The complete guide — everything AdsBuddy does

New here? This is the one page that explains the whole product — the daily rhythm, the screens you'll actually use, how to read the numbers, what the plan statuses mean, 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.

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:

1. Read — campaigns, keywords, bids and spend from Apple Search Ads; revenue and attribution from RevenueCat; the install funnel from App Store Connect.
2. Plan — each managed app gets an AI-built ads plan: structure, starting bids, keyword groups and a budget band, grounded in that app's economics.
3. Test — a new plan runs against a 14-day validation gate with explicit stop-loss rules, so spend always has a measurement window.
4. Brief — every day, the handful of actions that actually need you, sorted by impact.
5. Apply — you approve; AdsBuddy writes the change to Apple Ads and verifies it stuck. Reversible from History.

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. Four blocks, top to bottom: Needs you today (the brief — blocking issues and one-click fixes), Daily allocation(what your portfolio is set to spend vs. what it's actually spending), This week (the weekly report when there's an unread one), and What AdsBuddy did for you (history, with undo). See The daily brief.
• My apps — one row per app, and one page per app with five tabs (Plan · Performance · Keywords · Revenue · Setup). This is where you go to understand or change a single app. See The My apps page.
• Settings— connections, budget & caps, daily-brief time, notifications & auto-pilot, plan & billing.

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. Once these click, the whole dashboard reads at a glance:

• Ad spend — what Apple billed you for ads.
• Blended ROAS — total revenue ÷ ad spend (organic included). The honest “is this app making money overall” number.
• Ad ROAS — only the revenue RevenueCat attributes to Apple Search Ads, ÷ ad spend. The “are the ads themselves paying back” number.
• Daily allocation — the card on the Dashboard with three figures: Daily budget (the sum of every app's daily cap — the most you've allowed), Spending now (your actual current run-rate per day), and This month (spend so far vs. your monthly budget). Allowed vs. actual — they're rarely equal, and that's fine.

Plan 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 — your live Apple Ads account matches the plan. You've done what the plan asks. A mid-test ROAS reading red is still On track — economics recover over days; that's the gate's job, not a drift.
• Needs attention — your live account has drifted from the plan's configuration: a Search Match toggle flipped, a bid fell below the plan's floor, an ad group is paused that the plan wants running. This is mechanical and one-click fixable.
• Off plan — the plan's economics no longer hold (spend with no return, a stop-loss tripped). The fix isn't a toggle — it's a rebuild with fresh context.
• No plan yet — neutral. Normal for watch-only apps; never an alarm.

When something needs fixing

A drifted app shows a What needs fixing card on its Plan tab — the problems as short bullets, not a wall of Apple-Ads prose, with one button:

• Apply fix — the primary action. It opens a progress modal, applies the changes to Apple Ads, then shows a summary of exactly what changed. You always see that summary — applying is never silent.
• Rebuild plan — shown instead when the economics broke (Off plan). Builds a fresh plan from your updated context.
• Re-verify — re-checks your live account against the plan right now (instead of waiting for the nightly run) and flips you back to On track the moment the config matches.

The same Apply flow — progress, then a summary — runs everywhere you apply something, whether it's one fix, a whole plan, or every fix across the portfolio at once.

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 deadline. The validation gate means no campaign spends forever without a verdict. Spend with no open measurement window is flagged as a blocking issue, not ignored.

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 plan-drift fixes (so a flipped Search Match heals itself within the hour). 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.
• Connect RevenueCat — the one required connection.
• Ads plans — what's in a plan and how to refine it by chatting with Buddy.
• Approvals, apply & history — applying, undo, and drift in depth.
• Already running campaigns? — what happens when you connect a live account.