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How Catchbase pulls Apple Ads data

This page explains what Catchbase pulls from Apple Ads, how often it refreshes, and when a brand-new event shows up in the dashboard. If a number you expect on the ad side looks late or missing, start here.

What Apple Ads provides

Apple Ads is the source for everything that happens on the ad itself. Catchbase reads the following fields, broken down by date, campaign, ad group, keyword, and country or region:

  • Impressions. How many times your ad was shown.
  • Taps. How many times a user tapped your ad.
  • Tap installs. Installs that Apple attributes to a tap on your ad.
  • Local spend. Your ad spend in the campaign's local currency.
  • Campaign, ad group, and keyword identifiers. The structure that lets Catchbase group the numbers the way Apple Ads reports them.

Apple Ads does not provide revenue, post-install events, or retention data. Those come from your MMP (see How your MMP feeds Catchbase).

How often it refreshes

Catchbase pulls from Apple Ads roughly hourly. How quickly a particular ad event reaches your screen depends on two things stacked on top of that sync:

  1. How fresh Apple's own data is. Spend and tap counts are Apple's fastest signals and show up within the same day. Tap installs typically take one to two days to stabilise, because Apple confirms installs once the download completes and is attributed. See Data freshness for the fuller table.
  2. How fresh the downstream aggregation is. Some analytics views aggregate to the daily level and therefore reflect today's partial data as incomplete until the day closes.

In practice: if you launched a keyword this morning, you should see impressions and taps by mid-afternoon, spend by end of day, and tap-attributed installs within one to two days.

How the numbers get joined

Apple Ads records are joined to MMP records by campaign, ad group, keyword, country, and date. Two numbers that both describe "installs" can legitimately differ between the two sources: Apple reports tap installs the way Apple counts them, while the MMP reports installs the way your measurement provider counts them. Catchbase surfaces both where useful, and explains the difference in the Metrics glossary.

When something looks wrong

A few practical checks when Apple Ads data looks off:

  • New account. After the first Apple Ads authorisation, allow up to an hour for the first sync to complete before expecting data in the dashboard.
  • Paused integration. If the Apple Ads connection has been disconnected or the token expired, no new data arrives. The Integrations page shows connection status.
  • Partial day. Today's numbers are always lower than yesterday's at the same hour, because today has not finished yet. This is expected, not a sync problem.

If tap installs stop updating for more than two days while impressions and taps keep flowing, that is unusual and worth raising with support.

Auction Insights and Impression Share

In addition to the Campaign Management reporting, Catchbase pulls from Apple Ads' Impression Share API. This is the source for Share of Voice (SOV) and feeds the Auction Insights metrics on keyword analytics. Apple's Impression Share API has a maximum 30-day lookback, which is why SOV values older than 30 days are not available in the dashboard.

References

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