Ramadan significantly influences mobile app usage as daily routines shift, presenting opportunities for marketers. A new report from Adjust, 'Ramadan app trends decoded: Benchmarks and insights for 2026,' reveals that average daily app installs in METAP increased 11% during Ramadan 2025 and rose a further 2% after Eid al-Fitr. Average daily session length across all verticals grew from 19.34 to 20.08 minutes during Ramadan, staying above 20 minutes post-Ramadan.
Gaming app installs surged 24% during Ramadan and 27% around Eid. E-commerce session growth was highest in Egypt (+132%), UAE (+101%), and Pakistan (+93%). The report helps marketers identify trends and plan campaigns effectively.
This article arrives at a strategic inflection point for UA and monetization teams targeting the METAP region. With Ramadan 2026 beginning in March, the benchmarks from Adjust’s report—such as the 11% install lift and sustained session length increases during the 2025 Ramadan—offer a timely, data-driven baseline. The key implication is that historical trends are not merely directional; they reveal granular vertical and country-level shifts, like gaming installs surging 24% and e-commerce session growth in Egypt spiking 132%.
For ad ops professionals, this granularity enables more precise campaign optimization and budget allocation ahead of the peak window. What's notable here is the emphasis on post-Eid performance, suggesting that the engagement tail extends beyond Ramadan itself. The report also implicitly underscores the importance of reliable attribution in a mobile measurement landscape shaped by privacy changes, as Adjust’s first-party data provides a privacy-safe way to validate these trends.
Competitively, teams that leverage these benchmarks early can calibrate creative strategies and bidding models to capture the observed uplift, especially in under-penetrated categories like gaming. The article signals that successful Ramadan campaigns increasingly depend on real-world performance data rather than generalized assumptions.
Adjust Audiences enables ad ops teams to build real-time user segments for personalized campaigns. Key audience types include geographic, acquisition-based, lifecycle, inactivity, revenue, event-based, and combined segments. Sharing dynamic audiences with partners ensures up-to-date targeting, reducing wasted spend and improving ROI. Actionable insights: suppress low-intent users, retarget high-value segments, and automate workflows via partner integrations.
Adjust's PC & Console solution enables cross-device measurement for gaming, addressing fragmentation across platforms like Steam, console, and mobile. It supports three setup paths: S2S for in-game events, Web SDK for web journeys, and external device ID matching for deterministic linking. Key features include Steam measurement via S2S or Steamworks SDK, SpendWorks for ad spend consolidation, and Datascape for unified reporting. With cross-device journeys becoming common, this solution helps marketers attribute campaigns, measure ROAS, and analyze player value across PC, console, mobile, and CTV, addressing the 61% rise in paid-to-organic ratio in gaming.
Adjust's SpendWorks unifies ad spend tracking across networks, enabling marketers to collect, validate, and analyze cost data with performance metrics. It supports multiple collection methods including API integrations, scheduling, web-to-mobile spend, and data imports. Key features include 40+ network integrations, automated scheduling with multiple daily pulls, and granular mapping for cross-channel campaigns. This solution reduces manual effort, improves data accuracy, and supports smarter budget allocation for better ROAS.
During Songkran 2025 in Thailand, overall app installs rose 8% and sessions 12% YoY. Food & drink apps surged up to 141% in installs and 160% in sessions during the festival. E-commerce saw a post-festival spike (+49% installs). Entertainment apps had longer sessions (+30%), while social and messaging apps also grew significantly. Key actionable insights: align campaigns to pre/during/post phases, optimize for intermittent usage, segment tourists vs. locals, and capture long-term value post-festival.
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 InSight incrementality testing uses machine learning to isolate the causal impact of budget changes, with 95% confidence intervals. Analysis of U.S. tests shows that on iOS, statistically significant lift occurred in ~33% of cases for top platforms, while on Android, ~25% of budget increases led to organic cannibalization. InSight helps ad ops teams separate signal from noise, enabling confident scaling or reallocation decisions. The tool integrates with Adjust's suite, complementing attribution for a complete measurement strategy.
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.
Dating app installs dropped 4% and sessions fell 7% in 2025, with rising user acquisition costs (CPI up 89% to $2.76) and shrinking session lengths (13.21 to 11.49 min). However, retention improved, with Day 1 rates rising to 26%. Valentine's Day 2025 drove only modest dating app activity (installs +12%), while video streaming (+138%) and recipe apps (+49%) surged. The paid-to-organic rate increased to 2.14, indicating higher reliance on paid channels. Ad ops teams should optimize for efficiency amid rising costs and shifting seasonal behavior.
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