The Connects Bangkok event, hosted by AppLovin, Adjust, and SparkLabs, focused on AI's role in mobile app growth. Alex Li (AppLovin) highlighted that AI-powered AppDiscovery cuts campaign optimization from over a month to just two weeks, achieving massive improvements. Manish Wali (Adjust) discussed privacy-centric measurement strategies, urging long-term planning for attribution.
A panel featuring industry leaders explored how non-gaming apps leverage AI to overcome saturated UA channels, optimize campaigns, and improve cost efficiency. Jessica Dolan (SparkLabs) demonstrated AI-driven creative production, boosting performance without increased budgets, while stressing the irreplaceable value of human insight. Key takeaways: integrate AI tools for faster UA scaling, adopt privacy-compliant measurement, and balance AI with human expertise.
The event concluded with networking, emphasizing collaboration across APAC markets.
Generative AI boosts creative success rates by 118% and saves 1,600 hours by automating tasks. Key to adoption: embrace change, share knowledge, and focus on workflow improvements. SparkLabs increased AI usage 170% in 2023, proving AI's potential for high-impact ads and resource efficiency. Overcome plateaus with open communication, AI task forces, and continuous learning.
Japan's finance app category is outperforming, with H1 2026 installs up 8% YoY and sessions up 40%—nearly 5x the install growth and well ahead of global figures (5% and 29%). Stock trading is the standout subvertical: installs +90% YoY and average session length climbing to 11.7 minutes, driven by NISA reforms and a retail investor resurgence. Retention is improving across the full 30-day curve (D1 17% to 19%, D30 7% to 8%). For ad ops teams, the takeaway is clear: prioritize measurement depth, re-engagement, and channel-level quality over top-of-funnel volume alone.
Adjust's Halloween 2025 data across six weeks shows the holiday window opens well before October 31 and differs by category and market. Entertainment installs peaked the weekend before Halloween (up 42–44% vs. summer baseline), with OTT/streaming and video content installs up 120% on October 25 and 300% YoY. Photo and video sessions instead spiked on Halloween night itself (+6% global vs. the four prior Fridays; Canada +15%, Germany +13%, U.K. +11%, U.S. +9%, Mexico +7%). Single global send dates miss market-level peaks, so ad ops should time creative, push, and budget shifts per market—especially in Mexico, where activity runs through Día de los Muertos.
Google Marketing Live introduces generative AI for ad creative, enabling brand-aligned asset generation, immersive shopping ads, visual storytelling on YouTube, and AI Overviews in Search. These tools scale production, boost conversions, and improve consumer confidence.
Adjust introduced permission groups to give ad ops teams more flexible, scalable access management. Instead of relying on a single custom role, admins can create reusable groups and assign users to one or more. Groups define app access, product-area access, data access with metric/dimension filters (network, country, platform), and link access including read/edit/create and attribution setting restrictions. This supports agencies, regional managers, and developers with least-privilege access while preserving measurement configuration. For ad ops decision-makers, it means faster onboarding, better data governance, and fewer manual role adjustments as teams and partner networks grow.
Adjust has expanded store detection and verification across multiple app storefronts, making Store Type the primary dimension for identifying where an install originated rather than relying on platform or OS alone. For ad ops teams, this means campaign performance can now be analyzed at the store level across Huawei AppGallery, Xiaomi GetApps, Samsung Galaxy Store, Vivo Appstore, and Google Play variants, with independent verification of install origin. Newly detected stores are flagged in AppView with a direct route to configuration, and store-level data flows automatically into reporting, raw data, callbacks, and CSV exports, plus Conversion Rules via Store Rule conditions.
Adjust's Device Usage dashboard in Datascape gives ad ops teams a prebuilt view of how active users are distributed across app versions, OS versions, SDK versions, and iOS ATT status, plus dimensions like device type, country, language, and date. The core insight is that release impact can lag because users update over days or weeks; segmenting DAU by version explains flat or shifting metrics. Teams can track SDK and app-version adoption, compare OS behavior, identify stale versions, and add device/country context to performance analysis. Actionable takeaway: use the dashboard before and after releases or SDK rollouts to validate adoption, isolate version-specific issues, and contextualize attribution and engagement trends.
Adjust’s Türkiye 2026 spotlight report positions Türkiye as a high-growth, mobile-first market for ad ops teams. Mobile penetration exceeds 93%, median age is 33.5, 2025 e-commerce volume reached $115B, and Turkish game studios generated $2.76B worldwide. The report benchmarks installs, sessions, session length, and retention for gaming, finance, and e-commerce against MENAT and global data, with insights from Hepsiburada, Rollic, Enpara Bank, and Migros One. H1 2026: gaming sessions +6% YoY; e-commerce sessions +4% YoY vs 0.3% globally; finance D1 retention 14%. Use these benchmarks to validate media performance, set retention goals, and prioritize measurement.
The blog highlights the strategic rationale for a TikTok merger, emphasizing the performance advertising gap where TikTo...
The article examines how identifiers like those from Google and Facebook flow across e-commerce sites via standard integ...
AppLovin explains its AI-driven advertising platform, Axon 2, which has quadrupled ad spend to a ~$10B run rate. The eng...
AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi refutes a short report questioning its e-commerce ad business and pixel practices. He highlig...
User acquisition on a budget is achievable through a mix of organic and low-cost paid strategies. Key tactics include op...
Performance issues like crashes and slow load times directly reduce user retention and LTV. With 60% of users uninstalli...