The founder-led boutique
PickASO. Spain’s first native ASO agency, still small, still honest. The retainer is the only criticism.
ASO agencies in Spain · September 2026
ASO agency Spain: the best boutiques in Europe, and the ad networks that own them.
Spain punches above its weight in App Store Optimization. Barcelona and Madrid produced some of the first native ASO agencies in Europe and some of its most respected practitioners. They also produced a pattern: the good boutique gets acquired by an advertising group, and the advice starts sloping toward media. Here is how to tell which kind you are talking to.
Thinking about a Spanish ASO agency? Let me explain the ownership question.
Gabriel Machuret · September 2026If I had to name the European country with the best small ASO agencies, it would be Spain. PickASO in Barcelona was the country’s first native ASO agency, founded in 2013 by Daniel Peris and Miriam Peláez, and it has stayed small, founder-led and honest when it could have become a bloated full-service shop. Lab Cave in Madrid learned ASO by ranking its own games before selling the expertise. The Spanish scene is practitioner-led in a way London and Berlin are not, and I say that as someone who competes with it.
So what is the problem? Ownership. Lab Cave was acquired by Fibonad, a global advertising media group with its own publisher network, at the end of 2017. Admiral Media, founded in 2019 and run from Marbella and Barcelona, is a performance media agency that has managed more than half a billion euros in ad spend and holds partner badges from every ad platform. Both sell ASO. Both are, structurally, businesses that earn from spend and inventory, and an organic service inside such a business is a front door to a larger relationship. The advice is competent and it slopes, in good faith, toward media.
You see the slope in the phrasing. Organic and paid ‘work together’, which is true and a media pitch. A game gaining visibility should ‘monetise the new users’, which is true and a mediation pitch. A better store page ‘makes every paid euro work harder’, which is true and a reason to spend more euros. None of it is dishonest. It is what a company built on ad revenue sounds like when it discusses a service that costs nothing per install.
The second Spanish pattern is the regional edge. Spanish agencies are genuinely excellent on Spanish and Latin American storefronts, and PickASO in particular has depth there that almost nobody else does. That is a real reason to hire them if those are your markets. If your installs come from the US, the UK and Germany, the regional depth is an edge you fund and do not use, and the organic work follows the same process as anywhere else.
The third pattern is the one every market shares. Even the best Spanish boutique sells a monthly retainer, and a retainer does at a good agency what it does at a bad one: it bills the months where the stores are quietly responding at the same rate as the months where the rewrite shipped. Month four at PickASO contains monitoring, a small tweak and a well-written report. It costs the same as month two, which contained the work.
Against that: one consultant who made the same choices the Spanish boutiques made, small and focused and founder-only, and then one more: no retainer. The teardown, the rewrite, one screenshot test at a time, the handover with dates. Nobody upstream wanting your media budget or your inventory. The fee is fixed, ends, and buys the person you spoke to on every deliverable.
To be fair to Spain, and I mean this more than on most pages: if you want an agency and your markets include Spain or Latin America, PickASO is one of the few I would name without hesitation. If you are a game studio comfortable being a client of an ad group, Lab Cave’s studio-born expertise is real. If you want your listing improved by someone with no downstream interest in your spend, ownership matters. Send me the proposal and I will show you who it serves.
Whatever ASO agency in Spain you are talking to, the questions are the same: what ASO services actually contain, what they should cost, and whether you need an agency or a consultant at all. The individual agency reviews cover the named players.
01 — What you will actually find when you search
What the first page of results actually containsThe studio-born agency inside an ad group
Lab Cave, part of Fibonad. Real expertise, and a parent that earns from media and inventory.
The performance media agency
Admiral Media. €500M in managed spend. ASO is a bolt-on to the media desk.
The agencia de marketing digital
Madrid and Valencia SEO shops with a ‘posicionamiento de apps’ page and Google instincts.
The LatAm-facing shop
Genuine depth in Spanish-language storefronts, priced for markets you may not sell in.
The freelance practitioner
Spain has several excellent ones. Most learned at the boutiques above.
02 — What ASO costs in Spain, honestly
Typical local rates · illustrative, not quotesTypical agency in SpainGabriel, direct
Monthly retainer€3,000–€7,000None. Fixed fee, one engagement.
12-month total€36,000–€84,000US$9,500 (≈ €8,700)
OwnershipBoutique, or ad group, or media agencyIndependent. No one upstream.
Regional depthSpain and Latin AmericaYour primary markets, whichever they are
Month fourMonitoring, a tweak, a good reportNothing. It ended. You own it.
What you own afterA report and a relationshipThe keyword map, the test log, the training
Spanish fees are the most reasonable in Western Europe and the boutiques are genuinely good. The questions are who owns the agency, which markets its depth is in, and whether you want month four on the invoice.
03 — Six questions to ask any Spanish ASO agency
Take these to the first call- Who owns the agency, and does the parent company earn from ad spend or ad inventory?
- Will you commit in writing to not proposing media or mediation inside the ASO engagement?
- Our installs come from the US and Germany. Which apps have you ranked in those storefronts?
- Who, by name, owns our title and subtitle, and how many accounts do they hold?
- What does month four contain, with dates, that month two did not?
- When the contract ends, what does our team run on its own?
04 — Agencies in Spain I have reviewed
Full reviews, one per agency05 — Should you hire an ASO agency in Spain?
Honest answer: depends who you areAvoid if
The agency is owned by an ad group and you want independent organic adviceYour markets are not Spanish-speaking and you would fund that depth unusedYou want the work done once and handed over, not subscribed toYou would be buying ASO inside a media retainerHire locally if
Your markets include Spain or Latin America and you want a good boutiqueYou are a game studio comfortable with ad-group ownershipYou need serious paid media run by a Spanish team with platform partnershipsFree teardown
Send me
the Spanish
proposal.
I will show you who the proposal serves, whether the regional depth is one you will use, and what the same organic scope costs as a fixed fee with nobody upstream. If PickASO is the right call for your markets, I will say so.
Objections
“You clearly rate PickASO. Why not just recommend them?” +
For Spanish and LatAm markets, I often do; read the review. The difference is the retainer model, and it is a real difference in cost and in what month four contains.
“Does ad-group ownership really change the advice?” +
Structure shapes incentives. An agency whose parent earns from media will, in good faith, find reasons you need media. Decide if that is what you want from an organic vendor.
“Are Spanish agencies cheaper than London?” +
Meaningfully, and the quality is often higher per euro. The criticism is ownership and model, not price.
“Can you handle Spanish storefronts?” +
I handle the strategy and structure, and work with native copy where needed. If you need deep LatAm review management, a regional agency is a fair option for that piece.
ASO agency in Spain? Read this first.Free teardown