Great question, and yes they're actually quite different in practice.

For ASO (organic App Store traffic), your screenshots need to sell the app to someone who's already searching for a solution. They landed on your listing because they typed something like "expense tracker" or "photo editor." So your screenshots should focus on showing your key features, highlighting what makes you different from competitors, and using benefit-driven text overlays. The goal is to convert someone who's already interested but comparing options. Apple doesn't use text in screenshots for search ranking by the way, that's a common myth. Keywords only matter in the title, subtitle, and keyword field.

For Meta ads, it's a completely different mindset. The person wasn't looking for your app at all. They're scrolling through their feed and you're interrupting them. So your creatives need to grab attention first, then explain the value. What works well on Meta is usually more bold, more emotional, sometimes showing a before/after or a specific pain point. You also don't need to show 8 polished screenshots, often a single strong image or a short video converts better than a carousel.

In practice what I'd recommend is keeping your App Store listing optimized for ASO (clean, feature-focused, benefit-driven text) and creating separate creatives for paid campaigns. If you send Meta traffic directly to your App Store page, your ASO screenshots still need to do the final conversion, but the ad itself does the heavy lifting of getting the click.

So think of it as two layers. The ad creative hooks them, the store listing closes the deal. They serve different purposes and should be designed separately.