The 5 Hot Topics Set to Dominate Appsforum London

The app industry is going through a period of significant change. AI is reshaping how users discover and interact with products, acquisition is becoming increasingly complex, and app businesses are under greater pressure to turn installs into long-term, profitable relationships.

At Appsforum London we have left no topic uncovered. The conversations will move beyond traditional growth metrics and towards a bigger question: what does sustainable app growth look like now?

From AI and hyper-personalisation to retention and monetization, here are five of the biggest topics set to be discussed at Appsforum London.

1. Is AI changing the future of apps?

AI is arguably the biggest question hanging over the app ecosystem right now.

It is making it easier than ever to build new products, but the agenda raises an important challenge: just because more apps can be built, does that mean more apps will actually be used?

The opening keynote, Jobs to be Done, Supercharged with AI, explores how AI can be used not simply to speed up product development, but to better understand what users actually need. This is followed by Is the App Dead?, which tackles an even bigger question: as AI assistants increasingly book, order, search and complete tasks on behalf of users, will people need to interact with individual apps in the same way?

Later sessions, including The Alignment Advantage: Why Better AI Isn't Enough and App Growth in 2026 and Beyond, continue the conversation around how AI can create genuine value rather than simply adding another layer of technology.

The underlying theme is clear: the winners of the AI era may not be the apps with the most AI, but those that use it to solve real user problems.

2. Personalisation is moving beyond the paywall

Personalisation has been a major focus for app marketers for years, but the conversations at Appsforum suggest that the industry is moving towards a more connected approach.

Mind the Gap: The 4 Levels of Personalizing Your Funnel looks at the gap between personalised acquisition campaigns and generic onboarding and monetization experiences. Instead of optimising the paywall in isolation, the session focuses on creating continuity from the initial ad through onboarding and ultimately to conversion.

That idea is taken even further with The End of Segments: Marketing to an Audience of One, which explores how AI could make truly individual experiences, offers and customer journeys possible at scale.

The message for app marketers is that broad audience segments may no longer be enough. As expectations for relevance increase, the opportunity lies in creating journeys that respond to individual users rather than forcing everyone through the same funnel.

3. Retention is becoming the foundation of growth

For years, app growth has often been measured through installs. But installs alone do not create sustainable businesses.

That shift is reflected in sessions including Past the Install: Cohorts, LTV, and the Path to Profitable Growth, which focuses on looking beyond top-line acquisition numbers and understanding which users and channels actually generate long-term value.

Meanwhile, Day Zero Onboarding: Turning Preinstallation into Activation highlights the importance of the earliest stages of the user journey. If users fail to understand the value of an app in their first interactions, retaining them becomes increasingly difficult.

The agenda also brings the topic together with The Retention-Led Growth Blueprint, exploring how loyalty, engagement and long-term customer value can become central to a sustainable growth strategy.

As acquisition costs continue to put pressure on growth teams, the conversation is shifting from how do we get more users? to how do we keep the right users?

4. Monetization is becoming more experimental

Monetization is another area where the traditional playbook is being challenged.

Appsforum London will explore everything from The Evolution of Monetization Experiments to Alternative Ways to Monetize Your Users, with a particular focus on how app businesses can better understand when, how and what to offer users.

The agenda also features The Future of Subscription Apps Is Human-Centred Architecture, which takes the conversation beyond conversion tactics and towards building products around genuine human needs and behaviour.

This suggests a broader shift in how monetization is being viewed. Rather than treating the paywall as a single conversion moment, app teams are increasingly experimenting with the entire journey around it: when users see offers, how those offers are framed and how monetization fits into the wider product experience.

The future of monetization may be less about finding the perfect paywall and more about creating the right value exchange.

5. App growth needs a new measurement playbook

Attribution and measurement have become increasingly complicated.

As ad platforms automate more of the media-buying process and privacy changes reduce the amount of available user-level data, growth teams are being forced to make important decisions with less certainty.

Paying Smarter: Media Buying, Attribution & The Measurement Stack addresses this directly, covering topics including incrementality testing, budget allocation and what a modern measurement strategy looks like in 2026.

This is closely connected to Past the Install, which looks at using cohort and LTV data to understand which users are genuinely valuable, rather than simply optimising towards the highest volume of installs.

Together, these sessions reflect a major shift in performance marketing: the easiest metrics are not always the most meaningful ones. As measurement becomes more fragmented, the challenge for app businesses will be building a clearer picture of what is actually driving profitable growth.

The bigger conversation: sustainable growth

Across the Appsforum London agenda, one theme connects all five of these conversations.

The app industry's definition of growth is changing.

AI is changing discovery. Personalisation is becoming more individual. Retention is becoming more important than raw acquisition. Monetization is becoming more closely connected to product value. And measurement is moving beyond simple install numbers.

The common thread is a move away from growth at any cost and towards something more sustainable: building products that attract the right users, deliver real value and create relationships that last.

That is likely to be one of the biggest conversations running through Appsforum London and one that will continue long after the event ends.

Join us at Appsforum London this September: Appsforum | Mobile App Growth Event