes every frame for the markets you ship to (40+ languages, one pass).
• Pushes straight to App Store Connect — every localized set at once, no manual re-upload per language.

Funny enough I went web-first for a while, then came back to native Mac because the screenshot output was just better and far more manageable.

Free to use. $9.99 one-time (lifetime) to unlock export/upload — no subscription.

If you ship apps and hate this part as much as I did, I'd love your feedback: releaseframe.com

Happy to answer anything about how it handles localization or the local/BYO-key setup.

Hey everyone 👋

Last September I built Photo2Calendar+!

I’ve just added a new Home Screen widget.
Now you can copy any image or text — from WhatsApp, email, websites, screenshots, notes, school/work messages, booking confirmations, etc. — tap the widget, and Photo2Calendar turns it into a calendar event.

The app can already create events from:
\- photos
\- screenshots
\- PDFs/files
\- typed text
\- voice input
\- shared content from other apps

It detects the date, time, title, location, and lets you review everything before saving it to your calendar.
(Syncs also with Google Calendar, Outlook and more)

The goal is simple: stop manually creating calendar events from random messages and documents.
Would love to hear what you think about the widget and whether there are other “quick add” flows I should support next.

App: www.photo2calendar.it/download

I built Photo2Calendar, and the new widget is the feature I’m most proud of.
The idea is simple: stop copying event info, switching apps, opening the calendar, creating an event manually, pasting bits piece by piece.
Here’s the actual flow with the new widget:
1. You see something with a date — a WhatsApp message, a screenshot, a handwritten note, anything
2. You copy it (or just take a screenshot)
3. You tap the Paste button directly from your home screen widget
4. The AI reads it, extracts title, date, time, location
5. The event lands in your native calendar. Done.
No app switching. No typing. The widget stays on your home screen and handles everything in one tap.
We support photo, audio, typed text, and now clipboard paste — because the info you need to save is already in your phone, you just shouldn’t have to move it manually.
App is called Photo2Calendar, free to try.
Happy to answer questions about how the AI extraction works or anything else 👇

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photo2calendar.app

Hey everyone 👋

Last August I shared Photo2Calendar here, and it ended up getting noticed in "Best September Android Apps" video by HowToMen.

That gave the app a huge visibility boost, so I really wanted to come back here with the next meaningful update.

I’ve just added a new Home Screen widget.

Now you can copy any image or text: from WhatsApp, email, websites, screenshots, notes, school/work messages, booking confirmations, etc. — tap the widget, and Photo2Calendar turns it into a calendar event.

The app can already create events from:

• photos
• screenshots
• PDFs/files
• typed text
• voice input
• shared content from other apps

It detects the date, time, title, location, and lets you review everything before saving it to your calendar.

The goal is simple: stop manually creating calendar events from random messages and documents.

Would love to hear what you think about the widget and whether there are other “quick add” flows I should support next.

App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photo2calendar.app