Seven industry experts on what comes next for app store optimization, user acquisition, monetization, and the AI-driven future of mobile.
A Collaborative Article Hosted by Phiture, February 2026
Introduction
When we set out to map the year ahead in mobile growth, we had a great idea: why don’t we just ask the very people shaping it?
So, we brought together a fantastic cast of experts to answer a few critical questions, starting with our very own Claudia Trujillo and Talha Mumtaz from our own growth consulting team, not to mention Andy Carvell, our CEO. On deck, we have Simon Thillay, who leads ASO strategy and market insights at AppTweak, and Marcus Burke, one of the sharpest minds in Meta Ads and app growth advisory. To round it off, we talked to Vahe Bagdasaryan, whose consultancy Tangent has become the go-to name in app monetization, as well as Roi Nam, CEO of AB180, the company behind Airbridge and Airflux.
We asked all seven the same questions: What major shift do you expect in 2026? Why does it matter? What should the industry stop doing? And what bold prediction are you willing to put on the record?
Their answers cover the full spectrum, from how AI is transforming app store discovery and rewriting the rules of search, to why siloed growth teams are becoming a liability, to the case that most apps are leaving serious money on the table by ignoring lifetime value. Across every contribution, one thread kept surfacing: the old playbooks are expiring fast, and the teams that adapt first will pull away from everyone else.
What follows are their takes, in their own words.
Part One: The Future of App Store Discovery
CLAUDIA TRUJILLO,
Senior Growth Consultant, Phiture
The shift
There are actually two major shifts I am looking forward to seeing in 2026. On one side, the evolution of new Google Play Store features for games and apps, including Play Games Sidekick, the You tab, immersive headers, and more, and the expected impact on visibility, conversion, and retention.
On the other hand, the growing influence of AI on ASO is leading to an increase in search and discoverability across both app stores. How will AI interpret users’ natural language and search intent, and how will the stores respond with new AI-driven processes and ASO features to support more advanced keyword optimization?
Why it matters
Regarding the evolution of features available at the Google Play Store, the shift matters as it may alter how and where users discover apps and games. Teams should adapt by monitoring how these features expand and their impact on long-term engagement, signaling a shift in user experience, which may impact the store algorithm in the long run.
With AI already redefining search results, I am curious to see how the stores will adapt other discoverability placements and provide more tools for keyword strategy optimization. Teams should adapt by monitoring how AI is already providing users with excerpts of content and affecting results, and curating their ASO strategy accordingly.
“Manual keyword research will remain more relevant than fully AI-driven search. Natural search behavior is innate to users, and while AI can refine elements of keyword intent or initiate searches on a user’s device, it cannot replace the traditional human query patterns when someone searches for their needs in the app stores.”
TALHA MUMTAZ
Growth Consultant, Phiture
The shift
In 2026, I expect ASO professionals to evolve into App Store Growth experts, managing a truly full-funnel approach. This shift will become crucial as app stores, especially Google Play, have already begun and will continue to integrate AI-backed features designed to create a smoother user experience. As the journey moves from users actively browsing store listings to AI systems answering questions or summarising the app experience upfront, ASO experts will need to optimise store listings not just for humans, but for AI-driven discovery as well.
This evolution means thinking beyond traditional keyword optimisation and experimentation. Leveraging Custom Store Listings and Custom Product Pages for deeper audience segmentation, understanding how the detailed app vitals affect the overall conversion (ANRs, crashes, higher battery consumption), ensuring descriptions clearly explain the app’s value, and aligning creatives with different users’ search intent will all require a broader, more growth-oriented mindset.
Why it matters
App store algorithms are evolving in the post-AI era. Recent algorithmic updates appear to prioritise app quality, content, and store performance metrics such as ratings, reviews, conversion rate, and search term optimisation. As these algorithms continue to evolve, ASO experts must evolve as well. The long-term direction of app stores increasingly points toward providing users with a complete, at-a-glance understanding of the product through summaries and contextual information.
Misconceptions to leave behind
ASO is not becoming less important. In fact, it is more important than ever. However, it is no longer limited to keywords and experimentation alone. Successful ASO experts are evolving into growth-focused roles, with a stronger emphasis on optimising the full app store experience. This includes leveraging Custom Product Pages to align creatives with users’ search intent, creating tailored store experiences for different user interests through Custom Store Listings, and managing paid and organic traffic with distinct strategies.
“The app title should clearly communicate the most important feature, benefit, or value proposition, especially since screenshots and other creatives may not be the first point of contact for users arriving through discovery-oriented placements.”
Bold prediction
The reach of app stores will need to extend beyond the stores themselves. In 2025, growth strategies such as web-to-app user journeys and Answer Engine Optimisation became increasingly prevalent. In 2026, as AI assistants and discovery tools continue to evolve, a greater share of traffic is likely to flow toward certain app categories such as shopping, entertainment, utilities, and games. As a result, growth strategies beyond app store optimisation will need to be incorporated into overall growth plans to ensure apps remain relevant and discoverable.
SIMON THILLAY
Head of ASO Strategy & Market Insights, AppTweak
The shift
I believe 2026 will be the year Large Language Models make their impact truly felt on App Store Optimisation, as the App Store and Play Store will revamp how search results and other recommendations are presented to users. We know Apple and Google have already made some changes in that direction in 2025, but I think 2026 is the year they go further and move the goals of ASO from improving how apps are found and downloaded (with keyword matching and creatives optimisation) to improving how apps are discovered, recommended and adopted (with semantic matching, reviews analysis and creatives targeting).
Why it matters
This shift matters first and foremost for consumers, as it could lead to the most significant UX/UI change we have seen in years, particularly in the App Store if Apple is able to deliver on some of the profound AI changes they have announced within the next 12 months.
For ASO teams, the shift will also be significant because it will challenge them to determine which of their processes and “ASO recipes” work well enough in the new logic, and which need to change first. Keyword optimisation will not die outright but evolve significantly towards semantic optimisation, and teams will start running tests outside of the app store product page and Play Store listing to optimise their visibility.
“Most importantly, I expect this shift will also mean the divide between paid and organic efforts will be even less relevant than in prior years, as growth marketing teams will have to collectively work to identify which are the relevant intents to target to acquire qualified users.”
Misconceptions to leave behind
Having siloed paid and organic teams compete in terms of user acquisition performance is a far too common practice, and I hope more companies will leave it behind. In 2026, the best ASO teams will be the ones that are aware of blended acquisition costs and understand how they can contribute to performance increases, while top-paid teams will have to look beyond direct attribution numbers and focus on blended statistics and incremental results.
Bold prediction
LLM ads will outperform Apple Ads only for certain utility app verticals with subscription models. While the launch of LLM ads is greatly anticipated and likely to bring nice wins to early adopters, I expect that in the mid to long run, the analytics will reveal the lion’s share of answer engines’ traffic is not as ready to download an app as is native traffic in app stores, and while an LLM ad might contribute more retained installers, the early acquisition cost will make them less profitable for most app verticals.
Part Two: From Channels to Systems
ANDY CARVELL
CEO, Phiture
The shift
2026 will see a decisive shift in high-performing teams towards Integrated Growth approaches. Integrated Growth is an approach that aligns marketing efforts across the funnel, treating growth as a connected system, prioritised and measured against business outcomes rather than channel-level performance.
In practice, it’s a closed loop: ASO informs paid, and paid sharpens ASO. Creative and messaging cut across everything. CRM feeds acquisition (and vice versa), while product signals power predictive value models that guide bidding. First-party data, AI, and automation make this possible, but teams and incentives must shift from channel KPIs to business outcomes.
“The organisations that can orchestrate this loop in near real time will pull away from those still operating in silos. Some teams might want to consider reorganising into cross-functional pods to make this work.”
Why it matters
The idea of growth loops and applying systems thinking to mobile growth is nothing new. However, two forces are at play that are rendering old growth playbooks less effective and creating evolutionary pressure: signal loss (primarily due to increased privacy regulation) and AI. Teams have been adapting to signal loss for some time, but many app companies currently struggle with attribution and measurement. AI brings the promise of incredible speed and scale of experimentation with very different unit economics versus traditional manual approaches: this creates urgency.
In 2026, the performance gap will widen between teams that build AI-enabled integrated growth systems and teams that remain stuck in channel-based execution.
Misconceptions to leave behind
“That releasing one more feature will change the trajectory of a product. Great products without a growth engine will lose to good products with superior distribution and experimentation velocity.”
Products are no longer expensive to build and are easier than ever to replicate; it’s no longer enough to have a great product. The growth engine is what counts.
Bold prediction
The word of 2026 is velocity. Everything accelerates: concept validation, time-to-launch, time-to-scale, and value extraction. A flood of AI-assisted apps will hit the stores, many designed to attack incumbents in established categories. Brand still commands attention, but the moat is eroding. Incumbents will keep share only if they can match challenger speed: faster learning cycles, faster iteration, and faster execution.
MARCUS BURKE
Meta Ads & App Growth Advisor
The shift
The best teams in 2026 will master audience diversification at scale by using AI not just for creative production but for research and personalisation of touchpoints from ad to onboarding and core product experience. LLMs and generative AI will let teams drill into every sub-audience with messaging that resonates, then extend that same level of specificity into the app itself.
2025’s hottest topic was Organic Social (a.k.a. “Viral apps”). Products like CalAI, Locket, or Quittr showed everyone the importance of a highly visual, entertaining onboarding and a strong activation feature to efficiently acquire broad, young demographics and bridge the gap from dopamine-filled social feeds to your app. In 2026, legacy brands will catch on. Re-focusing growth efforts on onboarding/activation and creating tailored experiences for each channel and audience to lift their ceiling. All enabled by AI.
Why it matters
Onboarding must be treated as an extension of the ad and the audience being acquired. It needs to quickly adapt to the ever-changing composition of sub-audiences targeted. For that to happen, onboarding must be dynamic and easy to test. The same goes for pricing. Feedback loops between the growth team working on onboarding and user acquisition must be extremely tight. Or even better: both must be driven by the same team.
Misconceptions to leave behind
“Younger demographics (under 25) can’t be disregarded anymore. They’re not immaterial or invaluable to subscription apps. We just haven’t been building products in ways that address their needs and preferences.”
Breaking your ceiling means not limiting your total addressable market by age, but only by the constraints your product and the pain points it solves actually set.
Bold prediction
ASO will become a battleground again. With apps catching on when it comes to converting a much larger target audience through focus on onboarding and diversification as outlined above, most top search ranks won’t be defensible. Even for scaled legacy players that have been around for ten years plus.
Part Three: The LTV Reckoning
VAHE BAGDASARYAN
Founder & CEO, Tangent
The shift
The biggest shift in 2026 will be the industry’s transition from optimising short-term monetisation metrics to explicitly optimising for user lifetime value (LTV). Growth teams will increasingly move away from maximising installs, trials, or paywall conversion rates and instead design monetisation strategies around revenue durability, retention, and long-term user value.
Why it matters
This shift matters because many apps have reached diminishing returns on top-of-funnel optimisation. Teams should adapt by redefining success around cohort-level LTV, payback periods, and revenue curves, and by aligning pricing, trial mechanics, and offer structures to reinforce long-term engagement rather than short-term conversion spikes.
Misconceptions to leave behind
“Many teams still assess pricing or paywall tests without accounting for how they affect downstream behaviour like renewal rates, upgrade paths, churn timing, and expansion revenue. In 2026, monetisation decisions that aren’t validated on full cohort LTV will increasingly be viewed as incomplete or misleading.”
Bold prediction
In 2026, more teams will discover that their true growth bottleneck is not acquisition or conversion, but insufficient LTV headroom. As a result, the most impactful monetisation work will come from restructuring pricing and offers to expand long-term revenue per user, rather than continuing to squeeze incremental gains from conversion optimisation alone.
Part Four: AI, Speed, and the Next Wave of Apps
ROI NAM
CEO, AB180 (Airbridge & Airflux)
The shift
In 2026, we will see a major expansion of consumer apps. This growth will be driven by easy access to AI coding and no-code tools, which significantly lower the barrier to entry and enable studios to launch multiple products with far greater speed and efficiency. At the same time, large publishers from markets such as China, Vietnam, and Turkey, many with deep roots in casual gaming, are actively exploring AI and subscription apps as their next major growth engine.
Why it matters
This shift will significantly intensify competition. The baseline for success will rise, with outcomes increasingly driven by aggressive soft launching and marketability testing, followed by strong UA, and ultimately by continuous, data-driven LTV optimisation. While this environment will be challenging for many long-tail consumer apps, it will also drive three major outcomes: an explosion of new AI-powered app categories and rising new stars; the emergence of more super apps that excel across every growth dimension and generate $100M+ in revenue; and the rise of app aggregators and UA finance companies that acquire or scale apps with strong market fit but limited growth execution.
Misconceptions to leave behind
“The idea that games and apps are fundamentally different businesses is becoming outdated. Consumer apps are becoming more gamified, and many AI-native apps now rely on the same core growth fundamentals as casual games.”
While they differ in content, casual games and consumer apps, especially AI-native and subscription-based apps, are increasingly similar in their growth formulas and business models, including soft launch and marketability testing, scaled user acquisition, monetisation optimisation, deep cohort analysis, predictive LTV, and more.
Bold prediction
In 2026, reinforcement learning will emerge as one of the foundational pillars of marketing technology, acting as the interpretation and decision-making layer that powers continuous optimisation. AI-driven ASO will require ongoing testing and intelligent decision-making; without it, prompts will continue to produce suboptimal variations. UA budget allocation will increasingly be optimised through reinforcement learning, and within apps and games, numerous digital variables will be continuously tested and refined using the same approach.
Ultimately, much of experimentation and growth automation will be governed by reinforcement learning, enabling products to self-optimise at a massive scale within just a few years.
CONTRIBUTORS
Claudia Trujillo, Senior Growth Consultant, Phiture
Talha Mumtaz, Growth Consultant, Phiture
Simon Thillay, Head of ASO Strategy & Market Insights, AppTweak
Andy Carvell, CEO, Phiture
Marcus Burke, Meta Ads & App Growth Advisor
Vahe Bagdasaryan, Founder & CEO, Tangent
Roi Nam, CEO, AB180 (Airbridge & Airflux)
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