About Creative Monitoring
Creative Monitoring is a tool in the MobileAction platform that lets you scan icons, screenshots, and videos published on the App Store or Google Play Store so you can track emerging design trends and see how your own creatives compare to the market.
If you want to start researching right away, go to Browse creative trends by category or Compare competitor creatives by app.
How Creative Monitoring works
Creative Monitoring has two distinct views.
Creatives by Category gives you a broad view of what icons and screenshots look like across the entire App Store or within a specific category.
Creatives by App lets you select up to five specific apps and view all their creatives side by side for a direct comparison.
Both views show the app's rank alongside its creatives, so you can connect visual choices to market performance. Clicking any creative opens a larger preview so you can inspect the design in detail. Clicking an app's name or icon takes you to its profile page in the MobileAction platform, where you can view additional information about the app.
Filters available in both views
The same set of filters applies to both Creatives by Category and Creatives by App. You can combine any of these filters to narrow the view to exactly the segment you want to research.
- All Types / With Video / Without Video: Controls whether video creatives are included in the results or excluded, so you can focus on static assets only or include video previews.
- All Assets / Only Icons: Switches between showing all creative types (icons and screenshots) or icons only, which is useful when you want to study icon design trends specifically.
- Date picker: Sets the date for which creative data is shown. Use this to study how designs have changed over time by selecting different dates.
- All Categories: Filters results to a specific App Store category such as Books, Business, Games, or Health and Fitness. Selecting a category narrows the creative gallery to apps in that segment only.
- Free / Grossing / Paid: Filters apps by their monetization model, so you can focus on the segment most relevant to your competitive set.
When to use Creative Monitoring
Creative Monitoring is useful when you are planning a creative refresh, preparing for a seasonal campaign, or tracking how competitors are evolving their visual identity. Because you can set a specific date and filter by category, you can build a precise picture of what the market looked like at any point in time.
Related links
Need more help?
If you have further questions on the process, contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or contact the support team via live chat.