Ad Intelligence in AppTweak is a comprehensive suite designed to provide insights into the advertising strategies of apps, highlighting how competitors are positioning themselves in the market through paid search ads. This includes a historical overview of all the keywords your app and your competitors have bid on, as well as the search terms for which Apple has displayed ads for your app or your competitor's. The insights displayed in this section gather the data of ads running since March 7th, 2024 on the Apple App Store.

Methodology

Our Ad Intelligence tool is designed to track and report on the keywords you are bidding on. Here’s a step-by-step explanation of how this process works:

Daily Data Fetching: In order to capture the ads that run on a keyword, AppTweak simulates a keyword search on the relevant keyword. This process is generally done once a day.
Ad Detection: Our system checks to see if an ad is being shown for those keywords. If an ad is detected for a specific keyword, we record this information and include it in our Ad Intelligence reports.
Ad Visibility Variability: It's important to note that ads are not always shown consistently for the same keyword throughout the day. Here are a few reasons why an ad might not be detected:
- Timing: Since we fetch once a day, it is possible that ads shown later in the day or at different times may not be captured.
- Ad Rotation: Advertisers often use ad rotation strategies, meaning that not all ads are shown every time a keyword is searched. This can result in some ads not being detected during our scheduled search time.

Navigation

Here’s how you can access and use this feature on AppTweak:

1. Select the App: Choose your app, store and region along with the competitor apps for which you want to analyze.

2. Navigate to Ad Intelligence: Go to the "Ad Intelligence" section on the ASO Intelligence tab

Note: The Ad Intelligence feature is only available for Enterprise plans

Watch Quick Video Tutorial below:

1 to 1 Comparison

This feature allows users to compare their app directly with a competitor on keyword strategies. It provides a direct comparison of which keywords competitors are bidding on, allowing for strategic adjustments in keyword targeting.

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In the section "1 to 1 Comparison" tab, you can pick one of the competitors you're tracking and see how their ad strategy compares to yours. The insights provided allow you to measure how much overlap there is between the terms used in your paid keywords and those of your competitors.

The Venn Diagram gives an idea of how many terms are unique to your app, how many are unique to your competitor and how many are shared between both apps.

Total and Shared Keyword Terms: The number of shared vs unique paid search terms of the selected app and one competitor.

The Word Cloud displays the top shared keyword terms between the two apps you have selected.

Total Shared Keyword Terms: The terms that appear most often among the selected apps' paid search terms.

As you hover over each term in the word cloud, you can view the n° of times we found this term in the list of paid keywords shared between the two selected apps.

In the Keyword table below, you can view all of the unique terms (words only your app uses in its paid keyword or words that only your competitor uses in their paid keywords) and all the shared terms (words that both your app and your competitor uses in your paid keyword strategy).

The "Count" metric indicates how many of your paid keywords actually contain that specific term.

For example, for the keyword term 'travel', both Airbnb and TripAdvisor use this word in their ad strategy. However, Tripadvisor seems to use this term more extensively since we found their ad running on 456 keywords that contain the term "travel" whereas we only found the Airbnb ad running on 156 keywords containing the word "travel".

If you click on the number, you can see the full list of keywords that the app bids on.

You can also filter this keyword table by 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, 4+ word combinations.

💡 All this data is an excellent source of information to help you find new keyword ideas for your ad campaigns. By scanning through the keywords that are unique to your competitor you can find new opportunities to bid on.

Cross Competition

Cross Competition analysis helps identify which competitors are bidding on the same keywords as your app. This can reveal competitive strategies in keyword bidding and help adjust your bids to ensure your app remains competitive in search ad placements.

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All Keyword Terms

In the All Keywords Terms table, you can compare, by keyword terms, what is the number of keywords where your ad is appearing and compare that number with your competitors.

Compare the keyword terms that are most repeated across the paid keywords of your app or your competitors. This helps understand which keywords your app appears on and where your competitors are targeting.

For example, with the keyword term 'travel', you can compare the number of paid search terms we found your ad running and compare that number with your competitors. In the example above, we can see that we found an ad for Airbnb running on 158 keywords related to "travel". However, Booking.com seems to be targeting travel-related keywords much more intensively since their ad was found on 3654 keywords that contain the word "travel".

You can also find a keyword using the search bar and tick the boxes if you would like to filter 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, and 4+ keyword terms.

Shared Keyword Terms

In the Shared Keyword Terms table, you can compare all the terms that were found within all of the selected apps' paid search terms. This means that all of the apps selected have had ads running on keywords that contain these terms.

The Shared Keyword Terms gives an indication of competitive keywords that you and your competitors are bidding on.

Unique Keyword Terms

The "Unique Keyword Terms" table allows you to see how different your keywords are from your competitors.

The "Unique Keyword Terms" table allows you to identify terms that are unique to your Ad strategy or unique to a competitor's strategy. This table shows the terms that only the selected app bids, meaning that we found no competitor app running ads on the same keyword. The more you have added competitors, the harder it will be to find terms that are totally unique. You can view all the unique terms that were found within only the selected app's paid keywords.

Target Keywords(ASA)

In the Target Keywords section under Ad Intelligence, you can identify which apps have ads targeting competitors' keywords in their titles or subtitles. This strategy helps apps gain visibility by bidding on well-established brands' keywords.

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We analyze Title Keywords and Subtitle Keywords.

Title Keywords:

Description: Shows individual and long-tail keywords in the selected apps' titles.
Metrics:
- Total Bids: Sum of all paid search terms containing the keyword.
- In Title: Green dot indicates the keyword is in the app's title.
- Bids(Count): Number of search terms found for the app containing the keyword.

Example: The keyword "meet" has 371 total bids from apps like Bumble, Hinge, and Hily. However, it's only in the titles of Bumble and Hily, suggesting their organic visibility may be threatened by competitors' ads.

When you click on the 38 kws for Hily, you can view all of the keywords or search terms we found for this app.

You can also filter this keyword table by finding a specific keyword in the search bar or ticking the boxes for 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, 4+ word combinations.

Subtitle Keywords:

Description: Shows individual and long-tail keywords in the selected apps' short descriptions.
Metrics: Indicates if keywords are included in the app's subtitle with a green dot and shows the number of terms with ads running.

You can click on the "Count" metric to see all associated keywords for a specific term.

This detailed view helps you understand the competitive landscape and optimize your keyword strategy accordingly.

Organic Keyword Protection(ASA)

This functionality is designed to monitor keywords that are crucial for your app’s organic search performance. Identify who is running Apple Search Ads on your top-performing organic keywords and compare ad visibility with competitors. It helps in understanding how paid search ads are impacting your organic search results by providing a range of metrics, including graphical and analytical data, to help defend these keywords against aggressive bidding by competitors.

In the Organic Keywords Protection section of the Ad Intelligence tab, the user can go deeper into the analysis to understand, keyword by keyword, which ad is appearing the most.

⚠️ In the Organic Keywords Protection section, the data is calculated based on one search per day over the last 90 days.

We show all the keywords that drive the most organic downloads (Booking.com, United States). To determine these keywords we look at the keywords where Booking.com is ranked in the top results and that have the most traffic (volume is high).

Share of Voice Coverage

The first chart shows the Share of Voice Coverage. In other words, it indicates the overall SOV of Booking.com vs. other apps on the top 50 organic keywords. This analysis helps you gauge how visible the ads of the selected app are compared to the ads of other apps on the same list of keywords.

How is this chart calculated?

SUM(Down. Est KW * (%SOV of my app)) = SOV coverage of Your App
SUM(Down. Est KW * (%SOV of all other apps))= SOV coverage of Other Apps
SUM (Down. est. KW (WHERE there is no bid from the app OR the competitor) * 1 (since it is equal to 100%) = SOV coverage of No Bids

Paid Visibility

The second chart shows the Paid Visibility. This graph indicates which app has the highest-paid visibility on Booking.com's top 50 organic keywords.

This analysis helps you understand which competitor might be stealing away the organic downloads of Booking.com by running ads on the top keywords.

Keyword Protection Status

This graph indicates how well protected the selected app is on its top organic keywords. By running ads on their top organic download keywords, apps can protect their organic ranking and prevent other apps from stealing away organic downloads. The higher the number on the graph, the better protected the app is on its top 50 organic keywords.

What do the Keyword Protection Status colors mean?

Here we have established four levels of protection when it comes to how protected your Organic Keywords are: Protected, Unprotected, Defended, and Attacked.

In the Keyword table below, we have a better understanding of how your organic visibility on certain keywords can be threatened by competitors' ads.

Top Organic Keywords: Top 50 keywords bringing the most organic downloads to your app
Organic Installs: Estimated number of monthly organic installs the keyword drives to the app
Rank: The selected app's organic rank
Volume: The Volume is an indicator between 5 and 100 that shows how often a keyword is searched. The higher the number, the more popular the keyword is
Difficulty: The Difficult is an indicator between 0 and 100 that shows the level of organic competition of a keyword. The higher the number, the higher the competition
Protection: Indicates the app's level of protection on the keyword
SOV: Share of Voice is how often this ad shows in comparison to other ads on the keyword. The higher the SOV, the more likely the app bids on this keyword.
All Apps SOV Spread: All the apps that are bidding on this keyword, along with their SOV.

Share of Voice (SOV)

Although Apple Search Ads dashboard provides insights and data on campaign performance from a budget perspective, it doesn’t offer any data on the breakdown of Ads impressions.

At AppTweak, we make daily searches on given keywords and compile all the apps that would appear in the Ad banner. This enables us to provide our users with an estimate (in %) of the Share of Voice of any app on a keyword.

For example, the keyword "travel" we see that Booking.com has a SOV of 2%. This means that 2% of the time, Booking.com's ads will appear on this keyword.

All Apps SOV Spread

In the All Apps SOV Spread column, we display all the apps that are bidding on this keyword, along with their SOV.

When we're taking a look at the keyword "travel" we see that there are 25 apps we have identified that are bidding on this keyword.

When you click on the "+22", you can view all of the apps that are bidding on this keyword and the SOV for "travel".

Study a specific keyword

You can also use the search bar in this section to enter a specific keyword that you would like to study.

For example, when I enter the keyword "vacation", I can see all of the bidding apps for this specific keyword and the SOV Spread.

You can even take a look at the "Live Search" to see what it would look like if you were to type in "vacation" in the search bar on an iPhone device.

The "Past Results" tab will show you the Top Chart History on the selected period for this keyword.

Paid Keywords(ASA)

The Paid Keywords section provides an overview of the keywords that the selected apps are using in their paid campaigns. This can inform your paid keyword strategy by highlighting potential keywords that may be valuable to target or defend. It lists the top 100 keywords on which an app had ads running over the last 30 days.

Read more

In the Paid Keywords of the Ad Intelligence section, you can see who else is running ads on your paid keywords. But more interestingly you can also spy on your competitor's keywords and find out which keywords they are currently bidding on.

⚠️ In the Paid Keywords section, the data is calculated based on one search per day over the last 90 days.

Top Paid Keywords: Top 100 Paid keywords on which your app has placed an ad and having the highest Volume (Search Popularity).
Rank: The selected app's organic rank
Volume: The Volume is an indicator between 5 and 100 that shows how often a keyword is searched. The higher the number, the more popular the keyword is
Difficulty: The Difficult is an indicator between 0 and 100 that shows the level of organic competition of a keyword. The higher the number, the higher the competition
SOV: Share of Voice is how often this ad shows in comparison to other ads on the keyword. The higher the SOV, the more likely the app bids on this keyword.
All Apps SOV Spread: All the apps that are bidding on this keyword, along with their SOV.

Share of Voice (SOV)

The Share of Voice (SOV) is how often this ad shows in comparison to other ads on the keyword. At AppTweak, we make daily searches on given keywords and compile all the apps that would appear in the Ad banner. This enables us to provide our users with an estimate (in %) of the Share of Voice of any app on a keyword.

For the keyword "airbandb", we see that Airbnb has an SOV of 57%. This means that 57% of the time, Airbnb's ads will appear on this keyword.

All Apps SOV Spread

In the All Apps SOV Spread column, we found all of the apps that are bidding on this keyword, along with their SOV.

When we're taking a look at the keyword "airnbnb" we see that there are +6 apps we have identified that are bidding on this keyword.

When you click on the "+6", you can view all of the apps that are bidding on this keyword and the SOV for "airnbnb".

If we find more than 100 keywords on which the selected app has an ad running within the last 90 days, these are shown in the form of a summarized keyword list as you scroll down to the bottom of the list.

You can click on each of these keywords and see the SOV Spread, Live Search, and Past Results.

With the "Live Search" feature, you can see what it would look like if you were to type in "find friend" in the search bar of an iPhone device.

The "Past Results" tab will show you the Top Chart History on the selected period for this keyword.

Find a specific keyword

You can also use the search bar in this section to find a specific keyword in this list.

SOV History (Share of Voice)(ASA)

Share of Voice (SOV) history tracks the visibility of your app’s ads over time. It monitors the share of voice for ads on specific keywords where it shows how often your ads are being shown compared to competitors for the same keywords. This historical data can be crucial for understanding trends in ad performance and making informed decisions about future ad strategies.

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Keyword Monitoring

Monitor the Share of Voice (SOV) on a certain keyword over time and compare it with other apps. Using these insights you can make informed decisions on whether or not to increase bids on these keywords. See how often your ads appear for these terms compared to your competitors.

We conduct 50 searches a day for each followed keyword, offering a broad perspective on your ad strategy's effectiveness. The report includes a chart showing the SOV History for these terms for the selected time period.

Gain an understanding of competitor strategies and identify potential areas for improvement in your own campaigns and use this data to refine keyword selection and bidding strategies to optimise ad spend.

Each of these tools within the Ad Intelligence suite offers strategic insights that can help in refining both organic and paid search strategies, optimising ad spend, and improving overall app visibility and performance in the crowded app marketplace.

FAQs

General queries

Q: Is it possible to track the keywords that my competitor is bidding on?

Yes, it is indeed possible to track the keywords that your competitors are bidding on using AppTweak's Ad Intelligence features.

Q. What factors are considered in calculating the Share of Voice (SOV) for ads on a keyword?

We perform a search on that keyword once a day and save the ad that was running when that search was performed.
We then aggregate the results found over the last 90 days to compute the SOV.

It is important to note that our SOV remains an estimation based on the data we are able to fetch on the App Store. While it remains a good indication of the visibility of the ads that we are able to detect, our searches are not exhaustive and we cannot guarantee that we are able to detect all possible ads running on the store each day.

Q. Which apps advertise (use ASA) in your niche?

AppTweak allows you to see which apps are bidding on specific keywords, including those in your niche. This is part of the Ad Intelligence tool. By analyzing the Share of Voice (SOV), you can identify which competitors are actively advertising on keywords relevant to your niche

Q. What keywords do my competitors use for ASA?

You can discover the specific keywords that your competitors are using for their ASA campaigns. AppTweak allows you to view a historical overview of all the keywords an app has bid on in their Apple Search Ads campaigns. This information is accessible through the Ad Intelligence feature, which provides insights into the keywords and the frequency of their use in ads since September 2017.

Q. How can I find out the volume of advertising traffic or budget for our competitors' ASA campaigns?

While AppTweak provides estimations of the Share of Voice (SOV) for apps on specific keywords, it does not directly provide detailed data on the advertising budget or exact traffic volume from ASA campaigns of competitors. The SOV can serve as an indicator of how visible the ads are, but it's important to note that these searches are non-exhaustive and may not capture every ad running on the store each day. Therefore, the exact budget and traffic volume might not be directly available.

Q. How accurate is the ad data fetched by AppTweak from the App Store?

Our Share of Voice (SOV) estimation is based on the data we can gather from the App Store. The personas we use for fetching ads are designed to simulate typical user behavior and interactions on the platform. This helps us capture a representative sample of the ads displayed, although it may not include every possible ad variation.

Q. How long does it take for updates made on the App Store to reflect on the platform?

We collect data once a day, so any changes that appear on the store (visible on your phone) will be picked up by AppTweak the following day.

Q. Where are the ads for my app?

The ads shown in this section are non-exhaustive. To provide unbiased results, AppTweak emulates generic user profiles on the App Store to simulate everyday searches and detect ads running on keywords. We can guarantee that the ads we detect are real and currently being shown to users; however, Apple does not show all possible ads to the personas we emulate. As a result, ads from certain apps or ads with demographic filters may not be detected by our searches.

Q. Wondering why you’re not seeing the ads you expected?

AppTweak emulates a wide variety of profiles to simulate searches on the App Store on a daily basis to fetch keyword rankings and discover ads. If you don't see the keywords your app is bidding on, you have likely chosen to target your ads to specific regions, age ranges or users with specific privacy settings only. As a result, it is possible Apple is not showing your ads to the persona's we emulate.

Q. Still having trouble finding your ads on AppTweak?

The list of ads shown in this section is not exhaustive. To provide unbiased results, AppTweak emulates generic user profiles to simulate searches on the App Store on a daily basis and detect the ads running on keywords. We can guarantee that the ads detected by our searches are real ads that are currently being shown to users. However, Apple does not show all ads to the personas we emulate, therefore, ads from certain apps or ads with demographic filters won’t be detected by our searches.

More info on the reasons why we don’t detect all ads on the App Store

Several elements can explain why we do not detect certain ads:

We emulate generic accounts to fetch data on the App Store. These accounts aren’t logged in, and therefore don’t have a defined gender, age etc. As a consequence, Apple isn’t showing any ads from certain apps (this is the case for Dating apps, Sports betting apps, certain games etc.) to the profiles we emulate.
We don't detect ads with demographic filters. The data is fetched by simulating phones that have generic user profiles, therefore, we cannot detect ads that have demographic filters.
The data is only fetched once a day, so it can be that at that time of the day, we found another ad running on the keyword.
The data is computed over 90 days. We show the ads that we have detected over the last 90 days, therefore it takes time for AppTweak to reflect recent changes in ad campaigns.

Tool queries

Q. What does "keyword term" mean?

This section gives a snapshot of the most repeated terms found across all the paid keywords of the selected apps. In other words, this section goes through all the keywords on which we found an ad running for a given app (since September 2017) and then checks what are the single, double, and triple words (or keyword terms) that are most repeated across that list.

Q. Can you download Organic keyword protection table data?

Currently we don't have the option to download the Organic keyword protection table but you can download the Keyword Protection status data in PNG and CSV formats.