To market an app in 2027, fix your store page first, then feed paid channels video creative that you test in volume, and judge every campaign by active users instead of installs. That order matters more than any single tactic.
Here is the number that changed how we plan campaigns. In ApsteQ's work on the LunarLinc friendship app, 113 video ads drove 41,420 installs, while 83 image ads drove 468 (ApsteQ LunarLinc case study, November 2023 onward). Same budget pool, same app, same audience. The format alone separated the winners from the rest. Most app teams still split spend evenly across formats and count installs as success. This guide shows what to do differently in 2027, with real figures, platform limits, and a plan you can hand to an in-house team or an agency.
Key takeaways
- 113 video ads produced 41,420 installs; 83 image ads produced 468 (ApsteQ LunarLinc case study, 2023 onward).
- 76% of Enjoy Movies Your Way downloads were active monthly, 38K+ MAU on 50K+ downloads by December 2023 (ApsteQ Enjoy Movies case study, 2023).
- Apple lets you build up to 70 custom product pages per app (Apple Developer documentation, 2026), so one store page for all traffic is a choice, not a limit.
- EarningsCall's 2022 to 2023 campaign kept 60% of downloads monthly active (ApsteQ EarningsCall case study, 2023).
What does it take to market an app in 2027?
It takes a funnel you can measure end to end: discovery, store conversion, activation, and retention. Each stage has a different lever, and the weakest stage caps everything above it. A team that buys installs into a weak store page pays twice, once for the click and again for the lost conversion.
App Store Optimization (ASO) is the practice of improving your listing (title, subtitle, keywords, screenshots, video, descriptions) so it ranks for relevant searches and converts visitors into downloads. It sits at the center of the funnel because paid and organic traffic both land on the same page. Apple gives you tools to test and segment that page. Custom product pages are alternate versions of your App Store listing, each with its own screenshots, text, and preview video, that you can link to specific ad campaigns. Apple allows up to 70 per app (Apple Developer documentation, 2026). Google Play offers a similar feature called custom store listings, documented in the Google Play Console Help center.
Now the part most teams skip: counting users who stay. ApsteQ's EarningsCall campaign for a US fintech app aimed at investors held 60% of downloads as monthly actives in the 2022 to 2023 run, roughly 3K+ MAU on 5K+ downloads. The app now sits at 100K+ downloads (ApsteQ EarningsCall case study, 2023). That 60% is the number to watch, because it tells you whether the people you paid for actually wanted the product.
For illustration: imagine two campaigns that both buy installs at $2 each. If 60% of those users become monthly active, you pay about $3.33 per active user. If 76% do, you pay about $2.63. The second campaign looks identical on an install report and is roughly 21% cheaper where it counts. Plan 2027 budgets around cost per active user, and the rest of your decisions get easier.
How do you build an app marketing plan for 2027, step by step?
Start with the store listing, then build segmented landing pages, then test paid creative in volume, then measure by cohort. Each step feeds the next, and skipping one makes the later ones more expensive. Below is the order we recommend, and the one our app marketing team follows on launches.
- Audit the store page against platform limits. Use every character you get. The table below lists the documented limits so you can check your own listing in ten minutes.
- Pick three to five audience angles. A budgeting app might have angles for students, freelancers, and couples. Each angle gets its own custom product page and its own ad set.
- Launch a creative test with at least 20 video concepts. Short vertical video is the format that scaled in our LunarLinc data. Keep a few images in the mix only as a control.
- Set the success metric before spend starts. Use cost per day-7 active user or cost per monthly active user. Install cost alone hides bad traffic.
- Scale by cohort. Raise budgets only on ad sets whose users are still active after a week or a month, then cut the rest.
| Store lever | Apple App Store | Google Play |
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