ASO Trends To Watch in 2025

As we begin 2025, looking back at the changes that occurred in ASO in 2024 leads me to think it was a relatively quiet year for App Store Optimisation practitioners. This isn’t to say that there were no significant changes introduced at all (Apple had to allow the creation of third-party stores in the EU and introduced alternative business terms for app distribution on iOS as a result; Google introduced its EngagedSDK and revealed its plans for a new “Collections” experience), however, it appears that so far, their practical impact on the conduct of ASO have been limited.

Instead, the changes that have had the most direct impact on the conduct of ASO were in my opinion the addition of one new targeting method for Custom Store Listings (CSL) on Google Play, CSL per keywords, and the introduction of a featuring “nomination” form in App Store Connect to enable app developers to more easily request Apple consider featuring their app in the App Store. Even Apple Search Ads and Google Ads, the bridges between ASO and paid User Acquisition, did not change much: despite rumors back in 2023 that Google was considering allowing for manual keyword targeting in its ad platform, no major change occurred around Play Store ad inventories in 2024, while the most significant changes on Apple’s side were the expansion of Apple Search Ads to new markets including Brazil and Turkiye.

Read ASO news & updates for 2024

In this context, a fair question is what trends should ASO practitioners be on the lookout for in 2025.

Will 2025 be yet another rather quiet year in ASO, or are there major changes on the horizon?

Tackling search traffic in 2025: the slow evolution of keyword optimisation

Having started working in ASO in 2017, I can attest the “death” of keyword optimisation has been announced already (too) many times, frequently out of sensationalism, and often also as a comparison to the early days of ASO when the lack of competition for high-traffic keywords meant simply adding a few carefully chosen terms meant almost immediately ranking in the top search result positions for them and observing search traffic metrics in store consoles sore.  Keyword optimization is still not dead at the end of 2024, nor will it die in 2025, however, its evolution will continue, and with it, the challenges of changing how to approach it and how to measure its impacts will grow. Simply put, a continuous trend for at least the past five years has been the ever-growing weight of brand-name searches in the App Store and Play Store, while generic search becomes more diversified and diluted, and thus appears to have marginally decreasing value.

Discover the most popular App Store keywords in 2024

At the same time, AI assistants are rapidly gaining market share in the global search market (ChatGPT is already estimated to have over 4% market share according to Statista & Datos), and could become a pre-store step in the search funnel with users first researching apps that might suit them by theme and/or use case, and only search the name of the best recommended app in an app store. Even without speculating on the potential impact of AI assistants on app store search, numbers from Apple’s App Transparency reports show App Store searches are growing slower than overall activity in the App Store (thus suggesting faster growth from “browse” type experience).

While I do not believe these trends mean the end of keyword optimisation, I do think they call for a change in perspective in 2025: the goal of keyword optimisation should no longer be solely to secure the highest possible search result position for specific terms, but instead the approach should more largely consider how text metadata can influence incoming traffic on keyword (thematic) clusters, positions in search results for competitors’ brand terms, growth in browse/explore traffic from store featurings, collections and events, and even indexation for specific topics with AI assistants.

A potential resurgence of videos in app stores

Since the introduction of videos in app product pages and store listings, very little changes have been made to store guidelines and features that regard the use of video. This has largely led to a division around video adoption between apps and games, with games relying very often on videos to increase conversion in the stores, whereas most apps stuck to using only screenshots.

2025 could mark the start of a change in these lines, particularly as Google Play rolls out new video options for Android developers. First, the introduction of portrait-format video support in the Play Store towards the end of 2024 is likely to appeal to more developers, who saw the landscape-only display of video in the Play Store as a limit to how they could showcase their app in action. Portrait videos could convince more developers with apps used in portrait orientation to test videos in the Play Store, while some developers already using landscape videos may be tempted to test a change in format.

More importantly, Google’s announcement that developers will be able to add multiple videos to their store listings in 2025 should particularly appeal to game developers (and other app developers in the mid to long term): whereas the one video limit led to little differentiation between games with the same fundamental gameplay or type, the possibility to add ‘how to play’ videos, guides, and more, will allow developers to better showcase the differences in features, style and content of their apps and games compared to competitors’. This would also allow for a more differentiated approach to appeal to various audiences (including differentiating between new and returning users) without having to rely on Custom Store Listings and sometimes uncertain targeting choices.

The main caveats to this trend will however be challenges in terms of video production costs (though generative AI could alleviate some of these) and more importantly impact measurement. So far, Google has not disclosed whether new metrics will be added to the Play Console to help developers analyze the impact and value of additional videos, and while secondary measurement options from YouTube analytics could help conduct these, it is quite possible that interest in additional videos would die down if no metric is directly available in the Play console.

Finally, while Google has unveiled its plans to encourage developers to leverage more videos in the Play Store, Apple has yet to announce any change to its store policies and features regarding videos, which are often seen as very restrictive given the official requirements of showing only content captured in the app itself. As a result, the resurgence of interest around videos is still uncertain for 2025, since improvements from the Play Store will not be guaranteed to be transferrable to the App Store.

The start of a shift from acquisition to engagement?

Probably the most significant, though still uncertain trend for ASO in the upcoming year will be a shift in focus from acquisition to engagement. While the introduction of in-app events on the App Store and Promotional Content in the Play Store have marked a first expansion in the types of opportunities available to developers via store console, they are regarded so far as the addition of an engagement-related feature to the larger acquisition-driven features of app stores, rather as the introduction of a deeper change in the focus of ASO.

2025 might mark the start of such a change as Google Play’s announcement of a new “experience” called Collections, relying on Google’s EngageSDK, can be considered the most significant new feature rollout in the Google Play console in several years. While many details are still to be clarified, Google Play’s announcement suggests Collections would not be (primarily) located in the Play Store itself, but rather would appear as a widget directly available on Android phones that would send users into a Play Store-like app or UI, showcasing mostly contents and products available within already installed apps on their devices, rather than new apps to download.

While Apple has yet to unveil specific plans to foster user engagement in already installed apps on iOS devices, early “pitches” of Apple Intelligence have suggested Apple’s approach to artificial intelligence relying on on-device processing would also lead to an AI assistant that would lead users to leverage their installed apps in new ways.

Many questions remain about both Collections and Apple Intelligence, but among these, one of the most crucial ones regards the management of in-app content indexation and availability of new metrics inside store consoles (or new consoles) to measure users’ responses to these new features and the impact of developers’ efforts when trying to adopt them. At this point, it’s likely that 2025 will only be the starting point for this potential shift and perspectives will remain uncertain regarding whether these features will mark a real change in user experience or will be discontinued after a few years, as well as whether their management on the app developer side will fall onto ASO teams or other parts of organisations. Nevertheless, this trend is probably one ASO practitioners should follow closely, as the ever-evolving role of ASO teams is increasingly including the responsibility of staying at the forefront of marketing capabilities offered by Apple and Google.

A real first look at third party stores on iOS

Finally, an important trend to monitor in the ASO space in 2025 will be the development of third-party app stores on iOS. While 2024 marked the official opening of iOS to third-party stores (in EU territories only), very few third-party app stores ended up being introduced so early, the most famous one being the Epic Games store, which only served as a download platform for Epic Games Studio’s three mobile games (Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League Sideswipe) in 2024.

2025 is expected to see more third-party stores be introduced, with most rumours expecting especially several large gaming companies to make a move in the space. Epic Games announced already in 2024 that it would look to turn its store into a distribution platform open to other game developers only in 2025, promising lower platform fees and competitive developer conditions, while Microsoft was rumored to be working on its own mobile game store, and names of other major game developers also being floated as additional candidates to operate a third party store.

It is doubtful that we will see more than a few digs in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store market shares for mobile game distribution in 2025 (at least not in Western countries where third-party Android stores that are popular in Asia are barely an afterthought), however the EU’s decision to make Apple open iOS to third party stores could still lead to some significant changes by Apple itself. For instance, rumours started emerging soon after the release of iOS 18 that Apple may be working on a new App Store dedicated to games. Whether Apple may be able to release such a store before the end of 2025 is not certain, but the possibility itself is absolutely credible, especially given Apple’s potential for growth in the gaming space considering the technical qualities of Apple hardware (not to mention potential for the Vision Pro headset in particular).

Conclusion

As 2025 starts, I don’t expect this year will lead to the most consequential changes we have seen in ASO since the introduction of custom product pages and in-app events, though it does not mean you should expect no important change whatsoever either. If anything, 2025 has the potential to be a transition year for App Store Optimisation, during which innovative app marketers will adjust to larger trends to revisit their approach and/or position themselves as early adopters of major changes to come.

Until the very fundamentals of ASO are reset, remember that even with somewhat standardized processes, there is no one best way to do ASO, and your efforts should be driven by both the types of outcomes needed for your app to grow and the opportunities to play to its strengths, whether in terms of marketing, product or business strategy.

Happy New Year,

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