New here? This is the one page that explains the whole product — the daily rhythm, the screens you'll actually use, campaign modes, key metrics, and how spend stays safe.
This is the long read — the one page that ties everything together. If you've just signed up, skim it once and you'll understand every screen and every word the product uses. For the 10-minute setup, see the Quickstart; for the one-paragraph version, see How AdsBuddy works.
Daily homeStart on Dashboard. It tells you if anything needs action today and keeps the rest quiet.
Campaign setupOpen an app to see active campaigns, budget, countries, Easy/Advanced mode and performance.
Spend modeUse Watch mode to pause spend, or restart with a fresh campaign setup when the data supports it.
What AdsBuddy is, in one sentence
AdsBuddy is a daily copilot for indie iOS developers running their own Apple Search Ads: it reads your campaigns and your real subscription revenue, and each day hands you a short list of changes worth making — each explained in plain words, each applied only when you say so.
The thing that makes the advice trustworthy is that it's grounded in money, not installs. AdsBuddy ties ad spend to revenue through RevenueCat, so “this keyword is worth it” means it actually paid back, not that it was cheap.
The daily rhythm
The whole product is one loop that repeats every day:
1Read
Campaigns, keywords, bids, spend, real revenue, and attribution.
New spend runs through a checkpoint window with stop-loss rules.
4Brief
The Dashboard shows only the actions that need you today.
5Apply
You approve, AdsBuddy writes to Apple Ads, and then verifies the result.
You don't drive this loop manually — you just react to the brief. Most days that's a 30-second skim.
The three places you'll actually use
The sidebar is deliberately short. Everything lives in three spots:
Dashboard — your home, read top to bottom. First a slim needs-you strip: a calm green “You're all caught up” when nothing is pending, or “N things need you today” with a blocking count, an Approve all safe button and compact rows you Approve or Reject. Below it, Portfolio analytics, active apps and recent activity. This is the one place you approve and apply changes. See The Dashboard.
Apps — one row per app, and one page per app with five tabs (Campaigns · Performance · Keywords · Revenue · Settings). This is where you go to understand a single app at a glance. See The My apps page.
Settings— a left sub-nav: Notifications & auto-pilot, Daily brief, Budgets, Integrations, Plan & billing, Account.
Two more live at the bottom of the sidebar: Ask Buddy (chat about your portfolio in plain words) and Notifications (a bell with the recent alerts; clicking one opens a summary of what changed).
Reading the numbers
A handful of figures recur everywhere. The Dashboard's Overview shows them in a KPI row — Revenue, Ad spend, ROAS, Trial starts, Purchases and Avg order — over whatever date range you pick (Today, Last 7 / 14 / 30 days, This month, Last month, or Custom). Each label has a hover “i” tooltip with the plain-words definition and the formula. Once these click, the whole screen reads at a glance:
Revenue — total revenue RevenueCat recorded in the range (organic + ad-driven).
Ad spend — what Apple billed you for ads.
ROAS — only the revenue RevenueCat attributes to Apple Search Ads, ÷ ad spend. This is the “are the ads themselves paying back” number.
Trial starts, Purchases, Avg order — the conversion volumes behind the revenue.
Don't guess what a metric means — hover the “i” next to any KPI label and AdsBuddy spells out the definition and the exact formula it used. The same range filter drives the revenue-trend chart, Top apps, Top countries and Biggest movers below it.
App status, in plain words
Every app carries one status chip. This is the single most important thing to understand, because the word means something specific:
On track — AdsBuddy is tracking the live campaigns and there is no action needed right now.
Needs attention — there is a concrete campaign action or decision to review: budget step-up, bid change, Target CPA issue, failed apply, or mode decision.
Watch — ads are intentionally paused; AdsBuddy keeps reading revenue and seasonality until a restart makes sense.
No campaign yet — neutral. Add Apple Ads or create the first Easy/Advanced setup.
“Needs attention” should always mean there is something you can actually do. Background auto-pilot work appears as queued activity, not as a fake daily chore.
When something needs fixing
The Dashboard and app Campaigns tab surface only concrete next steps, not a wall of Apple Ads prose:
Apply fix — a real Apple Ads write, shown in full before it runs.
Pause & watch — stop spend for an app while AdsBuddy keeps monitoring revenue and seasonality.
When nothing needs you, AdsBuddy says so plainly. Easy apps focus on Max Conversions performance, Target CPA, search terms and negatives. Advanced apps expose manual bids, exact keywords, Search Match and promotions.
How your spend stays safe
This is the part to trust. Three guarantees:
Caps are enforced, not suggested. The daily and monthly limits you set in Settings are checked server-side at apply time. AdsBuddy can't spend past them, and neither can auto-pilot.
Nothing moves silently. Every change shows exactly what it will do before it happens. Your click is the consent. The lone exception — auto-pilot — is off by default and strictly bounded.
Every test has a checkpoint. AdsBuddy watches spend, trials, purchases and ROAS, then recommends scale, hold, pause or restructure.
Letting AdsBuddy do more
Once you trust the recommendations, auto-pilot lets AdsBuddy apply specific low-risk change types without a per-action click — small bid nudges, obvious negatives, promotions to exact, and safe campaign-config fixes. Each type is a separate opt-in, all off by default, everything logged and reversible. Vacation mode pauses all of it at once.
Where to go next
Quickstart — sign up to first brief in ~10 minutes.