SocialPeta Adds Apple Search Ads and Makes App Rankings Free
In November 2023, SocialPeta introduced Apple Search Ads intelligence and opened its Featured APP ranking data to registered users, expanding the market and competitive data available to mobile app and game teams.
As mobile globalization became more challenging and competition intensified, media buying costs were rising while creative innovation was becoming increasingly difficult.
Based on feedback from users, SocialPeta introduced a series of major product updates toward the end of 2023. The updates expanded advertising intelligence into Apple Search Ads and made several important app ranking datasets available to registered users.
Apple Search Ads Intelligence Arrives on SocialPeta
Changes to Apple's privacy policies and the development of privacy protections across the mobile ecosystem created major challenges for user acquisition teams. Higher acquisition costs, weaker efficiency, and uncertainty around targeting became common concerns for studios.
At the same time, Apple Search Ads was becoming increasingly important for App Store user acquisition. SocialPeta therefore introduced Apple Search Ads as a new advertising intelligence channel to help teams research ASA activity before launching their own campaigns.
At the time of this update, Apple Search Ads covered four major ad placements:
- Search Results ads
- Search Tab ads
- Today Tab ads
- Product Page ads
Running ASA campaigns effectively requires preliminary research into important factors such as keyword selection and regional targeting. Better preparation can improve conversion efficiency and reduce wasted ad spend.
SocialPeta enables marketers to identify suitable competitor references using dimensions such as game genre, advertising days, estimated impressions, and popularity. Studying competitors' keyword and regional strategies can provide useful preliminary intelligence before an ASA campaign begins.
Featured APP Rankings Become Free
The Featured APP section had previously been a VIP-only core data feature. With this late-2023 update, SocialPeta made it available to registered users for free.
The Featured APP dataset included:
- Daily App Store free, paid, and grossing chart rankings
- Daily Google Play free, paid, and grossing chart rankings
- Pre-Order App Advertising Top Charts
- App Downloads and Revenue Top Charts
By combining advertising, revenue, download, and app-store ranking signals, these datasets were designed to help market teams track competitors and identify shifts in the mobile market more quickly.
How to Use App Store Rankings
Daily App Store free rankings can serve as an early signal of changes in user demand. Newly launched games, suddenly resurgent products, and fast-moving categories often become visible in the rankings before longer-term market patterns are obvious.
Supporting information such as the number of days an app remains near the top of the chart and changes in ranking position can help teams understand changes in download momentum.
Paid App Rankings
Paid charts have historically been especially useful for observing premium and niche titles. Pricing information shown alongside the rankings provides additional context for teams evaluating paid-app strategies and category positioning.
Top-Grossing Rankings
Revenue is an especially important performance signal for mid-core and hardcore games. Changes in top-grossing rankings can help teams observe the effects of product updates, campaigns, and monetization activity while also tracking competitor performance.
Pre-Order App Advertising Rankings
The pre-registration period is one of the most important stages for product promotion and user acquisition. App stores support pre-registration and pre-order campaigns that allow publishers to build product awareness before launch.
Markets including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea placed particular emphasis on scheduled releases and pre-launch promotion. Publishers would often begin testing market response roughly a month before release.
The original article highlighted Dewdrop Games' Moonlight Thieves and Tencent's Undawn as examples of products that generated strong advertising activity during their reservation periods.
By aggregating information such as launch dates, target regions, and user-acquisition ad volume, pre-order rankings can help market teams evaluate upcoming competitive pressure and plan release timing. Comparing pre-registration regions and categories can also provide clues about competitors' global publishing strategies.
App Revenue and Download Rankings
SocialPeta's App Downloads and Revenue Top Charts provide another way to understand changing market performance. The company uses these datasets in its recurring game and app ranking reports to analyze new products, high-performing titles, and potential reasons behind changes in revenue or downloads.
Ranking Chart
The standard Ranking Chart compares leading apps across platforms, regions, categories, and time periods, allowing market teams to identify products with the strongest overall download or revenue performance.
Rising Chart
Apps can also be segmented by month-over-month growth in downloads and revenue. The Rising Chart highlights products gaining momentum, giving teams a way to investigate the gameplay, marketing, and publishing strategies behind sudden growth.
Release Chart
The Release Chart focuses on newly launched products, including apps released within recent three-month and six-month periods. Tracking these products can help teams study how pre-registration promotion, product features, and launch strategies contribute to a breakout.
For advertisers, monitoring metrics such as the number of advertised products, keyword competition, impressions, rankings, downloads, and revenue can make it easier to identify shifts in competitor strategy and adjust campaign plans.
This 2023 update expanded the range of competitive signals available inside SocialPeta, connecting ad intelligence with app ranking and market-performance data for mobile game and app teams.