It will come as no surprise to anyone when I say that the app industry is a very dynamic one, with things changing by the week or even day, and 2025 was no different in the developments it brought.
In April, the Epic Games v. Apple ruling permanently barred Appel from forcing developers to use its in-app purchase system. The decision essentially blew open the App Store, paving the way for web-to-app purchase flows.
A similar fate would befall Google just a few months later. While the Epic Games v. Google ruling rejected calls to break up Google or Android, it still forced the Mountain View giant to implement sweeping changes, including allowing third-party app stores and giving them access to the full catalogue of Google Play apps as well as letting developers link to alternative ways to download their apps outside the Play Store.
The two landmark rulings consolidated web stores into an essential part of the growth funnel, opening new horizons for the subscription industry.
AI, as expected and already predicted at the end of 2024, continued to dominate the headlines in 2025, with the usual suspects (OpenAI, Claude, Grok, etc.) launching feature after feature and, in the case of OpenAI, even a new app, Sora AI. More interestingly, 2025 saw the rise of custom-built AI agents (e.g., SplitMetrics’s Iris) trained on relevant data in order to complete very specific tasks (to return to Iris, it specialises in Apple Ads).
All of this made 2025 a watershed year for the app industry and laid the groundwork for the opportunities and challenges the industry will face in 2026.
To help you prepare for 2026, we’ve invited eleven seasoned app professionals reflect on the changes that 2025 brought and share their advice for what’s next for the app industry in 2026.
Freya Fine, Founder at &Fine
Femtech and women’s health will be one of the strongest growth categories in 2026. We’re already seeing momentum with apps like Joii, Ovum, Moody, and Pelby (launching soon), and this is only accelerating. Period tracking is being upgraded beyond calendars into intelligent health companions, while AI designed specifically for women will unlock more personalised care across hormonal health, fertility, pelvic floor health, mental health, and menopause. The next wave of women’s health apps will move away from one-size-fits-all solutions and focus on deeply personalised, life-stage–specific experiences.
The biggest challenge for apps in 2026 will be community building, especially beyond the screen. Digital-only engagement is no longer enough. Users want real connection, and brands will need to figure out how to bring their digital products into physical spaces through events, meet-ups, and shared experiences. Retention and monetisation will increasingly depend on how well apps can translate their online communities into meaningful offline relationships. Apps like Cliq are already leading the way, but this is still a difficult problem the industry hasn’t fully solved.
The biggest opportunity lies in organic community-led growth rather than paid promotion. Ambassador programs, creator-led advocacy, and platforms like TikTok and Reddit will play a central role in driving installs organically. The most successful apps in 2026 will be those that achieve strong product–market fit, build genuine communities around their products, and scale growth organically before relying heavily on paid acquisition.
Connect with Freya Fine.
Dieter Rappold, Co-Founder & CEO at ContextSDK
AppLovin dominates. Everybody has to work with them, but the dominance can be suffocating. So I think we will see strategic initiatives aligned to give the app economy some room to breathe and increase independence. The interesting question is: who will take the lead in this movement?
Context rules. Whether it is contextual targeting or exploring new contextual perspectives: increasing your ‘context score’ with new data points will be a top strategic priority in 2026 for most of the leading players.
ChatGPT & Co. If there is ever a challenger to traditional app store structures and structures of distribution in the world of apps, it will be the leading LLMs, aiming to establish alternative platforms of discovery and distribution. 2026 will see significant steps in that direction.
Connect with Dieter.
Ekaterina Gamsriegler, Head of Marketing and Growth at MyGroove
AI dramatically lowered the barrier. Now what? In 2025, many marketing and especially ad creation workflows included AI to generate and test new creative concepts, whether for on-brand ads or AIGC. It’s become dramatically easier to produce, test, and especially scale creative assets. Which is great, as lean teams were suddenly able to compete with big players.
Looking ahead to 2026, though, I think that in this sea of AI- and UGC-sameness, brand identity becomes a growth lever. My concern is that with infinite content that is increasingly optimised to be provocative, thumb-stopping, and sometimes just plain bizarre, we’re optimizing for an even faster ad fatigue and a system that demands even more shock value to maintain performance. It feels like optimizing for the opposite of what we’d actually want as users. And maybe even as a society. But I know…Don’t blame the player, blame the game, right?
Beyond acquisition, I also expect AI to get more embedded across the rest of the funnel, especially on the retention and conversion sides. With smarter lifecycle messaging, pricing, and paywall experiments. I think that the tools were already there in 2025, but relatively few companies really took advantage of them. I expect this to change.
Multi-channel marketing isn’t going anywhere. And different types of creators are part of the mix. What I don’t expect to change in 2026 is the importance of multi-channel, cross-platform acquisition strategies, which spread across social (owned and paid), search (on the app stores and on the web), creator marketing, UGC loops, communities, virality, referrals, and everything in between.
In 2024-25, we saw a wave of tools designed to make working with creators and influencers easier at scale. As a result, creator marketing became more measurable, repeatable, and performance-driven. I believe this is here to stay in 2026, with creators no longer sitting purely on the brand side of the budget, but acting as a more reliable channel alongside paid UA and a great source of “fast” insights and feedback.
Retention and long-term value will keep winning. I believe that teams that optimise for retention and long-term value will keep outperforming those focused purely on acquisition volume in 2026.
At the same time, monetisation is likely to become more granular and complex. Users are getting tired of one-size-fits-all subscriptions, and the winning strategies will be the ones that combine smarter pricing with relevant offerings that feel tailored and kinda more fair to users.
Connect with Ekaterina.
Marcus Burke, Meta Ads & App Growth Consultant
In 2026, winning UA teams won’t replace tasks with AI but rebuild processes AI-first.
As social feeds flood with AI content, users will crave two things: (1) the next level of insanity (content that feels impossible) and (2) authentic, raw, non-AI voices they can trust. Lean into these extremes instead of replicating your existing UGC talking heads with AI to save a few bucks.
Use generative AI for what wasn’t accessible before: scenes a creator couldn’t film, art styles you’ve never used, cinema-level production quality no smaller brand could afford. It’s all possible now.
Focus on research and context to increase win rates: build deep understanding of diverse sub-audiences through review mining (your store, competitors, niche books), Reddit for authentic tone and pain points, ad comment patterns.
AI ad volume scaled without insight and strategy doesn’t translate into better performance but waste.
Connect with Marcus.
Nico Winkelhaus, Head of Digital Marketing at PAYBACK
App fatigue is real. 2026 will accelerate the trend of consolidation. Users don’t want 50 mediocre shopping apps; they want 5 great ones that include everything.
We will see the rise of Western ‘super apps’ or connected ecosystems where shopping, loyalty, payment, gamification, and media consumption are united under one roof.
For marketers, the challenge is no longer just ‘getting the download’, but earning a permanent slot in the user’s daily ‘core four’ apps.
Connect with Nico.
Gary Danks, General Manager for AIM at Kochava
This isn’t about AI. AI will no doubt feature heavily in every other 2026 trends piece, which is exactly why I’ve left it out of this one. Instead, I’m focusing on a less flashy, but arguably more impactful development for marketers: the growing adoption of measurement frameworks like marketing mix modeling (MMM), which themselves rely on machine learning under the hood.
The rise of measurement stacks. One of the biggest shifts happening right now, and one that will define 2026, is the move away from relying solely on last-touch attribution. For years, it’s been the default measurement method for most of the industry. But today, more and more advertisers are combining it with incrementality testing and marketing mix modeling (MMM) to build a more accurate view of performance.
It’s not about replacing one method with another, it’s about using the right tool for the right job. Last-touch still plays a role in day-to-day decision-making and creative optimisation. But for strategic planning, budgeting, and channel mix decisions, marketers are increasingly relying on top-down methods that give a broader perspective.
Rebuilding the marketing workflow. The shift in measurement and availability of advanced technologies is driving change in how marketing teams operate. The most forward-thinking teams are building dual workflows: one bottom-up (using last-touch and in-platform metrics for campaign execution) and one top-down (using MMM and holdout testing to guide overall spend). These teams aren’t looking for precision in every data point, they’re looking for direction and confidence in their decisions.
The result is a more thoughtful, stable, and experimentation-driven way of working. And it requires new skills, new processes, and better cross-functional collaboration, especially between marketing, analytics, and senior management.
Experimentation becomes essential. One clear trend for 2026 is that experimentation will no longer be optional. As teams adopt MMM and incrementality testing, they quickly realise the outputs often challenge platform-reported performance. That can feel uncomfortable at first, but it opens the door to testing more, learning more, and making better decisions.
Marketers are increasingly running holdout tests and channel experiments to triangulate what’s really driving value. That curiosity is becoming a competitive advantage.
Rethinking the funnel. Another important trend we expect to accelerate in 2026 is a rebalancing of media mix. For a long time, performance marketers, especially in user acquisition, have heavily favored bottom-of-the-funnel channels like Google and Apple’s app stores. The reporting tools made those channels look like the clear winners.
But when teams start building MMMs and running experiments, they begin to see the impact of mid- and upper-funnel channels more clearly. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and even traditional media, TV, audio, out-of-home, often play a bigger role in driving conversions than last-touch reporting suggests.
As more marketers start to see this, we expect to see more budget shift up the funnel, toward brand awareness and consideration activity that has long been undervalued.
This isn’t optional anymore. To put it bluntly: if you’re still relying only on last-touch attribution by this time next year, you’ll be at a disadvantage, and possibly out of step with where the industry is headed.
Marketers need to take the time to learn how MMM works, how to interpret the data, and how to use it alongside their existing tools. This is now a core skillset. Those who don’t adapt will find it harder to justify spend, harder to compete, and harder to grow.
Connect with Gary.
Iain Russell, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at Know Your Dosh
In 2026, it will be hard to escape the ever-growing adoption of AI tools into daily workflows. So far when it comes to mobile marketing and optimisation for apps, I have found these tools somewhat lacking and quite basic, but I fully expect this to change very soon as established companies and tools in this space develop their own engines trained on historical data and knowledge of the app ecosystems. Expectation doesn’t slow down and neither will the options to support this expectation, finding the valuable ones will be the challenge.
With Apple specifically, I keep expecting their ad network to introduce paid or promoted ‘in-app events’. Maybe they aren’t fully utilised yet as they still appear to be an untapped organic resource for promoting your app on the App Store with up to 5 available to use at any time. It seems obvious to me that an option to ‘boost’ or ‘keyword target’ these events through Apple Ads can not be too far away offering conversion-led placements.
Finally, I can see that the value exchange with the end customer of your app in 2026 is going to need to be even quicker, which means that onboarding needs to be slicker and help guide customers to that point of value with as little friction as possible — we are all feeling more and more time-poor in general, so as soon as that time starts to be wasted, you’ve lost them.
Connect with Iain.
Steve P. Young, Founder at App Masters
As we move into 2026, the app ecosystem continues to evolve at breakneck speed, and winning in the market means thinking globally, intelligently, and strategically. One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing is the rise of localisation and monetisation outside traditional tier-1 markets. Growth in Southeast Asia, LATAM, Africa, and parts of Eastern Europe is accelerating, with users in these regions showing strong engagement and increasing willingness to pay for premium experiences when apps speak their language, culture, and local payment methods.
At the same time, AI will continue to dominate app marketing — not just as a buzzword, but as a core driver of performance. From predictive segmentation and hyper-personalised creatives to AI-optimised bidding and real-time A/B testing, marketers who can leverage machine learning at scale will outperform peers on both acquisition efficiency and retention metrics.
Cross-platform experiences — where acquisition funnels span web, social, in-app, and emerging touchpoints — will redefine how brands build lifetime value. And as AI-generated content becomes more mainstream, creativity and brand authenticity will become differentiators rather than just performance levers.
In 2026, the winners will be those who combine global perspective with localised execution, backed by data-driven, AI-powered marketing that respects user privacy.
Connect with Steve.
Andrey Shakhtin, Co-Founder & CEO at FunnelFox
By 2026, web-to-app will become the dominant growth engine for leading apps. Adoption is still accelerating, growing at ~77% year-over-year. Today, 82% of top-grossing apps already rely on web funnels. Many of the most advanced teams have shifted the majority of their acquisition budgets to web, with some generating up to 90% of total revenue outside the app stores. Once teams experience the speed, visibility, and control that web funnels provide, there’s little incentive to go back to slower, opaque in-app-only flows.
At the same time, AI is fundamentally changing how fast teams can move. When web funnels, AI-generated creatives, and flexible payment stacks come together, building, testing, and scaling happens in weeks instead of months. Creative volume is also exploding, and performance is increasingly driven by how quickly teams can produce, test, and iterate, not by finding a single winning idea. In parallel, revenue leaders are launching dozens or even hundreds of highly targeted funnels, each tailored to specific user intents, segments, and use cases, which consistently drives higher conversion rates and LTV.
The next challenge — and opportunity — sits after the click. Payments, retries, cancellations, churn, and upsells are no longer ‘backend details’; they’re core growth levers. With 30-50% of web payments failing and upsells adding up to 20% to LTV, the biggest wins in 2026 will come from teams that optimize the full journey end-to-end. The future belongs to teams that move fast, experiment broadly, and treat every step — from creative, to payment, to retention — as part of one connected growth system.
Connect with Andrey.
Shumel Lais, Co-Founder at Day30
In 2026, we’ll see signal engineering become a must-test initiative for any app investing five figures or more per month into algorithm-driven ad channels such as Meta and TikTok.
As platforms have moved fully toward algorithmic optimisation while simultaneously introducing alternatives to traditional attribution in response to privacy constraints, such as the shift away from SKAN, the signal or goal event a platform optimises toward has become critical in driving performance. In many cases, improving this signal will unlock greater efficiency gains than creative testing alone, an area many mature teams had already optimised heavily by 2025.
The teams that succeed will understand the trade-off between signal volume and signal quality relative to their budget, and deliberately design signals that platforms can learn from early. This also requires having first-party product usage data in order, so teams can identify what truly differentiates long-term, high-quality users based on early behaviour.
Connect with Shumel.
Andrey Kazakov, CEO at Adjust
In 2026, the most successful consumer businesses won’t be thinking ‘mobile-first’ but multi-platform by design. This means building products meant to be discovered and experienced seamlessly across desktop web, mobile web, and apps. The entire user journey, from first touch and onboarding to functionality discovery and core usage, is orchestrated as one continuous experience, not fragmented by device or platform. This shift creates a huge opportunity, and a necessity, for analytics and measurement that can truly follow the user cross-device and cross-platform.
This is why marketers demand tools that connect all UA efforts into a single, understandable picture of performance. At the same time, monetisation will span app stores, web shops, and hybrid checkout flows, so businesses will need to track and optimise transactions wherever they happen. The winners will be the tools and the teams that can unify app and web data into one coherent view of the customer, instead of separate silos. In short, mobile analytics will evolve into multi-platform journey analytics connecting discovery, engagement, and revenue across every surface where users show up.
Connect with Andrey.
If you want to hear more from app experts above and discover more strategies and tactics for app growth, join us at one of our three Business of Apps events in London, NYC, and Berlin.
