App marketing strategy for 2026: 9 methods marketers should know

July 2, 2021

Tin Le

Updated on October 17, 2026: Adtek rewrote this app marketing strategy guide in full with the latest data, platform features and rules from 2025 to 2026.

An app marketing strategy is the plan that takes an app from the point where nobody knows it exists to the point where people install it, come back and pay. In 2026, I split this work into 4 stages: pre-launch, acquisition, retention and re-engagement, with 9 methods spread across them. This article covers what each method does and how to measure it. It does not walk you through the buttons for building a campaign, because Apple and Google already publish their own documentation for that.

How app marketing strategy in 2026 differs from the 2021 version

In 2025, users worldwide downloaded about 149 billion apps, up only 0.8% from the year before. In-app purchase revenue, on the other hand, grew 10.6% to USD 167 billion, and for the first time non-game apps earned more than games (Sensor Tower, January 2026). Installs have nearly flatlined. The money is in the users who stay.

Vietnam ranked 11th in the world for installs in 2025, with 2.88 billion installs and 127 billion hours spent in apps; games alone accounted for 1.29 billion downloads (Adjust, May 2026). A big market means fierce competition.

Three technical changes made the 2021 version of this article obsolete:

Apple Search Ads was renamed Apple Ads in April 2025, because its ads now run in several placements across the App Store.
Custom product pages on the App Store can now be assigned their own keywords and appear in organic search, up to 70 pages per app (Apple Developer, October 2025).
Measurement on iOS is gradually moving from SKAdNetwork to AdAttributionKit. On Android, Google shut down most of Privacy Sandbox in October 2025.

Stage 1: pre-launch

1. Define your target users

I start with 3 questions: what does the app do, how is it different from competitors, and why would someone spend 30 seconds installing it. If you cannot answer them yet, do not spend money on ads.

Next, read the 1-star and 2-star reviews of 3 to 5 competing apps on the App Store and Google Play. Every complaint that keeps coming up is a reason for users to switch to your app. For an English learning app, for example: “ads pop up in the middle of lessons”, “makes you subscribe on day one”, “can’t study offline”.

From there, build 2 to 3 user personas. Age and location are just the frame. The part you can actually use to run ads is behavior: when people use their phones, whether they are used to paying for apps, and which app they currently use instead. The iOS to Android ratio in your target group decides how to split budget between Apple Ads and Google.

2. Landing page, content and press before launch day

A landing page needs real screenshots, a short video if it is a game, download buttons for both stores and reviews from beta users.

A blog is only worth doing when the app solves a problem people actually search for on Google, such as personal finance or studying. With the press, do not send a sales pitch disguised as a press release: reporters want a story, such as numbers from your beta test. The full checklist for the days before your app goes live is in our article on launching an app successfully on the App Store.

Stage 2: user acquisition

3. ASO and custom product pages

ASO (App Store Optimization) means optimizing your app’s store page so it gets found and installed. Product page conversion rate = installs / page views. If 1,000 people view the page and 300 install, the rate is 30%. Every percentage point gained here makes every ad channel that sends traffic to the page cheaper.

The biggest change is custom product pages. You can create up to 70 versions of your page, each with its own screenshots and keywords. Someone searching “conversational English” sees a page about speaking practice, while someone searching “IELTS prep” sees a different one. Assigning keywords does not require submitting a new app build for review, but the keywords must be in the keyword set of the most recently approved app version.

Google Play has custom store listings, up to 50 of them, each with its own metrics and link. Play Console also lets you A/B test the images and descriptions on your listing.

4. Apple Ads

Apple Ads currently has 4 placements: the Today tab, the Search tab, the top of search results, and the “You Might Also Like” section on other apps’ pages. In search results, each custom product page can become an ad variation. Today tab ads lead to a custom page and support deep links starting with iOS 18.

How I use it: brand keywords and competitor keywords in search results, with each keyword group pointing to a custom page that matches the search intent. I save the Today tab for launches or big events, because people there are not yet looking for an app.

5. Google App campaigns

Google’s App campaigns distribute automatically across Search, Play, YouTube, Discover and the Display Network, using the text, images and video you provide. You only choose the goal: installs, in-app actions or value.

For iOS, Google recommends consolidating to 8 or fewer install campaigns per app. Beyond that, SKAdNetwork data and conversion modeling for the smaller-budget campaigns get obscured (Google Ads Help, 2026).

6. Social media and creators

Short videos show viewers how the app works before they ever open the store. A creator filming 30 seconds of real app use says more than 5 screenshots. When you hire a creator, do not just pay for one post. Ask for the rights to reuse that video as an ad on TikTok, Meta and YouTube.

Measurement on iOS and Android in 2026

7. Measurement under privacy rules

Since Apple switched on ATT (App Tracking Transparency) in 2021, advertisers receive only aggregated, delayed data from Apple’s measurement framework for any iOS user who does not allow tracking.

AdAttributionKit launched with iOS 17.4 and is compatible with SKAdNetwork. Starting with iOS 18, it can also measure re-engagement, meaning people who already have the app tap an ad and come back. From iOS 18.4, one app can have multiple re-engagement conversion windows open at the same time (Apple, WWDC, June 2025). As of October 2026, Google Ads documentation states that Google does not yet use AdAttributionKit for attribution and still relies on SKAdNetwork, so you need to configure both.

On Android, Google announced in October 2025 that it was retiring the Attribution Reporting API and SDK Runtime from Privacy Sandbox because of low adoption (Google, October 2025). Android measurement therefore still depends on mobile measurement partners (MMPs) such as Adjust, AppsFlyer, Singular or Firebase.

When platform numbers and MMP numbers disagree, I turn off ads in a group of regions for 2 to 4 weeks to see how much installs really drop.

Stages 3 and 4: retention and re-engagement

8. Onboarding and user retention

Day 1 retention (D1 retention) = the number of people who reopen the app on day 2 / the number who installed on day 1. If 1,000 people install and 190 come back the next day, D1 is 19%. That is exactly the figure for games in Vietnam in Q1 2026, lower than APAC (20%) and the global average (28%) (Adjust, May 2026).

Low D1 usually comes down to onboarding: forcing sign-up before users see any value, asking for too many permissions, a slow first screen. Fixing onboarding is usually cheaper than raising the ad budget. The full set of metrics to track (DAU, MAU, churn, CPI) is in our article on app marketing KPIs.

The metric I look at alongside retention is ARPU (average revenue per user). ARPU = revenue / active users in the period. High retention with flat ARPU means users are staying but have not yet found a reason to pay.

9. Deep links and re-engagement

Deep linking means a link that opens a specific screen inside the app. Without it, a “2 items left in your cart” email opens the home screen and the user has to find the cart again.

Google recommends App Links (Android) and Universal Links (iOS), because custom schemes lead to an error page when the app is not installed on the device. Google’s App campaigns for engagement require the app to have at least 50,000 installs, in-app conversion tracking in place and an app user list (Google Ads Help). If you are not there yet, start with email, push notifications and retargeting on Meta.

Email and push should be triggered by behavior (an unfinished lesson, a plan about to expire), with each message carrying a deep link to that exact screen.

Example: work out your CPI ceiling before running ads

Say I am getting ready to run ads for an English learning app with a paid plan. The numbers below are assumptions to show how the calculation works.

Take 90-day revenue per install from the app’s existing data: VND 18,000.
Subtract the store fee. Assuming a 15% fee, VND 15,300 remains.
Set a target of paying back ad spend within 90 days. The maximum cost per install (CPI) is VND 15,300.
Compare with the CPI you are actually paying, say VND 22,000. Each install loses VND 6,700 in its first 90 days.
Pick a fix: raise D7 retention through onboarding, improve the product page to lower CPI, or extend the payback window if cash flow allows.

If you can calculate line 3 before you spend, you know whether you are buying growth or buying losses. An app marketing strategy without this number is just a list of channels.

Adtek’s view: app marketing strategy checklist by stage

Stage	Check question	Key metrics
Pre-launch	Have you read competitors’ low ratings and written 2 to 3 behavior-based personas?	Waitlist sign-ups, landing page visits
Acquisition	Does each Apple Ads keyword group have its own custom page? Do you have more than 8 iOS install campaigns on Google?	Product page conversion rate, CPI
Measurement	Have you configured both SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit? Is your MMP receiving complete data from every ad network?	Share of attributed installs
Retention	Do users see value in the first 60 seconds? Which onboarding step loses the most people?	D1, D7, D30, ARPU
Re-engagement	Do email, push and ads deep link to the right screen? Does the app have the 50,000 installs needed for App campaigns for engagement?	Return rate, revenue from existing users

What to avoid:

Pouring budget into installs while D1 is still below the category average. You are paying for users so they can delete the app.
Using one product page for every ad. A bad example: the ad says “IELTS prep” and the page that opens talks about vocabulary for kids.
Judging iOS channels only by the ad platform’s own report. Those numbers are modeled and need to be checked against your MMP and a holdout test with ads switched off.
Sending email or push that opens the app’s home screen.

Adtek plans app marketing from ASO, Apple Ads and Google App campaigns through to measurement setup and deep links for re-engagement. If you are about to launch an app or want to know whether your current CPI is still profitable, contact Adtek.