One Campaign, Four Problems: Auditing a Real Apple Ads Account Structure
Objective: Given a screenshot-style export of a single-campaign Apple Search Ads account, diagnose which search terms are silently wasting spend and explain how splitting into Brand/Competitor/Generic/Discovery would fix each defect.
You're a freelance ASO consultant. A new client, a language-learning app competing with Duolingo, hands you an export of their only Apple Ads campaign, three months old, never restructured, and asks why CPA keeps climbing.
Read the search-term report, flag every defect using the lesson's four-campaign framework, and rank fixes by expected budget recovery.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, no account needed to practice the audit
Paid upgrades (optional, faster/deeper)
Confirms whether the harvested Discovery terms are worth the exact-match move on LTV, not just CPA
The process
Specimens to review
This single campaign mixes brand, competitor, generic, and irrelevant terms under one Search Match/broad-match setup with zero negatives. Identify every defect and name which of the four campaign types each search term belongs in.
Campaign: "App Growth - All Keywords" (Search Match ON, broad match, no negatives) Last 30 days, 40,200 impressions, 2,150 taps, $4,988 spend Search term Taps Installs Spend CPT "babbel" 210 38 $588 $2.80 "duolingo" 4 0 $11 $2.75 "learn spanish app" 340 61 $850 $2.50 "free language app" 280 12 $644 $2.30 "language learning app" 190 29 $437 $2.30 "our app name" (own brand) 6 5 $ 9 $1.50 "kids coding games" 95 1 $228 $2.40 "spanish for travel" 140 22 $308 $2.20
Specimen: synthetic, realistic
Final deliverable
A defect list mapping each search term to its correct campaign type, with the brand term's starved spend flagged as the first fix.
See a reference example
Robinhood ASA restructure notes (excerpt) BRAND (move now): "robinhood app" — was getting 4% of budget at the cheapest CPT on the sheet, raise daily cap immediately COMPETITOR (new campaign, capped budget): "webull", "acorns" — currently unbudgeted inside broad match GENERIC, harvest to exact match: "stock trading app", "investing app for beginners" — both above 2x conversion threshold DISCOVERY, add as negative: "free games", "budget planner" — zero relevance, cut immediately
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly sorts all 8 search terms into Brand/Competitor/Generic/Discovery-irrelevant
- Flags the starved brand term as the highest-priority fix, not the highest-spend term