App Store Marketing
App Store Marketing covers the full app growth stack - ASO, Apple Search Ads, Google App Campaigns, paid social, DSPs, retention, CRM, creatives and app UX optimisation.
Daily thought from Tom, the ASM editor-in-chief... Ask Play, Play Shorts, and Apple’s age-rating tweaks share an annoying theme: distribution keeps adding surfaces and rules that can quietly break your funnel. Tiny win: audit one listing for (1) a 3-second hook, (2) a clear ‘what is this for?’ Q&A answer, and (3) correct age-rating questionnaire inputs (especially AU/VN) before June 18.
Start here: core guides
View all guides
Start here: What is App Store Marketing?
What it is, what’s changed, and the levers that still matter.
ASO Guide 2026
Positioning → metadata → creative → iteration cadence (a repeatable system).
Apple Search Ads Guide
Structure, bidding, creative, and incrementality - without hype.
ASO checklist
A simple weekly routine to keep listings compounding.
App marketing tools
A curated toolbox for research, creative, and measurement.
Why youth-sensitive app environments are becoming a real compliance problem for advertisers
Mike Rhodes argues that as programmatic buying gets more automated and more fragmented, suitability risk moves from ‘the edge cases’ into mainstream mobile inventory. The practical answer is app-level governance: clear thresholds, repeatable scoring, and auditable Accept/Refer/Decline decisions.
Latest
- Why youth-sensitive app environments are becoming a real compliance problem for advertisers
- RevenueCat Sub Club: 68% trial conversion came from trust, not paywall tweaks (Natal App)
- Apple ships iOS 26.6 beta (and friends): why release engineering still breaks launches
- App Store Marketing Weekly – Week 22 (2026)
- RevenueCat AI Toolkit: putting subscriptions setup inside coding agents
- Apple: age ratings are changing in Australia and Vietnam (June 18, 2026)
News feed
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App Store Marketing Weekly – Week 22 (2026)
This week’s theme: intent is only real if you can measure it. CPPs and ‘free’ ASO tooling both promise better relevance, but Apple’s new proceeds-per-download benchmarks are the reminder to follow the chain all the way to money.
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RevenueCat Sub Club: 68% trial conversion came from trust, not paywall tweaks (Natal App)
A credited summary of RevenueCat’s Sub Club write-up (May 27, 2026) on Natal App: how answering every message for years built enough trust that users convert without needing a ‘test drive’, and why HSA/FSA payments are an underused growth lever for health apps.
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Apple ships iOS 26.6 beta (and friends): why release engineering still breaks launches
A credited summary of Apple Developer News (May 26, 2026) announcing iOS 26.6 / iPadOS 26.6 / macOS 26.6 betas. Not a ‘growth’ post, but a reminder that tooling and OS cadence can silently become your biggest go-live risk.
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RevenueCat AI Toolkit: putting subscriptions setup inside coding agents
A credited summary of RevenueCat’s launch of the AI Toolkit (May 22, 2026), a plugin + skills bundle that brings RevenueCat setup, SDK integration, and paywall troubleshooting into tools like Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and VS Code.
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Apple: age ratings are changing in Australia and Vietnam (June 18, 2026)
A short, practical summary of Apple’s June 18 age-rating updates in Australia and Vietnam, and why it can create surprise review or support issues if your questionnaire answers are stale.
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Apple says it blocked $2.2B in App Store fraud in 2025: what it signals about trust, reviews, and distribution
A credited summary of Apple’s 2025 App Store fraud report, plus the practical takeaways for app teams: review integrity, account abuse, bait-and-switch risk, and why ‘trust’ is still a growth lever.
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Braze: a practical CRM playbook hiding inside a ‘Marketer of the Month’ interview (Chopt Rewards)
A credited summary of Braze’s May 2026 Bonfire Marketer of the Month interview with Alison LaGatta (Founders Table/Chopt): cohort-first lifecycle planning, in-store sign-up as a CRM unlock, and why ‘owned’ only works when you can execute the whole loop.
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ConsultMyApp: UK finance Apple Search Ads winners (and why organic rank is not the same as paid visibility)
A credited summary of ConsultMyApp’s ASA benchmark on 40 UK finance search terms: Monzo dominates paid share of voice across core banking intent, Zopa is the most consistent challenger, and the big lesson is that competitors can intercept demand above your organic position.
More stories
- Android at Google I/O 2026: the themes that matter for shipping, UX, and distribution
- Google Play Billing Library v9: the small API changes, and the bigger Play discovery shift
- Apple previews new accessibility features powered by Apple Intelligence: why it matters for UX, onboarding, and content
- Google Play (I/O 2026): Ask Play, Play Shorts, and the push for discovery beyond the store
- App Store Marketing Weekly – Week 21 (2026)
See more
- Apple Design Award finalists 2026: a useful swipe file for onboarding, motion, and ‘proof moment’ UI
- Google System Services (May 2026): the Play changes you feel before you can name them
- Brazil looks next for alternative iOS app marketplaces: iOS 26.5 adds a ‘default marketplace’ setting
- Push notifications: the retention lever that also burns trust (a practical 2026 refresher)
- Mother’s Day Apple Search Ads (US, iOS): who bought the moment, and what their creatives reveal
- Google outlines Android’s 2026 security and privacy roadmap (banking scam calls, threat detection, theft protections)
- App Store Marketing Weekly – Week 20 (2026)
On the grapevine
Small notes and community chatter worth keeping an eye on (curated and capped).
- Assign keywords to Custom Product Pages (organic intent routing, not just paid variants) Apple Developer (App Store Connect Help) Primary source. The practical unlock: you can route specific search terms to a CPP, so screenshot #1 can match intent instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
- Search results ad placements (what can show where, and why you can’t pick position) Apple Ads Help Primary source. Useful when teams panic about “more ads”: you can’t choose placement, so intent matching and CPP alignment matter more than vibes.
- Store listing experiments (native A/B tests for graphics and copy) Google Play Console Primary source. Handy when you need to justify cadence: run one test per intent cluster, then ship the winner as a real default (do not treat experiments as a side quest).
- Apple Design Award finalists 2026 (a high-signal swipe file for UI clarity and proof moments) Apple Developer (Design Awards) Primary source. If your listing promises something your onboarding cannot prove in session one, this is where good looks like in practice. Steal interaction patterns, not aesthetics.
- Apple vs Epic: Supreme Court declines to pause contempt order (link-out payments are still a live wire) SCOTUSblog Not a platform doc, but a high-signal legal datapoint. If you rely on steering or external payments, keep your UX and support expectations flexible, and document the exact flow you ship.
See more
- Google I/O 2026: what’s new in Google Play (Ask Play, Shorts, billing churn fixes) Android Developers Blog Primary source. Worth skimming for the new discovery surfaces (Ask Play, Shorts) plus the billing changes aimed at involuntary churn and subscription management.
- New IAP and subscription data in App Store Connect Analytics (cohorts, benchmarks, exportable reports) Apple Developer News Primary source. A strong link for measurement debates: Apple is pushing monetization truth into Analytics (cohorts, benchmarks, exportable reports), so teams can stop arguing from screenshots.
- DMA and apps in the EU (the canonical “what’s actually allowed” hub) Apple Developer (DMA in the EU) Primary source. If you’re debating external payments, alternative distribution, or link-out UX, start here. It’s the closest thing to a stable reference in a fast-moving region-specific ruleset.