Journalist at Promodo
For over 6 years, I have been working as a journalist in the communications and marketing industry. I help brands communicate effectively through written content, engage with market experts, and create professional materials on topics related to business and marketing, sharing insights on working with marketing tools.
The mobile app market in 2026 is highly competitive, with a focus on attention, retention, and unit economics instead of just installs.
User acquisition costs are rising, while the App Store and Google Play rely more on behavioral signals such as install conversion, retention, and engagement.
App growth depends on the balance of two channels:
In our new guide, you will read about mobile app promotion step by step, common mistakes, and how to scale what works.
Before you start, clearly define your app’s target audience and the problem it solves. Without it, you can’t set up ads properly or evaluate their performance.
The second critical point is analytics. If you don’t track in-app events, you’re simply working blind. The third is competitor analysis.
You need to:
This kind of analysis helps you rely on proven market hypotheses instead of starting from scratch.
It’s also important to look at the first user experience. On average, only 25–28% of users return to an app the day after installing it. The rest drop off after the first interaction, often because onboarding is unclear or the interface is inconvenient. As a result, a large share of the acquisition budget is wasted because users don’t complete key actions.
Another often underestimated factor is creatives. In 2026, they define ad performance. The same targeting with different creatives can deliver completely different results. That’s why, instead of launching 1–2 creatives and waiting, you need to produce dozens of variations and test them regularly.
Here’s how it works in practice:
In most niches, video creatives outperform static ones, especially on TikTok and Reels. Still, performance depends on the platform format and the scenario, so it’s important to test different types of content.
Organic traffic is the foundation of long-term growth. It doesn’t deliver instant results, but over time, it builds a steady flow of installs without paying for each user.
ASO (App Store Optimization) is the process of optimizing your app page in the App Store and Google Play to increase visibility and conversions. Simply speaking, it’s about how users find your app in the store and whether they decide to install it after viewing the page.
What affects rankings:
From Promodo’s experience, the core of ASO is working with the semantic core. It should cover as many relevant queries as possible, then prioritize them based on traffic and relevance. These keywords are then distributed across metadata (title, subtitle, description), which helps expand the app’s indexing.
This is why ASO also directly impacts paid promotion—broader indexing helps ad platform algorithms find more relevant audiences.
SEO in mobile app promotion works as an additional acquisition channel. Users often search for solutions on Google before going to the app store. That’s why landing pages, articles, and reviews can drive high-quality traffic, especially in niches with established demand (fintech, marketplaces, subscription services).
In one of our previous blogs we also discussed the latest ASO trends.
At the start, ads help you understand which audiences and creatives work. Then they’re used to scale what already performs. At the same time, most platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) now rely on automated models where algorithms find users based on your goal.
The key point is choosing the right objective. If you optimize only for installs, you may end up with cheap but low-quality traffic. That’s why campaigns are increasingly optimized for lower-funnel events like registration, purchase, or subscription.
Main channels:
The first step is to define the goal you’re buying traffic for: installs, registrations, first transaction, trial, or metrics like D7 ROAS or CAC payback. Without this, everything that follows lacks a clear benchmark for success.
Before launching any ads, set up in-app events and connect analytics tools (AppsFlyer, Adjust).
At the same time, link them to your ad accounts. Without this, you won’t see what happens after the install: which users complete key actions and which campaigns actually work.
Deep linking lets you send users not just to the app, but directly to a specific screen after install—for example, a card application page in a banking app.
This step is critical for conversion, especially when using Custom Product Pages, where each creative can lead to a dedicated store page.
At the same time, it’s important to look at what already works in the market: which formats and messages competitors use, and how their videos and banners look.
We also recommend paying attention to funnel logic: what offers they use, how onboarding is structured, and which triggers and social proof (reviews, ratings, numbers) they highlight.
Also, review how app store pages are structured and how messaging changes with seasonality.
Develop creatives for different app use cases based on its functionality. For example, in fintech, this could be card issuance, cashback, bonuses, or deposits—specific actions rather than abstract benefits.
It’s important to look beyond CTR or CPI and evaluate the entire funnel: from click to install, registration, activation, and the target action, including retention and revenue quality. Cheap traffic has no value if users don’t reach the key outcome.
After each testing cycle, document insights. Not just which creative performed better, but what exactly worked, for whom, on which platform, and at which stage of the funnel. This becomes the foundation for the next iterations.
Testing must be structured. Don’t mix everything into one campaign. It should be clear what exactly you’re testing—audience, offer, page, or the creative itself. Define the decision logic in advance: when a creative is paused, when it gets a second chance, and when it’s scaled.
Creatives that perform well aren’t just left to run; scale them separately. At the same time, you should prepare a new wave, since any effective setup eventually loses performance.
- Vladyslav Skakovskyi, Mobile App Promotion Specialist
Once the core channels are working, additional growth often comes from less obvious sources. For example, influencers can drive installs and build trust, especially in lifestyle or fitness niches.
PR and media coverage serve as long-term tools: they build awareness and support organic growth. Referral mechanics bring in users through your existing base, which is often much cheaper than traditional advertising.
Another approach is cross-promotion. This is mutual promotion between products or brands with partially overlapping audiences. For example, one service can recommend another within its app or through its communication channels.
This approach helps drive additional traffic without classic ad spend and works well both within a single business and through partnerships.
Scaling a mobile app doesn’t start with increasing the budget but with data analysis. At this stage, you already have initial campaign results and can see which creatives and audiences perform well.
1. Running install campaigns (CPI)
At the beginning, the main goal is to gather enough data. Campaigns are optimized for installs, and the key metric here is CPI. You start by selecting creatives with the lowest CPI, while weaker ones are paused and reworked to launch new iterations.
2. Switching to event optimization (CPA)
Once enough events are collected (usually 100–150), campaigns shift from installs to a target action — registration, purchase, or another key event. At this stage, it’s important to track the install-to-action conversion, control CPA, and keep creatives that drive not just traffic, but results based on the chosen metric.
3. Working with unit economics (LTV, ARPU, ROAS)
At the scaling stage, you need to understand your product’s economics—how much revenue each user brings and how much you can afford to spend to acquire them.
Unit economics is a model that shows whether acquiring a user pays off. In simple terms, it’s the ratio between acquisition cost (CPA or CPI) and the total revenue a user generates over their lifetime (LTV).
4. Scaling through budget and channels
Start by increasing the budget for campaigns that already deliver stable results. It’s important to do this gradually — sharp budget increases often reduce performance as algorithms shift to less relevant audiences.
At the same time, expand your audience: from narrow segments to broader ones or lookalike models. This helps maintain effectiveness while increasing traffic volume.
Another direction is testing new channels and placements. For example, if a setup works well in Meta, it can be adapted for TikTok or Google while taking platform-specific formats into account.
The core approach stays the same: any scaling is a continuation of testing. New audiences and channels go through the same evaluation based on metrics as at the start.
Key metrics to track:
CPI — cost per install
CPA — cost per target action
Retention — whether users come back
ARPU / LTV — average revenue per user/lifetime value
ROAS — return on ad spend
One of the most common issues is weak ASO: irrelevant keywords, unclear screenshots, or simply no clear page structure. This affects not only organic but also paid traffic.
Another typical mistake is launching ads without analytics. In this case, you can’t tell what actually works and what just wastes budget.
We also recommend not ignoring reviews. Not having a review collection process and overlooking negative feedback directly impacts conversion.
Our goal with Rakuten Viber was to improve organic performance for both the Viber app and the Viber Dating feature, and drive more dating profile activations from the existing user base. The product entered a highly competitive market dominated by strong, well-established players.
We combined ASO and paid efforts. We rebuilt the semantic core, updated metadata, and adapted content across regions to improve visibility.
We also launched custom store pages tailored to specific search queries to increase relevance and conversion. At the same time, we used in-app events and store visuals to highlight key features directly in the app stores.
On the paid side, we focused on segmented audiences and behavior-based remarketing, prioritizing Viber’s existing user base to drive higher-quality engagement and profile activations.
As a result, in-app events generated over 4.1M impressions in the App Store and 5M+ views in Google Play, significantly increasing feature visibility.
The goal was to increase organic traffic in the App Store (US) and improve app page conversion.
The app already had basic optimization and broad localization, but the US market is highly competitive and demands strong query relevance. The large number of locales indexed within a single region also added complexity.
We focused on systematic ASO optimization: building a new semantic core, prioritizing queries, and updating metadata for each market. At the same time, we analyzed niche trends (including the impact of AI on search queries) and regularly tested changes.
The key focus was iteration: for specific locales, we made multiple rounds of subtitle and keyword updates, gradually improving visibility and page conversion.
As a result, over 11 months, organic traffic grew by 31.7%, exceeding the expected 10% benchmark, and the app page conversion rate also improved.
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Our goal was to increase organic installs, improve store visibility, and convert users into customers.
The app already had a strong foundation: high brand awareness, solid optimization, and stable performance. It meant that standard approaches would bring little growth, so we needed new tools.
We started with a full ASO iteration: updated metadata, expanded the semantic core, and ran an in-depth competitor analysis. Then we introduced a new tool for the market — in-app events.
This helped bring key updates and offers directly to the App Store page using dedicated visual cards with clear messaging. We adapted the content to user interests and updated it regularly.
At the same time, we worked with paid channels to boost install growth and strengthen the app’s performance in store algorithms.
As a result, the app reached the top of its category, installs grew by 15%, and card applications increased by 6.6%. In-app events became a separate acquisition channel and helped drive higher user engagement.
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The market is overloaded: users regularly engage with only a few apps, while the rest quickly fall out of sight. This changes how promotion works. What matters isn’t traffic volume, but how quickly a product becomes part of a user’s daily habits.
That’s why success depends less on budget size and more on a business’s ability to adapt: test and update approaches, and use data as the basis for decisions.
[[FAQ-START]]
Organic (ASO, SEO) and paid channels (Meta, Google, TikTok, Apple Search Ads), as well as influencers, referral, and retention tools.
CPI, CPA, retention, LTV, and ROAS are a core set of metrics for measuring performance and scaling.
By moving step by step from install-focused campaigns to optimizing for business events and scaling the best-performing creatives.
[[FAQ-END]]
Journalist at Promodo
For over 6 years, I have been working as a journalist in the communications and marketing industry. I help brands communicate effectively through written content, engage with market experts, and create professional materials on topics related to business and marketing, sharing insights on working with marketing tools.
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