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Preview ad variants

The Builder tab turns an ad group's keyword intent into screenshot variants you can review on iPhone and iPad before sending them to App Store Connect. Use this page when you have a search theme in mind and want to see how a new visual treatment would look next to the current App Store screenshots.

Before you start

  • App Store Connect connected (required for the eventual publish step).
  • A campaign with at least one ad group that has keywords attached. Without keywords on the ad group, the builder cannot compute intent context.
  • Admin or Editor role.

Steps

The Builder tab has three steps: Intent, Hypothesis, and Variation. Compare, zoom, and publish are actions inside Step 3.

  1. Intent. Open Creative Studio, stay on the Builder tab, and fill in the Step 1 panel. Pick a campaign, ad group, and country. Catchbase loads campaigns and ad groups for the selected organization, then computes audience context from the ad group's keywords and any configured audience targeting (device, location, customer type, demographics).

  2. Hypothesis. In Step 2, start concept generation. Hypotheses stream in tier by tier, so you can read the early ones before later ones land. Each hypothesis is a short creative direction grounded in the intent from Step 1. Select the one you want to take forward.

  3. Variation. In Step 3, start variant generation. Variants render in iPhone and iPad device frames at the correct App Store aspect ratios. Each slot shows a loading state and then the generated image, placed beside the original App Store screenshot for direct comparison. Click any image to open the zoom modal and inspect details at full resolution. If iPad source screenshots are missing for the app, the iPad column shows a warning and iPad generation is skipped.

When you are satisfied with a set of variants, the Publish bar at the bottom of Step 3 gives you two actions:

  • Push to App Store Connect. Pick a locale (see the list below) and click to publish. Catchbase creates a new hidden CPP in App Store Connect from the selected variants, then takes you to the Overview tab. Making the CPP publicly visible and submitting it for review are separate actions handled from Overview.
  • Download Bundle. Download the generated iPhone and iPad images as a zip. Use this if you want to review, share, or archive the assets offline without publishing them. The bundle does not include source screenshots, only the generated variants.

Publish locales

The locale selector in the Publish bar covers Apple's standard storefronts:

  • en-US (United States)
  • en-GB (United Kingdom)
  • en-CA (Canada)
  • en-AU (Australia)
  • de-DE (Germany)
  • fr-FR (France)
  • ja-JP (Japan)
  • ko-KR (Korea)
  • pt-BR (Brazil)
  • en-IN (India)

If your app is available in a locale not listed here, use Download Bundle and upload the variants through App Store Connect directly.

How device preview works

iPhone and iPad are generated independently, so a hypothesis with no iPad source screenshots still yields a usable iPhone result. A progress indicator shows per-device state while generation runs, and a retry action is available if a generation fails.

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