How to choose a daily app budget, starter Target CPA, and safe campaign speed without exposing old growth-posture mechanics.
Test smallStart with one country, a small daily budget and a conservative Target CPA.
Scale controlledIncrease budget only when spend, trials, purchases and ROAS support it.
Push fasterUse larger budgets for proven apps or hot season, with stricter checkpoints.
AdsBuddy asks for a daily app budget because that is the number it must respect when creating or changing campaigns. In Easy mode, it also asks for a Target CPA. In Advanced mode, the same budget informs manual CPT bids and how much room each country or campaign should get.
Budget is permission to spend, not a promise that Apple will spend it. If campaigns do not spend, AdsBuddy checks delivery, country choice, Target CPA/bids and search-term quality before suggesting a change.
Simple starting points
Test small — about $15/day and a low starter CPA. Best for new apps, weak data or one unknown country.
Scale controlled — about $50/day when the app has proof and you want enough data for 1-2 countries.
Push faster — larger budgets for proven apps, hot season or banked runway, with tighter kill rules.
Where to choose it
1Open app
Go to Apps → your app → Campaigns.
2Campaign setup
Choose Easy or Advanced, then enter daily budget and Target CPA or review manual bid setup.
3Review
Check countries, monthly projection and exact Apple Ads changes before applying.
Best season
Best season is also set per app, on the same Settings page. Pick the months where the app usually has the most demand, then add a short note if useful. AdsBuddy uses it as app-specific context when recommending budget, country tests, pause/watch decisions and restart timing.
What changes after you save
AdsBuddy uses the daily budget as the hard app-level spend guardrail.
Easy mode uses Target CPA as the initial guardrail for Apple Max Conversions.
Advanced mode uses the same budget to shape manual bids, country allocation and stop-losses.
Existing live campaigns are not blindly changed. AdsBuddy still shows exact Apple Ads changes before writing.
Apple may show its own CPA recommendation inside Apple Ads. AdsBuddy treats its recommendation as a starting guardrail from your app data and selected budget; you can still type any CPA before applying.