What Platform API 1.0 unlocks for Apple Ads performance

The real upgrade is decision data, not a new base URL.

Classic v5 is strong at creating campaign objects, returning reports, and exposing per-keyword suggested bids. Platform API 1.0 goes further with dedicated query surfaces for keyword discovery, personalized recommendations, search demand, and expanded impression share. That changes the workflow from ‘manage and report’ to ‘find, estimate, prioritize, then act.’

• Discover demand before building the next keyword list
• Estimate likely volume and acquisition cost before scaling
• Diagnose whether low delivery reflects weak demand or lost auction share

Expand campaigns with keyword suggestions.

The dedicated keyword suggestion query can return search terms related to an app or a set of seed terms. Instead of asking an operator to invent every variation manually, a planning workflow can generate a larger candidate set, then filter it for product relevance, market, and business intent.

• /suggestions/keywords/query for relevant search coverage
• Use seed terms and countries or regions to keep discovery relevant
• Validate suggestions against popularity, expected economics, and downstream ROAS

Prioritize keyword recommendations by expected economics.

The dedicated keyword recommendation surface can return more than a term and suggested bid. A recommendation may include popularity plus expected impressions, taps, installs, spend, and average CPA. That lets an operator compare likely reach with likely acquisition cost before adding the keyword or increasing exposure.

• /recommendations/keywords/query returns personalized opportunities
• Favor relevant recommendations with enough expected volume to matter
• Reject high-volume ideas whose estimated CPA does not fit unit economics
• Use expected results as a scenario, not a guaranteed forecast

Measure keyword heat by market, genre, and time.

Search-term popularity insights expose how demand changes by country or region and App Store genre. Weekly and monthly queries can return a term’s rank in its genre, a 1–100 popularity score, and a simplified 1–5 score. This is market demand—not the performance of a keyword already in your campaign.

• /insights/apps/search-term-popularity/query provides the demand signal
• Spot rising terms before they become obvious in campaign search-term reports
• Compare the same product concept across storefronts before localization
• Avoid treating a low-volume niche term like a scalable acquisition channel

Know whether to bid harder—or stop chasing limited demand.

The /insights/apps/impression-share/query surface can separate first-slot visibility from all-slot visibility and break the result down by search term and market. Combine that with search popularity: a popular term with low share may have room for a bid, budget, or relevance improvement, while a low-popularity term may simply have little demand to capture.

• High popularity + low share: investigate bids, budget, and relevance
• High popularity + high share + weak ROAS: do not scale on visibility alone
• Low popularity + low share: validate demand before committing more spend

Use target CPA and budget recommendations as scaling guardrails.

Platform API 1.0 adds dedicated recommendation queries for target CPA and daily budget. These can reveal campaigns where Apple estimates that a different acquisition target or more budget may produce incremental installs. The profitable response is not automatic acceptance: compare the recommendation with margin, payback window, cohort maturity, and current ROAS first.

• /recommendations/target-cpas/query informs the acquisition-cost constraint
• /recommendations/daily-budgets/query identifies possible underfunding
• Estimated installs, spend, and CPA make the tradeoff reviewable

Turn Apple’s opportunity signal into a revenue decision.

Apple’s recommendations can estimate delivery, installs, spend, and CPA, but they do not know your subscription renewals, refunds, gross margin, or customer lifetime value. The highest-value workflow joins the API 1.0 opportunity with RevenueCat or AppsFlyer outcomes, then scales only when expected acquisition cost is supported by observed revenue and ROAS.

Protect performance with account-wide change history.

The /change-history/query surface can show what changed, when it changed, and who or what made the change, including activity outside one automation tool. When performance moves unexpectedly, field-level old and new values shorten the path from a KPI drop to the campaign edit that may have caused it.

Query these opportunities directly with Lily CLI 0.2.1.

Lily CLI 0.2.1 adds read-only Platform commands for keyword and target CPA suggestions; keyword, target CPA, and daily-budget recommendations; search-term popularity; expanded impression share; and change history. Platform campaign workflows and authenticated live reporting remain available alongside classic v5. Applying or dismissing a recommendation is intentionally separate because that changes campaign state.

• Use --provider platform for every Platform API 1.0 opportunity query
• Opportunity commands return AI-friendly JSON without changing a campaign
• Use recommendations apply only after a future verified write contract and explicit approval