Deepstash spent less on App Store ads than almost anyone else in this category, 440 ad records across the EU in the last year, and it holds the one creative that has run longer than every rival: an English line, "Bite-sized Knowledge & Books," still recorded on 20 July 2026 and marked over a year old by Apple. Headway ran 2,145 records, nearly five times the volume, and its longest still-live ad is not an English book-summary line at all. It is a German audiobook line at 309 days. Volume bought Headway the most testing in the category. It did not buy the longest survivor.
We pulled every App Store ad these apps ran across 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 still-live creative has stayed up. Data window ends 21 July 2026.
The survivor board
| App | Ad records tracked | Distinct creatives | Longest still-live creative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deepstash | 440 | 2 | over 1 year ("Bite-sized Knowledge & Books", en-GB, 8 countries, recorded 20 July 2026) |
| Headway | 2,145 | 12 | 309 days ("Hörbücher & Allgemeinbildung", de-DE, Austria and Germany, recorded 20 July 2026) |
| Sumizeit | 81 | 6 | 248 days ("Microlearning & Books", en-GB, 11 countries, recorded 20 July 2026) |
| Blinkist | 1,599 | 6 | 143 days ("Learn something new every day", en-GB, 12 countries, recorded 20 July 2026) |
| Wiser | 406 | 9 | over 1 year ("Micro Learning & Audio Books", 5 languages, 12 countries), stopped 22 June 2026 |
| Imprint | 1,025 | 4 | 230 days ("Learn and grow daily", en-GB, 10 countries), stopped 18 June 2026 |
A few readings of this table.
The smallest spenders hold the winners. Deepstash ran 440 records and Sumizeit ran 81, a rounding error next to Headway's 2,145 and Blinkist's 1,599, and both keep a line alive far longer than the big two. Deepstash's "Bite-sized Knowledge & Books" is past a year and still recorded. Sumizeit's "Microlearning & Books" is at 248 days. An ad still live after that long is the strongest free signal a category gives you that a creative converts, and here it belongs to the two apps buying the least.
The heaviest spender has no long English survivor. Headway runs the most volume by a wide margin, across 18 countries, and its longest live line is a German one, "Hörbücher & Allgemeinbildung" (audiobooks and general knowledge), at 309 days in Austria and Germany. Its widest English line ran 197 days across 14 countries and switched off on 22 June 2026. Headway treats the App Store as a high-volume test bench and rotates English copy fast. That is a strategy, not a mistake, but it means the longest-proven line in the category is not the one the biggest budget is running.
Two evergreen winners went dark in the same week. Wiser's "Micro Learning & Audio Books" was past a year old and running in 5 languages, then stopped on 22 June 2026. Imprint's "Learn and grow daily" ran 230 days across 10 countries and stopped on 18 June 2026. Two of the category's proven lines switched off within four days of each other in late June. When a rival kills a long-runner, it is worth watching what replaces it, because they rarely stop paying for a winner without a reason.
Every survivor names the format, not the payoff
Read the surviving lines together. Deepstash: "Bite-sized Knowledge & Books." Sumizeit: "Microlearning & Books." Blinkist: "Learn something new every day." Wiser: "Micro Learning & Audio Books." Imprint: "Learn and grow daily." Every long-runner names the format and the cadence: bite-sized, micro, book summaries, audio, daily. Not one of them promises you will get smarter, land the promotion, or finish 50 books this year. The transformation is the fantasy on the landing page. The format is what the buyer searches for, "book summaries," "microlearning," "audiobooks," and the ad that names the format is the one that keeps converting.
Headway is the one that leans on the outcome, and only in German: "Allgemeinbildung," general knowledge, the thing you end up with. Even there it pairs the promise with the format, audiobooks, before the payoff.
Where these apps buy
Almost every record on this board ran in App Store search results, the slot you see after typing a query. That fits a category built on intent: people search "book summaries," "microlearning," "audiobooks," or a rival's name when they decide they want to read more without reading more. Blinkist is the only one here that also ran a small number of product-page placements. Nobody bought the Today tab at scale. This is a search-intent category, and the spend follows the search.
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, and past a year in two cases here, 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 read what the survivors say. Do not be fooled by the heaviest spender, because as Headway shows, volume is testing, not proof. And watch the ones that just stopped, the way Wiser and Imprint did in June, because a killed long-runner is a rival telling you a proven hook just changed.
See any advertiser's ads yourself
See which of your competitors' App Store ads have survived longest, 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), across 25 EU storefronts, data window ending 21 July 2026. "Days running" is the span from a creative's first to last recorded impression across those markets, and "over 1 year" is Apple's own 365+ marker. Record counts are what the repository reports for each advertiser; per-country slices return the most recent records, so the analyzed sample can be smaller than the repository total. "Still live" means the creative was recorded on 20 July 2026, the last impression date in this window. Translations are literal glosses of the advertisers' own lines. Longevity is a proxy for performance, not a measured conversion rate. We invented no numbers beyond what the repository reports. Refreshed monthly.