The State of App Marketing in Asia – 2025 Edition

From 2018 to 2024, Asia’s install volume grew by 150%. In the last two years, however, year-over-year growth has slowed to around 6%, a signal that the region is entering a more mature phase. Even so, Asia continues to outpace global trends by a wide margin, expanding 3–4 times faster than the rest. This momentum reflects more than scale; it marks a structural advantage. As the region evolves, growth is defined by sharper budget allocation, stronger retention, and higher value per user.

India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are driving that momentum. Since 2018, India’s install volume has grown by +160%, Indonesia by +196%, and the Philippines by +615%—the fastest relative growth in the region. India’s volume today is more than twice that of Indonesia, reflecting its weight in scale-based UA strategies. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s infrastructure, mobile-first behaviour, and the Philippines’ rapid digitization continue to attract aggressive investment.

Asia’s user acquisition spend hit $14.77B in 2024, and while Finance still commands the largest share at $6.1B, new categories are climbing the ranks. Food & Drink posted the fastest growth between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 at +32%, driven by repeat usage, loyalty behavior, and improved funnel performance. Shopping followed with +24% growth, buoyed by personalization and post-COVID recovery, particularly on iOS.

Gaming, still a top driver in volume, grew just +15%, signaling a relative shift away from traditional UA strongholds toward lifestyle categories with higher engagement potential.

As user expectations evolve, UA priorities are increasingly shaped by session quality, conversion depth, and post-install behaviour, not just volume. Marketers are reallocating budgets to verticals that can deliver sustained value, not just scale.

Strategic UA investment is moving beyond scale, toward regions delivering higher marginal returns. In 2024, India still led with $5.76B in UA spend, but its share of the region’s total dropped 24% between Q1 2023 and Q1 2025. During the same period, the Philippines surged +76% and Indonesia rose +48%, signaling a meaningful reallocation of budgets toward faster-growing, performance-optimized markets.

This shift isn’t just about volume. Marketers are responding to changes in marginal return, platform behavior, and monetization adaptability, looking beyond traditional giants to regions with better cost-performance balance.

Cross-border investment is reinforcing the trend. In 2024, 22% of Chinese UA budgets—approximately $2.4B—were redirected toward Asian markets. Indonesia (7.7%), the Philippines (5.3%), and Japan (6.3%) were the top recipients, highlighting Southeast Asia’s rising role as a monetization frontier.

Vertical-specific dynamics increasingly drive monetization in Asia. In gaming, hybrid adoption has accelerated significantly: in Q1 2025, 26.0% of gaming apps used a hybrid monetization model, up from 8% in early 2023 — a 3.4x increase. This reflects a broader shift toward revenue diversification in high-growth, price-sensitive markets.

Gaming remains the primary arena for hybrid experimentation, where combining ads (IAA) and in-app purchases (IAP) unlocks value across casual and midcore genres. The share of apps using IAA and IAP remained stable in the past year, while hybrid continues to grow incrementally, particularly in markets with shorter sessions and high install volume.

In contrast, non-gaming apps remain largely anchored in IAP. As of Q1 2025, only 3.1% of non-gaming apps use hybrid monetization, while IAP accounts for nearly 60%. Despite a growing appetite for post-install revenue, developers in verticals like Finance and Shopping opt for predictability and control, rather than experimenting with ad-supported models.

Across both verticals, monetization strategy is evolving into a marker of product maturity. Where price sensitivity and high churn dominate, hybrid models are gaining traction. Where user intent and transaction depth are stronger, simplicity still wins.

Remarketing is playing a larger role in performance strategy across Asia. In 2024, regional remarketing spend reached $4.47B, with 70% of that concentrated in India ($2.02B), Indonesia ($574.6M), and the Philippines ($482.7M). These markets are accelerating toward full-funnel strategies, where re-engagement is increasingly central to growth and long-term value.

iOS is delivering stronger performance in this space. From Q1 2023 to Q1 2025, iOS paid remarketing conversions grew 346%, compared to 78% on Android. This divergence reinforces iOS’s role in verticals like Finance and Shopping, where higher retention and post-install engagement improve campaign returns.

Remarketing growth is also being reshaped by category dynamics. Between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025, Food & Drink and Gaming saw the most significant gains in share, each rising more than 100% year-over-year. These shifts reflect a broader focus on sustained engagement, particularly in verticals tied to daily habits and entertainment.

As acquisition spend levels off, marketers are reallocating to post-install performance. Remarketing is now a core lever for driving incremental value, especially in markets where user acquisition alone is no longer enough.

Asia-Pacific remains the most exposed region globally when it comes to install fraud. In 2024, five APAC countries—India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan—ranked among the global top 10 for fraud-related financial exposure, represents the potential financial loss prevented by fraud protection systems. Combined, these five markets saw over $3 billion in potential losses, with India alone contributing more than $1 billion and the Philippines surpassing $650 million. The pattern is clear: where mobile performance spend is growing, so is the scale of fraud risk.

Finance was hit hardest, accounting for 80% of install fraud exposure across Android and iOS. High CPIs, longer conversion cycles, and increased re-engagement budgets have made it a consistent target. Bot-driven installs dominated APAC’s fraud profile, climbing to 88% of all fraudulent activity by the end of 2024, up from 74% a year earlier.

Meanwhile, install hijacking dropped 49% and fake publisher fraud declined 17%, pointing to real gains in SDK validation and attribution-layer defenses. But the surface is shifting. Tactics are moving deeper into the funnel, especially post-install engagement and remarketing flows. As budgets expand beyond CPI into lifecycle performance, full-funnel protection is now critical.