Mumbai: AppsFlyer, the Modern Marketing Cloud, has released its State of Marketing in APAC 2026 report, highlighting a growing disconnect between app installs, long-term retention, paying-user behaviour and fraud risk across the Asia-Pacific region.
The report analyses 30 billion installs across nearly 12,000 apps in the Finance, Shopping, Entertainment and Gaming categories, along with US$6.7 billion in combined user acquisition (UA) and remarketing spend, covering the period from Q3 2024 to Q2 2026.
According to the report, growth across APAC’s app economy is becoming increasingly difficult to assess through traditional headline metrics, with key indicators often moving in different directions across verticals, markets and platforms.
“What we’re seeing in the data is that installs and monetization have decoupled, and a single growth number, at the regional level, increasingly conceals as much as it reveals. These are new signals, and teams that read them correctly will make very different budget decisions from those still optimizing on install volume alone,” said Ronen Mense, President and Managing Director, APAC at AppsFlyer.
Finance emerged as one of the key growth categories, with installs increasing across APAC amid the expansion of digital payment infrastructure. In India, organic Finance installs on Android grew 55%, while the broader Indian Subcontinent recorded 46% growth on the platform. Despite the increase in installs, Finance’s share of paying users declined in some of its strongest markets, including Indonesia.
Gaming presented a contrasting trend. Android installs declined between 17% and 26% across every APAC sub-region, but its share of paying users increased across every region and platform. The Indian Subcontinent recorded 29% growth in Gaming’s share of paying users on iOS, while Indonesia saw 28% growth on Android.
Retention data further highlights the gap between initial engagement and sustained user activity. Finance’s Day 7 retention on Android in Southeast Asia grew 45% year-on-year, while Day 30 retention for the same vertical and region declined 32%.
The report found that the gap between early and long-term retention was visible across Finance, Entertainment and Shopping, while Gaming’s early retention remained largely flat. Day 30 retention declined across all four verticals, all four APAC regions and both major mobile platforms.
Fraud trends also varied significantly by market and category. While overall fraud rates declined across APAC, Shopping’s iOS fraud rate in Southeast Asia fell 90% and Finance’s iOS fraud rate declined 80%. However, Gaming’s Android fraud rate in Japan increased 68%, while Entertainment’s iOS fraud rate in the Indian Subcontinent rose 170%.
The report also highlighted several market-specific trends. Entertainment installs increased 42% on iOS in the Indian Subcontinent, while regional-language content accounted for 52% of total OTT viewing in India. In Vietnam, Entertainment UA spend on Android grew 194%, significantly above the regional growth rate.
Finance remarketing conversions in Indonesia increased 268% on Android, compared with just 3% growth in paid installs. Shopping UA spend in India rose 55% on Android, while Gaming UA spend in Southeast Asia remained broadly flat even as paid installs declined 36%.
“Marketers who assess acquisition, retention, payer behavior, and fraud together will make fundamentally different decisions from those working off a single regional number. When those signals diverge, the instinct is often to scale what looks like it is working or cut what looks like it is not, but the more important question is why they are diverging. A market losing installs but growing paying users needs a very different response from one gaining installs but losing retention. Understanding the mechanism behind the divergence will turn data into a real decision. And this isn’t a mobile-only problem. As measurement expands across web, CTV, and other channels, the ability to read these signals together, not in isolation, is what separates a modern marketing organization from one still flying on a single metric,” said Ronen Mense.
AppsFlyer said the findings underscore the need for marketers to evaluate acquisition, retention, monetisation and fraud together rather than relying on install growth as a standalone indicator of performance.
The report is based on an anonymised and aggregated dataset covering July 2024 to June 2026, comprising 30 billion installs, nearly 12,000 apps and US$6.7 billion in combined UA and remarketing spend across Finance, Shopping, Entertainment and Gaming. The analysis covers the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, and Australia and New Zealand across both major mobile platforms, with volume thresholds applied to the reported data.
