Prequel's longest ad has crossed the one-year mark. "Aesthetic Effects & Pic Editor" was at 325 days when we last pulled this category on 14 July, and Apple now dates it past its one-year window, still recorded on 21 July 2026, still running in 17 countries. Prequel got there on 930 ad records.
The bigger change is at the other end of the board. Facetune buys more App Store advertising than the rest of this category combined and, a month ago, had nothing still live past 39 days. It now holds one creative at 122 days across 23 countries. The heaviest spender finally found something it wants to keep.
We pulled every App Store ad these six apps ran across all 25 EU storefronts from Apple's public Ad Repository, the transparency dataset the EU Digital Services Act requires. Here is the survivor board, sorted by how long each app's longest creative has stayed live. Data window ends 22 July 2026.
The survivor board
| App | Distinct creatives | Longest-running creative | Total ad records tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prequel: Photo & Video Editor | 15 | Over a year, "Aesthetic Effects & Pic Editor", 17 countries, still live | 930 |
| Picsart AI Photo Editor, Video | 14 | Over a year, "Design, Editing, Collage Maker", switched off 28 Nov 2025 | 3,506 |
| Airbrush: Face Photo Editor | 8 | 167 days ("Retusche selfie mit Filtern", DE), still live | 76 |
| Photoroom: AI Photo Editor | 23 | 148 days ("Rimuovi sfondo, modifica foto", IT), still live | 4,811 |
| Remini - AI Photo Enhancer | 14 | 130 days ("Enhance, unblur and restore!", 14 countries), still live | 2,833 |
| Facetune: Photo & Video Editor | 14 | 122 days ("AI Retouch: Hair Makeup Filter", 23 countries), still live | 11,616 |
Four readings of this table:
- Prequel keeps winning on the smallest budget in the high-longevity group. 930 records, and both its top creatives, the English "Aesthetic Effects & Pic Editor" and the German "Video und Bilder bearbeiten", are now past a year and still running. It also holds a 245-day Italian line. Prequel found what converts and kept funding it.
- Facetune's rotation finally produced a survivor. 11,616 ad records across all 25 storefronts, and "AI Retouch: Hair Makeup Filter" has held 122 days in 23 countries. Facetune tests at a scale nobody else here matches, and this is what that eventually buys: not a cheaper ad, a proven one. Its next-oldest live creative is a Portuguese line at 90 days, and everything below that is under six weeks.
- Picsart lost its year-plus ad. "Design, Editing, Collage Maker" ran past a year and stopped on 28 November 2025. Its longest live creative today is "Background Remover, Image Edit" at 237 days across 11 countries, which tells you where Picsart moved its positioning: from collage to background removal, the thing Photoroom sells.
- Airbrush is the smallest advertiser and holds the third-longest live ad. 76 records, all in three markets, and its German line has run 167 days. Its French and Spanish lines both stopped in spring. One market, one line, still paying.
Where these apps buy
Search results dominate, but Photoroom is the exception worth copying. Of the records we retrieved for it, 372 are product-page placements against 778 in search, and one of its longest live creatives, "Remove background, edit images" at 135 days, runs on product pages across 15 countries. Photoroom is the only app on this board buying a browse surface at real volume, reaching people before they have typed a query. Every other app here is buying search intent almost exclusively.
What the winning copy says
The pattern from last month holds, and the year has now confirmed it: the ads that survive state the feature flatly, in the local language.
Prequel's year-plus lines name the effects ("Aesthetic Effects & Pic Editor", "Video und Bilder bearbeiten"). Photoroom's 148-day Italian winner reads "Rimuovi sfondo, modifica foto", remove background, edit photo. Remini's 130-day line reads "Enhance, unblur and restore!". Picsart's current best is "Background Remover, Image Edit". Facetune's new survivor is the one that names three things at once, "AI Retouch: Hair Makeup Filter", after a year of trying moods and app-category descriptions.
Nobody on this board is winning with a feeling. They are winning by saying what the app does to your photo.
What changed since 14 July
- Prequel's top ad crossed from 325 days to past a year, still live.
- Facetune went from nothing older than 39 days to a 122-day creative in 23 countries.
- Picsart's year-plus collage line is confirmed off since 28 November 2025, replaced at the top by a 237-day background-remover line.
- Airbrush's German line grew from 154 to 167 days, Photoroom's Italian line from 143 to 148, Remini's English line from 114 to 130.
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. Pull your own category the same way: list your three closest rivals, sort their ads by how long each has run, and write your first creatives against the survivors. Watch the spread between volume and longevity too, because a rival running thousands of records with no old ad is still hunting, and one holding a single line for a year is telling you exactly what works. Check monthly, because the interesting moment is the one Facetune just had, when a heavy tester stops rotating and settles.
You can pull any advertiser at recao.app, free, no account, in about a minute.
Method note: figures are computed from Apple's public Ad Repository (DSA Article 39), data window ending 22 July 2026. This July refresh sweeps all 25 EU storefronts, where the original 14 July version sampled the major European markets, so record counts are wider than before and are not comparable to that version. The longevity figures are computed the same way in both and are comparable. "Days running" is the span from a creative's first to last recorded impression across those markets, "still live" means the creative was recorded on 21 July 2026, and Apple reports creatives older than its one-year window as over a year rather than a date. Longevity is a proxy for performance, not a measured conversion rate. Refreshed monthly.