Campaign setup: import or start with the Guide

When you add an app, you choose how it starts: import the campaigns it already runs, or start new with The Apple Ads Guide. Either way you also set a daily budget, a payback target and how much AdsBuddy may do on its own. Nothing is written to Apple Ads during setup.

Start new with the Guide

For an app without Apple Ads yet. After the first daily review, AdsBuddy proposes two grouped campaigns in Decisions, following the Guide's General to Specific method: one per country tier, each with a single Broad ad group and manual bids. Add the keywords you want to test, then approve them. Once results come in, AdsBuddy suggests moving the countries that pay back into their own campaigns and testing the next ones.

• You control — daily budget, payback target, maximum bid, mode and every approval.
• AdsBuddy proposes — new campaigns, bid steps, negatives and pausing keywords that do not pay back.
• AdsBuddy watches — spend, trials, paid ROAS against your payback target, search terms and countries.

Payback target and mode

The payback target reads like 120% ROAS within 7 days. Every Guide rule uses it to decide what pays back. Then choose how AdsBuddy runs the app:

• Off — AdsBuddy watches and reports. It changes nothing in Apple Ads.
• Suggest — every change waits for you in Decisions, with the evidence behind it.
• Autopilot — bid steps, negatives and pausing keywords that do not pay back run on their own inside your limits. Budgets and new campaigns always wait for you. See auto-pilot.

Existing campaigns

If you already run campaigns, do not create a blank setup first. Connect Apple Ads, open the app, and use Refresh from Apple Ads. AdsBuddy reads active campaigns across reachable Apple Ads orgs, including Maximize Conversions campaigns, and starts tracking. It does not pause, replace or edit campaigns just because you connected them.

Apple Ads API insights

After a refresh, the Campaigns tab can also show read-only diagnostics directly from Apple Ads. These help you understand whether the app is eligible to advertise in the selected countries, whether an ad has a serving issue, and which default or Custom Product Page is producing the strongest install signal.

• Eligibility is checked per active country, so a country-level restriction is visible before you rely on that campaign.
• Ad results show spend, taps, installs, conversion rate and CPA without changing the live account.
• Product-page results group the same data by default page or Custom Product Page so you can compare creatives.
• When Platform API v1 is enabled, search visibility shows Apple-reported impression-share ranges for the latest complete 14-day window. It is diagnostic evidence, not an automatic bid instruction.
• If an optional Apple endpoint is unavailable, the normal campaign refresh still finishes and the missing diagnostic is labelled clearly.

Classic setup: Easy and Advanced

Workspaces created before October 2026 that still use the classic view keep the earlier setup in Apps → your app → Campaigns → Campaign setup. Easy creates Apple Max Conversions campaigns: you choose budget, Target CPA and countries, and Apple manages bidding. Advanced uses manual bids, with keyword, Search Match and negative keyword control. Switching between them is a restructuring action: AdsBuddy shows what would be paused, created or updated, and writes nothing until you approve the Apply review. New workspaces start with the Guide instead.

What happens after apply