Character AI's ad is the only survivor left in this category, the one creative still running that starts before Apple's published year begins, and the two heavier spenders switched off their long-running winners within five weeks of each other: EVA AI's 299-day line stopped on 25 May 2026, and Replika's 248-day line stopped on 23 June 2026. Character AI's line, "Make Your Own Chatbot on c.ai", was still recorded on 23 July 2026 in 11 storefronts.
We pulled every App Store ad these apps ran from Apple's public Ad Repository, the transparency dataset the Digital Services Act requires, across all 25 EU storefronts with no failed country queries and a window ending 24 July 2026. The sweep resolved eight advertisers in the category. Here is the board, sorted by how long each app's oldest still-running creative has stayed live.
The survivor board
| App (publisher) | Records | Storefronts | Distinct creatives | Oldest creative still running |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Character AI (Character Technologies, Inc.) | 250 | 11 | 4 | Past Apple's one-year window, "Make Your Own Chatbot on c.ai", 11 storefronts |
| PolyBuzz (CLOUD WHALE INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY LLC.) | 56 | 2 | 4 | 110 days, "Chatten mit KI Chatbot" (DE) and "Chattez avec un chatbot IA" (FR) |
| EVA AI Soulmate (Novi Limited) | 1,228 | 17 | 6 | 61 days, "Feel chosen", 5 storefronts |
| Linky AI: AI Chat&Char Maker (SKYWORK AI PTE LTD) | 26 | 2 | 4 | An untitled creative at 36 days, Germany and Italy |
| Replika (Luka, Inc.) | 1,339 | 20 | 8 | 32 days, "Someone you'll love to talk to", 18 storefronts |
| Botify AI: Virtual Chat (ARITMA WATER SOLUTION SDN. BHD.) | 51 | 25 | 2 | None left. "Your Companion for Dating Talk" ran 60 days across all 25 storefronts and stopped 20 July 2026 |
| CHAI: Social AI Platform (Chai Research Corp.) | 26 | 25 | 2 | None left. Its only line ran one day, 21 to 22 August 2025 |
| Janitor AI - Crushon Candy AI (solo developer) | 21 | 20 | 2 | None left. Its only line ran one day, 20 to 21 December 2025 |
Record counts here are not comparable to what we published on 16 July. That version sampled three apps across 10 countries; this one sweeps 25 storefronts and eight advertisers, so Replika reads 1,339 records now against 226 in July because the sweep widened, not because we can show its spend grew. Longevity is computed the same way in both versions and does compare.
What the board says once you read down it:
- Character AI has not written a new line all year. Four distinct creatives, and all four carry the same headline. 250 records, 11 storefronts (Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden), one English line in en-GB, untranslated in every one of them. Its first record sits at the edge of the published window, so the honest way to state the span is that it has run longer than a year and we cannot say by how much.
- PolyBuzz holds the longest still-running span we can actually date. 56 records, four creatives, which is two headlines times two ad formats: "Chatten mit KI Chatbot" in Germany and "Chattez avec un chatbot IA" in France. Both started on 4 April 2026, both are at 110 days, both were still live at the end of the window. One idea in two markets, held for three and a half months so far.
- EVA AI Soulmate traded a 299-day line in 17 markets for a 61-day line in five. Novi Limited's app is the second-heaviest advertiser in the category at 1,228 records and 17 storefronts, and it was missing from our July article entirely. "AI Friend to Chat With" ran 299 days across 17 storefronts on 524 records and stopped 25 May 2026. What replaced it is "Feel chosen" at 61 days in five storefronts (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden), plus a German cut, "Fühl dich auserwählt", at 44 days in Germany. Both still live. An older line, "Play with a Virtual Chat Bot", stopped on 30 July 2025.
- Replika buys the most and has nothing old left. 1,339 records across 20 storefronts and eight creatives. "Talk with AI companion" ran 248 days in 20 storefronts on 389 records and stopped on 23 June 2026. "Always here to listen and talk" also predates the published window and stopped the same day, after running in Austria, Germany, Spain, France and Portugal in de-DE, es-ES, fr-FR and pt-PT. "Avatar chatbot character talk" is another pre-window creative and stopped back on 20 October 2025. The only Replika ad still live is "Someone you'll love to talk to", first seen 21 June 2026, 32 days old, 18 storefronts, running in five languages at once.
Nothing in this category started a new creative in the final seven days of the window.
Two corrections to our 16 July version
One comes from the extra month of data, one from the wider sweep, and both change what we told you last month.
The July version said Replika keeps a stable of long-runners and that its fresh angle ran while the proven ads kept running underneath it. That is now false: those long-runners stopped on 22 and 23 June 2026, and the fresh angle is the only Replika creative still live.
The July version also said PolyBuzz ran one German line in Germany only. The 25-storefront sweep shows a French line, "Chattez avec un chatbot IA", starting the same day as the German one, so it is two markets rather than one. The missed market is the real correction here. The span reads 110 days now against the 97 we reported, but almost all of that is just the ad still running: our July window closed on 11 July and this one closes on 23 July. The wider sweep moved the first impression back by a single day, to 4 April 2026.
What the other advertisers did
Two of them bought the entire map for a single day. CHAI ran "Build and Share AI" in all 25 EU storefronts, first and last impression 21 to 22 August 2025, 26 records in total. A Janitor AI clone from a solo developer, listed as "Janitor AI - Crushon Candy AI", ran "Spicy AI Girlfriend Chat 18" in 20 storefronts on 20 to 21 December 2025, 21 records in total. Both bought every market they could and were off inside a day. PolyBuzz bought two markets and is still there 110 days later.
Botify AI bought the widest map that lasted. "Your Companion for Dating Talk" ran in all 25 EU storefronts on 51 records from 21 May 2026 in en-GB plus pt-PT, and stopped on 20 July 2026 at 60 days. It is the only advertiser here that sold the companion as practice for dating, and after two months it stopped.
Linky AI came back after ten months dark. SKYWORK AI PTE LTD ran "Chatte mit KI-Charakteren" in Germany, a pre-window creative last recorded on 28 August 2025, then nothing at all until 15 June 2026, when it started an untitled creative in Germany and Italy. That one is at 36 days and still live, on 26 records across two storefronts.
The US companion apps that do not show up here at all
Talkie, Kindroid, Nomi, Dippy, Paradot, Poly.AI, Candy AI, Muah AI, Anima, iGirl and the real Janitor AI are all absent from Apple's Ad Repository entity index, on multiple query variants. That means no EU App Store ads recorded for them in this window. It does not mean they do no marketing, and it does not tell you anything about what they spend elsewhere. Within EU App Store search, though, the apps that get talked about most are not the apps buying the slot.
Where these apps buy
Every one of the eight advertisers bought App Store search results and nothing else. No product page placements, no search tab placements, across all 25 storefronts and the whole year. That was true of the 10-country sample in July and it stayed true on the full map, which makes it one of the few claims in the July version that the wider sweep confirmed instead of correcting.
It fits demand that already exists. Someone typing "AI chatbot" or "AI companion" has decided what they want before they see an ad, and this whole category pays for that moment rather than for browse surfaces where it would have to create the want.
What the winning copy says
The lines that lasted describe what the app does. Character AI's year-plus survivor names the action, "Make Your Own Chatbot on c.ai". EVA AI's 299-day line named the thing plainly, "AI Friend to Chat With". PolyBuzz says the same sentence in German and in French. Replika's 248-day line was "Talk with AI companion".
The lines that replaced them read differently. EVA AI swapped a flat description for a feeling, "Feel chosen", and it is at 61 days in five markets against 299 days in 17. Replika's live creative, "Someone you'll love to talk to", is also a feeling rather than a function, and it is 32 days old. Neither has been up long enough to judge, and both are worth watching next month, because if the mood lines age past their predecessors that is the category changing its mind about what to say.
Translation is where the two long-lived approaches split. Character AI holds 11 storefronts on one untranslated English line, including Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Replika's single live creative runs in five languages inside one creative, EVA AI runs a German cut of its English idea, and PolyBuzz writes native copy in both of the two markets it bought. Two of the three longest spans on the board belong to advertisers doing opposite things, so the data does not push you one way.
How to read this for your own category
Longevity is the cheapest performance signal you can get for free. Nobody keeps funding an ad that loses money, so a creative still live after months is one that converts. Two notes from this refresh.
First, pull every storefront rather than a sample. A 10-country sample hid a whole PolyBuzz market from us, and it hid the second-heaviest advertiser in the category completely.
Second, watch the stops, not only the runs. The most useful facts in this pull are switch-offs: EVA AI's 299-day line, Replika's 248-day line and Botify AI's 60-day run in all 25 storefronts all ended between 25 May and 20 July 2026. A rival killing a proven ad tells you as much as a rival keeping one, and you only see it if you check again.
Then check monthly. A category with one pre-window survivor and two brand-new mood lines can look very different by the next pull.
See any advertiser's ads yourself
You can pull any advertiser at recao.app, free, no account, in about a minute. Type an app, get its live ads ranked by how long each has stayed up.
Method note: figures are computed from Apple's public Ad Repository (DSA Article 39). This refresh sweeps all 25 EU storefronts with zero failed country queries, data window 24 July 2025 to 24 July 2026, and "still live" means recorded on 23 July 2026, the last full day in the window. The 16 July version of this article sampled three apps across 10 countries, so record counts here are not comparable to it; longevity figures are computed identically and are comparable. "Days running" is the span from a creative's first to last recorded impression across the markets in the sweep. Creatives whose first record sits at the edge of Apple's published year have run longer than the repository shows, and we report those as past the one-year window rather than assigning a number. Apple caps each country query at about 50 records, so the analyzed subset is smaller than the record count for the biggest advertisers (900 of Replika's 1,339, 830 of EVA AI's 1,228). A creative is one distinct ad grouped by placement, format, headline and asset count, which is why the same headline often appears twice, once as an icon ad and once as an icon plus asset ad. Longevity is a proxy for performance, not a measured conversion rate. We invented no numbers. Refreshed monthly.