How to Steal Your Competitor’s App Strategy (Legally)

Kicking Off the Live Stream

Ariel welcomes everyone to a brand new live stream and introduces one of the most exciting topics they've been waiting to talk about: how to steal your competitor’s app strategy — legally.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving in the US, so Ariel hopes enough people can still join. As per tradition, before jumping into the good stuff, Ariel asks viewers what’s in their cup and where they’re from.

Ariel is in New York City, drinking hard black tea — organic Earl Grey — to wake up after a crazy week.

There’s some live chat banter as people shuffle in:

• Pepsi in the UK
• English breakfast tea in Ireland
• Water in Cambridge, UK
• Protein in Brazil
• Folks from Portugal

UK is in the house, and Ariel tells them they’re going to learn how to compete today.

Ariel jokes about juggling many screens and hoping not to lose the mouse again, mentioning running three computers in the past and deciding that was a bad idea: too many mice is a bad idea. Sidecar and Apple’s cross-device features are “amazing when they work,” but only work most of the time.

The stream is live on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, but most people seem to be coming from YouTube, which is Ariel’s biggest channel. Stats on the other channels are harder to get, so YouTube is the main focus.

Streaming right before Thanksgiving feels like a weird time — everyone is traveling or working — but Ariel wanted to get this topic in because it’s something everyone should be doing.

Black Friday and Following Along

Before diving in, Ariel brings up a Black Friday promotion.

If you’re on any of Ariel’s mailing lists, you already know: AppFigures is running a Black Friday campaign where all plans are 50% off. Ariel jokes that they “went insane” — as every year — to help people who want the tools and love a good deal.

Ariel mentions that a lot of their own purchases still happen during Black Friday.

A QR code briefly appears on screen for a special link to follow along with everything Ariel is going to demo. Even if you don’t grab it during the live stream, you can get it later.

The Goal: Steal Your Competitor’s Strategy (Legally)

Ariel moves into the main topic: stealing your competitor’s app strategy legally.

The goal is to:

• Look at competitors and their strategy
• Understand whether they’re doing well enough to learn from
• Figure out what you can learn from them to beat them
• Understand how they build and run their app
• See how they acquire users
• Learn who is using their app

In most niches, there are multiple competitors. You don’t need to focus on just one or two — you can look at a group and collect the things each is doing well.

Ariel emphasizes they love learning from competitors. It’s a very quick way to:

• Understand what’s going on in your market
• Get ideas
• Get inspiration
• Make your app better

You don’t need to copy and paste everything they do — and you really shouldn’t — but you do need to understand what they’re doing unless you want to reinvent the wheel, have infinite time, and infinite money.

Even with infinite money, if your ads are incorrect or target the wrong audience, they simply won’t work. So you still need to know what you’re doing.

The Main Challenge: Too Much Guessing

From talking to developers, Ariel sees the same pattern over and over:

• People guess which graphics will work
• People guess which keywords will work
• People guess which apps and categories to go after

Those guesses lead to mistakes:

• Advertising to the wrong audience
• Going after the wrong market
• Targeting apps or categories that don’t make enough money
• Using screenshots that don’t convert

Guessing = wasting time = bad.

Instead of guessing, you want to use actual data.

What Ariel Will Cover

Ariel outlines the plan for the session:

1. How to decide if a competitor is even worth looking at
2. How to uncover things competitors don’t publicly share
3. How to see exactly what is working for them
4. How to turn all of that into a growth strategy for your app

To do all this, you need real competitive data that you can’t get just by browsing the app stores. This is what AppFigures’ new App Intelligence pulls together and makes easy.

Components of a Competitive Strategy

When Ariel looks at a competitor, there are a few core questions that always come up. The process is basic, direct, and to the point.

1. Performance and Competitiveness

Every time Ariel analyzes a competitor, they ask:

• What is its performance?
• Is it competitive?

An app can have decent performance but still be insignificant in its market if others are much stronger.

If that’s the case, maybe you don’t want to copy that app or even spend time on it. You might want to move on to a different competitor.

Step number one: validation.

You need to know:

• Is the competitor making enough money or getting enough downloads to matter?
• Does this align with what you need your app to earn?

If you have a big team and funding, you’ll need more revenue. If you’re solo and traveling while coding, your target can be lower. But you still need a number in your head and a sense of whether a competitor is in that range.

Current performance usually means the last 30 days of data. That gives a decent view of whether the app is relevant.

But there’s a catch.

Looking only at the last 30 days could show you:

• A peak month during a long-term decline
• A low month in the middle of strong growth

If someone says, “Last month I made X,” you don’t know if that was a random spike or part of a strong upward trend.

You need to see how the app got to its current performance:

• Is performance trending up?
• Is performance trending down?
• Is growth consistent?

Then you need to understand if the app is competitive in its industry. You might see an app making $100k/month, but if several other apps in the category are making much more, this one might be relatively small.

That can still be useful:

• Small-but-successful apps in a large market prove that smaller players can carve out a piece
• That’s critical if you’re deciding whether to build a new app in that category at all

You also want to escape the silo of one or two competitors. Most niches have many, including partial competitors that don’t overlap on all features but still matter.

2. Audience: Who’s Using the App?

Once you’ve decided a competitor is worth analyzing, the next big question is: who is actually using the app?

You want to know:

• Age and gender demographics
• Where users are coming from geographically
• What other apps they use
• Whether they’re happy or frustrated

Most developers, especially indies and smaller shops, don’t even think about this. Ariel comes from the pre-mobile ad world, where everyone had basic audience demographics for TV and other media. You always knew who you were targeting.

In mobile, this data is harder to come by, so most people skip it. But it exists — and it’s extremely useful.

AppFigures made this accessible for your own users in the overview, and they also surface demographics for competitors.

There are two main audience angles Ariel focuses on:

1. Demographics (age & gender)
2. App graph (what else these users use)

This helps you build a profile:

• “My users like these kinds of games.”
• “My users rely on these types of business tools.”
• “My users overlap heavily with these other services.”

That’s gold for targeting — both paid and organic.

Are Users Happy?

Another critical angle: are users happy?

Users might be stuck with an app they don’t love because:

• It’s too expensive
• It’s missing a key feature
• Something in the UX annoys them

If users are using an app despite a pain point, they are actively looking for alternatives. That alternative could be your app.

You discover this by reading:

• User ratings
• Written reviews

Ariel will show a specific example later where ratings make it clear why this step is so important.

3. User Acquisition: Organic, Paid, and Hyper-Targeting

User acquisition is the fun part because it’s where most of your money comes back.

Ariel looks at three main areas:

1. Organic keywords
2. Paid keywords (Apple Search Ads, etc.)
3. Hyper-targeting and messaging

Organic Keywords

If you follow Ariel’s content, you know organic keywords are a recurring theme.

They are:

• Easy and hard at the same time
• A process to get right

A big shortcut: look at what’s already working for competitors, then evaluate whether those keywords make sense for your app.

Large apps often converge on a shared set of organic keywords. Once they’ve normalized on those, they can spend less time researching and more time improving performance to climb the ranks.

Paid Keywords

Paid keywords cost money, so the objective is to:

• Find low-cost opportunities
• Leverage long-tail keywords
• Build up momentum with many smaller, cheaper terms rather than just a few ultra-competitive ones

Looking at competitors’ paid keywords tells you:

• Which audiences they’re targeting
• Which features they highlight
• How they think about user intent

You might think, “My app does X, I’ll just advertise on X.” That’s only half the battle.

Once a user lands on your app’s page, you still haven’t acquired them. You need to:

• Show them the right visuals
• Use the right language
• Match their intent so they say, “Yes, I need this”

In a world where most apps are free to download and competition is high, users will quickly swipe away if your page doesn’t instantly resonate.

Hyper-Targeting

Hyper-targeting and paid keywords get a question mark from Ariel because not all apps do them — and even in 2025, not enough apps do this properly.

Hyper-targeting means:

Showing a user exactly what they want to see — not more, not less.

Different users have different needs, and that’s the whole point. You should:

• Hyper-target your messaging
• Hyper-target your screenshots
• Hyper-target even your keyword choices

If there’s only one thing you take from this session, Ariel wants it to be this: always hyper-target.

4. Activity: How the Team Operates

Most developers don’t think about a competitor’s activity as part of strategy analysis, but Ariel does.

This includes:

• How often they update ASO elements
• Whether they’re native or non-native
• Their release schedule
• Which tools they use
• What system access and data collection they rely on

These all contribute to how quickly and effectively they can adapt.

ASO Update Frequency

How often do they:

• Change the app name?
• Update the subtitle or short description?
• Edit the long description?

If they’re making frequent changes, they’re actively using ASO to compete.

If they almost never change anything, maybe they’re:

• Sitting comfortably at the top, or
• Neglecting ASO (which is your opportunity)

Native vs. Non-Native

Developers often think about native vs. non-native in a purist, technical sense:

• Native = access to more system features
• Non-native = slow and sluggish

That’s not really the case anymore for most apps.

In reality, the tradeoffs look more like this:

• Non-native: easier cross-platform development, potentially faster iteration across iOS + Android
• Native: deeper access to platform features, potentially better performance and tight OS integration

You need to know what your competitors are using, because it shapes:

• How quickly they can ship
• How fast they can adopt new OS features

Release Schedule

Are they:

• Actively shipping updates?
• Adding features regularly?
• Fixing bugs quickly?

If you plan to “set and forget” your app while your competitors iterate constantly, you’ll be in trouble.

Special Tools

There’s a large ecosystem of tools to help with:

• Monetization
• Development speed
• Marketing
• User engagement

If a competitor is using advanced tooling for analytics, attribution, A/B testing, or engagement, you need to know — because those tools can also be shortcuts for you.

System Access and Data Collection

Permissions and SDKs tell you what’s happening under the hood.

You want to see whether they:

• Collect logs and crash data
• Track user behavior
• Use analytics for improving the app
• Request access to camera, microphone, location, etc.

From this, you can infer features — even before they’re publicly launched.

For example:

• If a competitor starts requiring microphone access but their description doesn’t mention audio features, they’re likely building something new involving audio.
• That gives you a visibility advantage that you can’t get from the store pages alone.

Moving from Theory to Practice

Ariel wraps the presentation portion and moves to a live demo using AppFigures.

They’ll:

• Pick an app from a favorite niche
• Analyze it step by step
• Show exactly how to apply all the concepts just discussed

The chosen niche: photo editing.

Ariel has been following this category for a long time and finds it fascinating:

• Big competitors
• Small competitors
• Long-time incumbents
• New entrants like CapCut (from TikTok) that exploded out of nowhere in video editing, a closely related niche

The specific app: Picsart (spelled “Picsart”), a photo and video editor Ariel has looked at many times.

Step 1: Performance for Picsart

Ariel jumps into AppFigures and pulls up Picsart.

According to AppFigures’ data for the last 30 days:

• 6.9 million downloads
• $8.2 million in after-fee revenue

For Ariel, that’s clearly big enough to be worth analyzing.

However, Ariel also wants to see how Picsart compares within its category.

Using Keyword Inspector, Ariel looks up “photo editor” and sees a long competitive list:

• Lightroom
• Picsart
• Canva
• AirBrush
• Facetune
• Many others

A quick observation:

• Picsart’s total 30-day downloads are 6.9M
• But only ~6% of that is in the US
• India is the #1 country with 31% of downloads

Keyword Inspector, focusing only on US installs, shows ~264k downloads — which matches once you realize most of Picsart’s volume is coming from India and other markets.

In the US, Picsart is:

• Making about $3 million
• The largest app in its segment by revenue
• Even edging out Adobe Lightroom

So we’re analyzing the biggest app in the US for this niche.

Is going after the biggest app a good idea? It depends.

• For some aspects, learning from the big players makes sense
• For others, smaller competitors might offer more practical lessons

For the sake of the demo, Ariel sticks with Picsart.

Step 2: Trends — Are Things Getting Better or Worse?

Next, Ariel looks at Picsart’s download trends.

Lifetime / recent download data shows:

• ~7M downloads in the last 30 days (same as before)
• Downloads slightly down over the last 90 days
• Slightly down over the last 180 days
• Also down over the last year

Year-over-year growth shows that:

• Picsart has had a rough year on the download side
• There’s a visible “struggle zone” with red (negative) growth

This tells Ariel:

• Picsart is still big and leading its niche
• But it’s struggling to keep download growth up

Despite that, when Ariel looks at revenue, the picture is different.

Revenue trends for Picsart are mostly green:

• A few negative patches, but overall strong upward growth
• Revenue has increased from almost nothing in 2018 to $8+ million per month

Interpretation:

• Downloads are harder to acquire now — ASO and paid keywords likely aren’t delivering as easily as before
• But Picsart is doing a great job at monetization and hyper-targeting
• They’re getting fewer downloads, but:
  • Those users are better-targeted
  • Those users are much more likely to pay

In a tough market with heavy competition, this is impressive.

Ariel notes that if you look at more apps in the category and see similar red trends, it might be a sign that the entire photo-editing category is getting more difficult.

If you aren’t in this space yet, that might be a warning sign.

If you are in this space, it confirms you need to fight harder and get more sophisticated with targeting.

Step 3: Audience for Picsart

Next up: who is using Picsart?

Ariel asks viewers to guess the age and gender breakdown before revealing the data.

When the demographics load, Picsart’s audience looks like this (AppFigures’ combined App Store + Google Play data):

• Age:

  • Strong presence in younger age groups (18–24 is the largest segment)
  • More 50+ users than Ariel expected
  • Overall, usage is spread across age groups, but heavily concentrated in 18–24

• Gender:

  • Overall metrics might show something like 25% female, 45% male
  • But that hides an important nuance: in the 18–24 segment, the split is closer to half and half

This is why Ariel always drills into age segments instead of relying on top-line numbers.

For targeting:

• You can target by demographics on most major ad platforms (Apple Ads, Meta, etc.)
• For Picsart, both young women and young men are a big part of the user base

Geography

Geographic breakdown shows:

• India is the largest market by a wide margin
• Indonesia and other countries follow
• The US is behind those

If you’re entering this category and only target the US, you’ll:

• Be in the most competitive, saturated country
• Face higher acquisition costs
• Miss out on the biggest growth markets

Targeting India (and similar markets) needs to be a part of your strategy if you want to compete meaningfully in this category.

Step 4: What Else Picsart Users Use

Ariel then looks at “app graph” data: what other apps do Picsart users have and use?

The list includes:

• Picsart Background Eraser
• Prequel (photo & video editor)
• Photo & text apps
• VSCO
• Funimate Video and Motion Editor
• MotionLeap (3D photo animator)
• AI profile apps
• Facetune
• X Icon Changer
• AirBrush
• Many other editing and creative tools

Key insight:

• Picsart users aren’t loyal to one editor
• They’re trying many similar apps, often at the same time

This likely means:

• Users are chasing a specific look or effect
• Picsart doesn’t always deliver it on its own (at least not obviously)
• Churn is probably very high, with users hopping between apps

If you’re in this category, you must:

• Actively engage your users to reduce churn
• Expect that they’ll constantly test other apps

Step 5: Are Picsart Users Happy?

Now, Ariel looks at reviews and ratings.

For Picsart overall:

• Average rating: around 4.31
• Over 2 million written reviews
• Most users appear to be generally happy

However, rating volume shows an interesting pattern:

• Lots of ratings leading up to late August
• Then a noticeable drop in the number of new ratings afterwards

If something changes around that time, it often points to:

• Pricing changes
• Feature changes
• A new user experience that upsets people

Looking at some reviews, Ariel finds complaints like:

• “We cannot save our work because we need to pay”
• “App is so expensive”

On the App Store specifically, the average rating is higher (around 4.67), but similar patterns appear:

• Lots of ratings
• Then a slowdown after summer

Users complain about:

• Pricing
• AI-related changes

If you have or plan to build a competing app with a more competitive price or a better value proposition, this is a signal:

• There is a frustrated user base open to alternatives
• They’re already actively trying other apps

Step 6: Picsart’s Organic Keywords

Moving to acquisition, Ariel opens Picsart’s organic keywords report.

Results:

• Around 10,000 keywords
• That’s a huge footprint for organic ASO

Sorting by rank, Ariel looks at keywords where Picsart is ranked #1.

Many of these are variations of the brand name, but there are others as well.

In practice, for your own research, you would:

• Identify high-ranking, high-popularity keywords relevant to your app
• See which of those keywords your app doesn’t rank well for yet
• Use the competitor keywords report to find gaps and opportunities across multiple competitors

This is especially important in a category as competitive as photo editing.

Step 7: Picsart’s Apple Search Ads (Paid Keywords)

Next, Ariel views Apple Search Ads data for Picsart.

Picsart is bidding on:

• Nearly 2,500–3,000 keywords

That’s a massive paid keyword portfolio.

A favorite tactic Ariel uses:

• Look for keywords where the competitor is the king — i.e., has the highest share of impressions
• Stay away from those if you’re on a limited budget

If Picsart has, say, 33%+ of all impressions on a very competitive keyword, it likely means:

• They’re outspending everyone else
• You’ll need to overspend heavily to get meaningful visibility

For a smaller app, that’s usually not worth it.

Instead, you should:

• Focus on less dominated keywords
• Target long-tail phrases where:
  • No single competitor has an overwhelming share
  • Relevancy is still very high

Ariel types in some eraser-related queries:

• “photo eraser”
• “background eraser”
• “magic eraser”
• “AI eraser”

These keywords have solid popularity and are clearly relevant to Picsart’s capabilities.

The data shows that Picsart is not dominating many of these.

Interpretation:

• Eraser-related functionality might be a key usage pattern
• There’s an opportunity for others to go harder on eraser-focused searches

If your app — or your planned app — has excellent background/AI eraser features, this is a big hint about:

• Which features to emphasize
• Which keywords to target
• How to structure your app store visuals

Step 8: Custom Product Pages and Hyper-Targeting

To highlight a specific feature like background erasing, you need to show users that exact functionality the moment they land on your page.

That’s where Custom Product Pages on the App Store come in.

Custom Product Pages are:

• Alternate sets of screenshots (and sometimes videos)
• Tied to specific keywords (paid and, more recently, organic)
• Designed to match user intent more precisely

You can have up to 70 of them now.

You can’t browse other apps’ custom product pages directly from the App Store. There’s no public index. AppFigures does the hard work of finding and surfacing them.

Looking at Picsart, Ariel finds a custom product page centered on background removal:

• Screenshots focused on removing backgrounds
• Messaging around “swap out simple backgrounds” and similar flows
• A promo video showing background removal in action

This is exactly what a user searching for “background eraser” or “magic eraser” wants to see.

If someone searching for “background remover” instead saw screenshots about AI avatars, costumes, and more generic editing, they might think:

“This app isn’t for me.”

Even if the app does have the background eraser feature.

But Picsart avoids that by using custom product pages that:

• Align precisely with the user’s query
• Show only eraser/background-related workflows
• Make it clear that the app solves their exact problem

By correlating:

• Apple Ads keywords
• Organic keywords
• Custom Product Pages

…you can infer:

• Which features Picsart is pushing hard
• Which user intents they consider important enough to hyper-target

Step 9: Picsart’s Activity and ASO Changes

Ariel now looks at Picsart’s update timeline on the App Store.

They focus on:

• Name changes
• Subtitle changes
• Description changes

For Picsart:

• There have been multiple name changes in various languages
• “AI photo editor” was added to many localized names over the last year
• They’ve made a significant number of description updates
• Overall, ~675 updates over 11 years

That’s a lot of activity for a large, mature app.

This tells Ariel:

• Even at their scale, Picsart is not “set and forget”
• They keep evolving their positioning (especially around AI)
• They actively iterate on their ASO strategy

Most big apps tend to avoid messing with the main app name once they’re established, focusing more on subtitles and descriptions instead. Picsart is more aggressive, which is notable.

Step 10: Tech Stack and SDKs

Next, Ariel checks Picsart’s SDKs and tech stack.

On both Android and iOS, Picsart has used about 70 different SDKs over time, including currently installed and previously uninstalled ones.

Categories include:

• Ads: multiple ad SDKs
• Analytics: several analytics tools
• Attribution:
  • Adjust
  • AppsFlyer
• Engagement & Communication:
  • UserVoice
  • In-App chat / support logic
  • Braze
  • CleverTap
• Development / Frameworks:
  • Swift
  • Kotlin Multiplatform (on iOS)
  • Some experimentation with React Native
• AR & System APIs:
  • ARKit (or used ARKit)
  • Various Apple APIs

Interpretation:

• Picsart spends a lot on ads and uses Adjust + AppsFlyer to measure campaign performance
• They take customer support seriously, integrating in-app communication instead of relying on just email
• They use sophisticated engagement platforms (Braze, CleverTap) to:
  • Segment users
  • Send targeted push notifications
  • Trigger behavior-based flows

Given how actively their users try other apps, this level of engagement tooling makes sense.

Step 11: Permissions and Data Collection

Finally, Ariel examines Picsart’s privacy and permissions.

They collect:

• Audio data
• Coarse location
• Crash logs
• Customer support data
• Device IDs
• Email addresses
• And more

Coupled with the SDKs, this confirms that Picsart:

• Invests heavily in understanding its users
• Uses detailed behavioral data to drive engagement and monetization
• Is constantly optimizing the user journey and retention

Putting it all together, Ariel can now describe a simplified blueprint of Picsart’s strategy.

Picsart’s Blueprint (and What It Means for You)

From everything seen so far, Picsart’s situation looks like this:

• Category: photo editing, highly competitive, saturated
• Users:
  • Young, with a big 18–24 segment
  • Both male and female
  • Spread globally, with India as a huge growth market
• Behavior:
  • Users try many competing apps
  • Loyalty is low
  • Churn is likely high
• Performance:
  • Downloads are under pressure and trending down recently
  • Revenue is rising strongly
• Strategy:
  • Heavy use of organic and paid keywords (10,000 organic, ~2,500+ paid)
  • Hyper-targeted custom product pages for specific features (e.g., background eraser)
  • Aggressive positioning around AI
  • Frequent ASO iteration and updates
  • Heavy investment in analytics, attribution, and engagement SDKs
  • Active use of in-app support and communication

For someone with a photo editor or planning to build one, the message is clear:

1. Expect fierce competition.
2. Assume users will constantly test your competitors.
3. You must engage users actively to keep them from churning.
4. Ads + ASO must be coordinated and data-driven.
5. Hyper-targeting is non-negotiable if you want to get ROI on your spend.

Your checklist becomes:

• Is your engagement stack solid (push, in-app messaging, etc.)?
• Are your campaigns running at peak capacity, or are you guessing?
• Do your trends look like Picsart’s (downloads down but revenue up)? If not, why?
• Are you leveraging long-tail, intent-specific keywords?
• Are you using custom product pages or similar concepts to hyper-target messaging?

Audience Q&A

After the demo, Ariel looks at questions from the live chat.

How Does User Demographics Work?

Question from Devu/Deu: How does the user demographics feature work? How do you have that data?

Ariel’s answer:

• AppFigures uses information that’s publicly available in the app stores
• They do not touch any private device data
• They do not have private user-level data
• They use an AI model built and refined over the last 5–6 years
• The model was trained on a large amount of similar data
• It also has a “not sure” category, which significantly increases accuracy by not forcing a prediction when confidence is low
• The model is updated and improved over time

Which AppFigures Tiers Include These Features?

Question from Excel Growth: Which AppFigures tiers provide the information shown in the demo?

Ariel breaks it down:

• The overview screen with high-level monthly numbers (downloads & revenue) is available to everyone — from the free plan all the way up to Grow Premium

• Organic keywords and paid keywords are available in the Optimize and Boost plans

• Features like:

  • Custom Product Pages analysis
  • Trends
  • SDKs and some deeper competitive insights

  …are available in Grow plans.

Grow comes in three variants:

• Regular Grow: up to 10 competitors
• Grow Premium: unlimited competitors and unlimited lookups

During the session, all of these plans are on a steep Black Friday discount for a limited time.

Example of a Long-Tail Keyword

Question from Fatpan: Can you give an example of a long-tail keyword?

Ariel suggests something like:

• Instead of just “photo editor,” use a long-tail like “wedding photo editor” (or similar use-case-specific phrases)

Long-tail keywords:

• Are more descriptive
• Usually have lower popularity
• Typically cost less in paid campaigns
• Attract more qualified users who know exactly what they want

You make up for lower volume per keyword by using many such phrases.

Big apps usually don’t target all of these intensively, leaving room for smaller players.

Pushback on Data Accuracy

A viewer named Deo (or De) is very skeptical and says the data can’t be accurate and that Ariel “can’t have that data.”

Ariel invites specifics:

• If you can point to concrete concerns or examples, Ariel is happy to discuss

But reiterates that the data used is based on public information plus AppFigures’ own models and infrastructure, not private device data.

Wrapping Up

Ariel ends by summarizing what you can now do:

• Assess any app and determine whether you should:
  • Learn from it
  • Compete directly
  • Avoid the category
• Understand what your competitors are actually doing:
  • Performance and trends
  • Audience and demographics
  • User satisfaction and friction points
  • Organic and paid acquisition strategies
  • Hyper-targeting via visuals and messaging
  • Activity levels and tech stack
• Translate those insights into a concrete strategy for your own app

If you’re already in a competitive niche like photo editing, you now have a detailed blueprint of how at least one top player (Picsart) operates — and where there might be gaps you can exploit.

Ariel mentions they’ll be back next week with a mystery guest to talk about:

• How to get more money from subscription apps
• How AI is making that easier

They sign off by wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving (for those celebrating in the US or elsewhere) and inviting additional questions in the chat, comments, or via Twitter/X and LinkedIn (links promised in the description).

If you need anything else or want Ariel to analyze another app or niche, you can reach out through those channels.

✨ This transcript was generated and enhanced by AI and may differ from the original video.