Trends of Ad Creatives in App Marketing

In today’s fast-paced world of app marketing, one thing is abundantly clear: ad creative is now more than just a visual asset – it is what drives performance.With mobile usage at an all-time high and app store competition on the rise, marketers can no longer rely on traditional methodologies or generic ad formats. Your success now depends on how well your ad creative can capture attention, tell stories, and compel users to take action, in just a few seconds.

By 2025, ad creative will be the most powerful lever to positively impact anything from click-through rates (CTR) to user retention. The shift is not only happening, it is happening at an accelerated pace. Smart formats, immersive consumer experiences on the platform level, and consumer demands for relevance, clarity, and value from any ad have expedited the shift.

This industry report covers the emerging trends in ad creatives across app marketing, from format performance and behavioural insights to emerging tools like AI-generated production and dynamic creative optimisation, that could impact your marketing campaigns, whether launching a gaming app, scaling a fintech product or managing a portfolio of lifestyle brands to grow in this competitive market.

In the upcoming sections, we will share data, insights, trends and guidance.

Why In-App Ad Creatives Outperform Everything Else?

By 2025, in-app advertising will be indisputably the best-performing environment for mobile campaigns. But what truly makes it the best-performing environment compared to others, especially the mobile web, is not merely where the ad is being seen, but rather it is how the ad creative is constructed, delivered and experienced by the user.

Today, your audience expects to interact seamlessly, non-disruptively and engagingly within the apps they enjoy. This is why in-app advertisement creatives are leading the group, not only in performance, but user preference alike.

The Transition from Mobile Web to In-App Advertising

For many years, the mobile web was the de facto advertising placement for quick, scalable delivery. However, as app ecosystems have matured, and more importantly, user behaviour has shifted in favour of apps vs mobile web, the ability to yield effective mobile web placements has diminished.

On the contrary, apps offer a more immersive environment, and brands have greater control over how their ad creative gets displayed. In-app placements fully leverage native UI, screen inventory personalised data, all of which drive effective performance.

Data-Backed Performance Metrics

The numbers indicate:

• The CTR for in-app ads is 0.56% – 0.23% for mobile web ads.
• In-app conversions are 150% higher on average.
• Time spent with in-app ads has increased by 40% year-over-year.
• Users are 3x more likely to complete an in-app action (purchasing or registration) when served a relevant, engaging ad creative.

These results are not the result of chance, but represent the strength and validity of different ad creatives in the app ecosystem.

Why In-App Creative Drives Higher Retention and Conversions

Retention is one of the most expensive challenges facing app marketers. Users often uninstall in the first 7 days after download if their expectations of the app experience are not aligned. Again, creativity has a big role to play here. 

The right ad creative can help set proper expectations. It builds the app’s core value in an accurate way, visually and emotionally, before the install.

With expectation matching pre-engagement, users who convert via in-app ads often:

• Spend more time in the app during the first session
• Explore deeper features more frequently, organically
• Return more frequently in the first 30 days

Users’ association of their onboarding experience are stronger because they weren’t misled or confused by the creative.

The Role of Native Feel in Ad Engagement

In-app platforms support native ad formats, designed to blend into your app’s flow while feeling like a natural extension of the content. Native-style ad creatives far outperform static banners and interruptive popups.

When users do not feel like they are being marketed to, they are much more open to messaging, and that is the actual strength of effective in-app creatives. 

Furthermore, native ads:

• Reduce user banner blindness
• Increase perceived credibility and authenticity of brands
• Create smoother post-click experiences with decreased drop-offs

The 2025 Revolution: What’s Changing in Ad Creative Formats

Ad formats are changing faster than ever, and if your creative strategy hasn’t kept up, you’re already out of luck. Come 2025, the success of ad creative depends not just on what you say, but how you say it. While user expectations increase and platforms evolve, it’s clear to see that interactive, immersive, and native-first ad formats are becoming the standard.

Let’s take a look at how new ad formats are not only setting new performance benchmarks, but why your ad creative strategy should play into those new formats.

In-App Advertising Is The Priority For Ad Spend

In-app placements account for over 82% of mobile ad spend, indicating that advertisers allocating budgets to in-app options are wagering on the experiences that keep users most engaged. Of course, this pivot is not happening in a vacuum; it is directly correlated to the evolution of ad creatives.

The winning strategies today are designed with:

• Full-screen attentiveness
• Interactive experiences
• Integrated app UI

    That is to say, canned banners and cut-down videos that you use across channels will not yield results. You need to build aan d creative that is specifically created for the format.

Native, Interstitial, and Playable Formats Rise

Here’s how the best formats are transforming what works:

• Native Ads: Native ads appear similar to the host app, and users are seemingly more engaged because they don’t feel disrupted.
• Interstitials: Full-screen interstitials are a highly visible format option. Typically, highly visible ads put constraints on your creative timing, but interstitials generally require good creative timing to avoid being annoying.
• Playable Ads: Allowing users to “try before you download” is among the best-to-market strategies, especially for mobile games and interactive tools.

Recent industry statistics show:

• Native in-app ads account for over 50% of impressions
• Interstitials show 15.7% year-over-year growth
• Playables grow engagement by as much as 47%

 Why are these formats growing? Because they allow ad creatives to be more experiential, contextual and emotional.

Matching Creative to Format for Best Performance

All ad formats are not equally created; therefore, your creative should not be equally created. Each format necessitates a different approach in terms of how your ad creative is designed. When you respect the creative execution of the format, performance improves across all metrics relevant to ad platforms and campaign objectives – click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), lifetime value (LTV) – you will have ad units that work for you rather than against you.

Here is the approach for each:

Native Ads 

Native ads thrive on aesthetics and visual harmony. When users see your ad, your creative should fit well into the app environment. Prioritize cleanliness, limit the amount of text, and keep the call-to-action clear but soft. Native ads are ideal for being subordinate to the user experience, and you want it to feel that way, not an interruption.

Interstitial Ads

Since you have maximum real estate with interstitials, you must capture attention right away and do so visually, and follow it up with an excellent call-to-action front and centre. Your creative is creating value for the user, and it should do that immediately – interstitials are high-risk, high-reward, so your execution matters. Avoid jamming too much into one screen, and be clear.

Playable Ads

Playable Ads are entirely reliant on interaction. Your ad creative should feel like a mini demo of your product – the latter especially applies to games, tools, and utilities. The length should be short enough to keep the user engaged, and a feeling of achievement is key. It can offer a sense of entitlement and validation, even if they don’t install.

Always respect the unique behavior of each format and design accordingly.

By aligning your advertising creative design to the strengths of each format, you are exponentially improving:

• CTR (click-through-rate)
• CVR (conversion rate)
• LTV (lifetime value)

Creative mismatches, like a long-form video in a short interactive space, lead to multiple problems, including ad fatigue, lack of retention, and squandered budget.

Adapting for platform specifications alone is not enough; you have to adjust for how users engage with the format. The same message could need 3 different creative executions depending on where it is seen.

How to Craft High-Performance Ad Creatives in 2025?

Creating an ad creative that works in our crowded mobile world is both a science and an art. It is not enough to just show a product – it all starts with getting attention, keeping it long enough to provide something of value and then ensuring the next action requires no effort on the user’s part.

In 2025, as we jockey for attention, there will be some advertising creatives that will work – but not necessarily be the loudest or flashiest – they will immediately connect with the need or desire of the user. And these creatives will be designed with intent.

Here is the best way to create high-performance ad creatives that deliver real results.

5 Key Ingredients of High-Converting Ad Creatives

The winning ad creative recipe for success in 2025 includes five essential ingredients:

The Hook

You have about 2 seconds to capture attention. Start with something visual, a dynamic moment, a bold headline or an intriguing image.

Clarity

Users scroll fast. Your messaging should be straightforward, simple, direct and a single value proposition.

Visual Relevance

The imagery or video should match the app experience. If it does not, it could lead to bad quality installs and poor uninstall rates.

Strong CTA

A great call to action (i.e., “Try Now”, “Play Free”, “Book in 2 Taps”) that also matched the user’s journey is important.

Contextual Fit

Provide good design.

Visual Storytelling for Mobile

Mobile users are multitasking constantly and are also distracted as attention spans have shrunk. That’s the importance of visual storytelling. 

Use a narrative structure, even for short-form ads. A story could be thought of as: 

• Start: Hook them (a visual “hook” or bold statement)
• Middle: Show them the primary benefit (the “aha” moment)
• End: Give the user instructions to act (your CTA)

Storytelling doesn’t mean you need a complex plot, it just means you need structure in your creative so you are getting value through progression. Mobile is about being fast, visual, and impactful.

Importance of Personalization and Context

In 2025, personalization is more than just a name drop or a gender-targeted insight. Performance-based creative is based on context. 

Examples of contextual creative include: 

• Ads that change behaviour based on time of day (e.g. sleep aid apps at night) 
• Emphasizing features as per seasons (e.g. fitness apps in January) 
• Changing visuals for iOS vs. Android UI 
• Even small changes to the tone or design per context can greatly increase relevance and result in higher performance. 

Using CTAs and Testing with A/B Testing 

A strong call-to-action is a necessity. Equally important is understanding what the best CTA is for your audience and purpose.

Here are some CTA insights based on current mobile trends: 

• “Play Now” has a high usage rate in entertainment or gaming 
• “Try Free” improved conversion on subscription apps 
• “Book in 2 Taps” had high performance in utility/travel apps

Experiment using A/B testing to test:

• Button size, colour and placement.
• Headline copy.
• Creative length or sequencing.
• CTA wording.

Sometimes, just small changes can have substantial lifts in CTR and CVR. Regular testing makes guesswork a thing of the past and replicable success a reality.

Creative Strategy That Converts: Native, Playable, and Interactive

In 2025, attention is no longer gained through quantity; it is gained via experience. The most successful ad creatives today are not advertisements; they are experiences. Native, playable and interactive formats are paving the path towards more user-first advertising that converts.

These formats not only show your product, but they also pull the user into your product. That’s exactly why these formats outperform their less interactive counterparts.

What makes playable ads work?

Playable ads are not just game advertising anymore, and while they are still a mainstay for game advertising, they have begun to reach apps in finance, health, education, lifestyle, and other categories.

Here are some reasons that they work: 

• They provide raw delight – users get a short sample of the experience. 
• They pre-qualify the user – only users who enjoy the sample will continue to install. 
• They expand time-in-ad – some users interact with playable ads for 30 seconds or longer. 
• That doesn’t happen with traditional mobile ads.
• A high-performing playable ad creative has: 
• A straightforward and intuitive interaction (no instructions required) 
• Visuals that represent a typical in-app experience 
• A short, satisfying goal (i.e. winning a level or solving a problem) 

Playable creatives greatly reduce post-install churn because the user would already have a sense of what to expect

Integrating Native Ads Seamlessly

By blending in with the app experience, native ads come off as less like ads and more like a part of the experience.

Users are more inclined to engage with an ad creative that feels like it’s meant to be used with the app. Native ads help this happen by:

1. Matching the app design and tone

2. Using familiar interaction patterns

3. Allowing for a seamless transition from impression to action.

But just because ads are native doesn’t mean they can be generic. Your creativity must be strategic as well. Here are a few best practices for native creatives:

1. Aim for short copy with simple visuals

2. Use direct value propositions, not clever headlines

3. Design for placement and platform, not audience

Well-executed native ads can deliver 150% more engagement than standard banners.

Using Interactive Elements to Boost Engagement

Beyond native and playables, interactivity in ad creative is becoming the norm. Even in static or video formats, the addition of tappable, swipeable, or scrollable elements enhances user engagement considerably. 

Interactive creatives : 

• Encourages exploration (users swipe through features, colours or demos) 
• Provides options (eg “Choose Your Plan” or “Pick Your Style” formats) 
• Personalises the message based on the user’s selections 

Why is this important? 

When users engage with an ad, they share their attention, and attention has value in the mobile economy. 

Interactive ads work great for : 

• E-commerce apps (eg product galleries) 
• Subscription services (eg preference builders) 
• Travel and lifestyle (eg itineraries, quizzes) 

The best thing? These experiences amplify brand recall, regardless of whether users convert immediately. You have drawn attention and created a memory.

Behavioral Psychology Behind Winning Ad Creatives

Excellent design and clever formats will get you attention, but the ad creatives that convert consistently tap into something deeper: human behavior. In 2025, high-performing campaigns will be built with a more developed understanding of psychological triggers related to decision-making.

Let’s dig into some fundamental psychological principles that you can adopt in your ad creative strategy to help increase both engagement and conversions.

Emotional and Psychological Triggers in Ad Design

Emotions have a strong influence on how users engage with advertising. Whether it is curiosity, excitement, or even fear of missing out, your ad creative needs to be designed to elicit a response, not deliver information. 

Key emotional triggers that convert:

Urgency – Limited-time offers, countdowns, or words like “Only Today” will compel immediate action. 

Curiosity – Tease a benefit without telling everything up front to inspire taps. 

Excitement – Colorful visuals, lively motion, or gamification inspire positive energy. 

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) – Remind the user what they are about to lose or miss if they do not act. 

When you inspire emotion instead of relying only on logic, your creatives will be impactful and motivating.

The Power of Trust and Social Proof

Trust is the most valuable asset you can have in the noisy digital space that users inhabit. Users are sceptical, lazy, and flooded with choices. This is why ad creatives that utilize social proof are drastically more effective than those that do not.

Some types of social proof to include:

• User Testimonials or Reviews in the creative
• Star ratings or verified download badges
• Brand mentions or Users (Ex, Trusted by 2M+ users)
• Screenshots or quotes from Influencers or media outlets

Adding them to your ads will lower friction and give them some peace of mind when evaluating your app, especially new or niche apps.

Gamification, Rewards, and Habit Loops

Gamification will make your ad creative feel like an experience rather than just another commercial. But it’s not just fun, it’s a way to build habits. Here are some psychology-based mechanisms that positively drive retention and engagement:

• Immediate rewards: The ability to offer something to users immediately after watching the ad (i.e., bonus level, credits, unlock features) will help increase your ad completion rates.

• Progress bars or visual goals:  Seeing completion (how far you’ve gotten) makes people more likely to reach the end milestone.

• Conceptual hooks: These are subtle “loops” that tease “what’s next” and appeal to “what else can I do”, and will help drive engagement.

These mechanisms cause dopamine responses and will help make your brand more memorable and likely to be returned to.

Emerging Trends in Ad Creative Development

As mobile ecosystems evolve and user expectations rise, ad creative development is transforming. The old methods of static production and guess-based design are being replaced by dynamic, automated, and highly personalised approaches.

In 2025, if you want to stay competitive, your creative process must integrate technology, agility, and privacy-conscious thinking. Here are the most important trends reshaping how ad creatives are being built and scaled.

How Generative AI Is Changing Creative Production

Generative AI has transformed from a “nice to have” into a “need to have.” 

All the top teams are leveraging AI to:

• Create many creative variations in minutes
• Custom message and multimedia for different groups automatically
• Write local ad copy in a bigger way

This empowers marketing teams to iterate faster, and personalise deeper, and be able to innovate faster, without using up all their creative resources. 

So, instead of having to write three new video ads to test, AI tools are doing the work of writing 50 new video ads by altering voiceovers, background, calls to action, value propositions, etc. All while the main message is consistent. 

If you are not bringing AI into your advertising creative pipeline, you are lacking both speed and scale.

The Rise of Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

Dynamic Creative Optimization allows for real-time personalization of ads, using audience signals like device, location, language, or behavior. 

Some key benefits include:

• More relevant ads → better performance
• Media spend efficiency
• A/B testing at scale with fewer manual resources

DCO works with AI tools, which make it possible to ensure that the right ad creative reaches the right user at the right time, without having to build out creative assets for each ad opportunity.

Augmented Reality and Shoppable Creatives

AR- and shoppable ad creatives, enabled by mobile hardware improvements, are becoming increasingly dominant. Users can now engage with virtual try-ons, preview furniture purchases in their living room, or visualise a potential outcome, all within the ad unit. Shoppable ad creatives are accelerating the buyer journey by enabling the purchasing within the ad experience. If your product is visual, tactile, or experience-based, these ad formats are set up to work in your favour in 2025. 

Privacy-First Design Principles for Creative Assets

With tighter data regulations and a heightened sense of user awareness, creatives must begin to be built with privacy-first logic:

Don’t combine personal and audience-specific data: do so when it makes sense for your brand

• Focus on contextual relevance for your brand
• Communicate the fact that data is being used when necessary

A well-designed ad creative provides a good balance of performance, while being respectful of the user’s privacy boundaries, and leads to lasting trust and brand equity.

How to Build Your 2025 Ad Creative Strategy?

You’ve studied the trends, studied the formats, and studied the behavioral insights – now it’s time to construct a real-world ad creative strategy to prepare for 2025. Not only is having a good ad creative strategy about great ideas, but it is also about structure, testing, and linking every single creative decision back to the campaign’s goals. Here is how to help you do that.

Linking Creative to Campaign Goals

You will want to begin by understanding the primary objective of each campaign:

• Want installs? The ad creative should demonstrate instant value and urgency.
• Need engagement? The ad creative should highlight the experience in the app and the key features.
• Targeting conversions? The ad creative should leverage social proof and remove friction.
• Every creative asset should have one key message which ties back to the goal. Confusing messages kill performance.

Don’t forget to ask yourself:

“What action do I want the user to take – and does this creative support that action within 5 seconds?”

Budgeting and Resource Planning by Format

Not every format has to have the same level of effort or spend. Divide your creative budget by specific formats:

• High-production value playables or video ads typically require more expenditure before launch but have a greater longevity and ROI on the back end.
• Native static creatives can be quickly produced and iterated; so, they work well for testing or retargeting. 
• Dynamic creatives (DCO) require large asset libraries and a strategic data pipeline.
• Plan on committing 20–30% or more of your media budget to consistently test and optimise creatives in 2025. That is where most of your performance lift will come from this year.

Segmenting Creative based on Android vs iOS

Your ad creative should be slightly modified per platform, regardless of whether the message is the same. 

Why?

User behavior is different. iOS users often have a higher LTV, but Android users may respond better to utility-based CTAs. 

Examples of different Store experiences: App Store vs. Play Store landing pages, visual previews, CTA buttons, etc. 

Differences in device UI/UX may affect how a user relates to and interprets the creative design elements. 

Use platform-specific visual treatments, tone, or app interface layout and elements to create a seamless post-click experience.

Setting Up Testing, Measurement, and Scaling Systems

Even the best creatives are only as good as what you can learn from them. Develop a systematized process: 

• A/B consistently – headlines, visuals, CTA, length 
• Weekly analysis on performance by format, audience, and message 
• Retire creatives and refresh, as it shows signs of fatigue 
• Scale winning creatives across formats and placements 

Establish clear KPIs for each ad creative (CTR, CVR, ROAS, retention) and measure success based on outcome, not just impressions/views.

How to Measure Ad Creative Performance in 2025?

Developing a compelling ad creative is just the first half of the challenge — measuring the results is what turns it from a shot-in-the-dark guess into a growth marketing strategy.

By 2025, success will not be defined by vague impressions or “vanity” metrics. Instead, the best-performing mobile marketers will be tracking the real business outcomes of installs, retention, engagement, and returns on ad spend (ROAS), and tying each outcome to the creative that drove it.

It’s time to set up your measurement process so that what you’re doing creatively is based on actual insight rather than instinct.

The Core Metrics to Measure for Ad Creatives

When measuring the success of your ad creative, these are the KPIs that matter most:

1. CTR (Click Through Rate): The first piece of information to measure is how successfully the creative captured the user’s attention. A low CTR generally means you are either not messaging correctly or you had little visual impact.

2. CVR (Conversion Rate): This metric will guide you on how many clicks turn into installs, sign-ups, or purchases. A high CTR with a low CVR is indicative of a mismatch in the creative, and that the image or video did not match the messaging.

3. Install to Action Rate: This metric helps look at the number of users who take an action in the app after they install your app. This is useful for assessing how well the creative sets expectations for the user.

4. Retention Rates (Day 1, Day 7, Day 30): This metric shows you if users you acquired from a creative stick around and if the messaging actually brought the right users to the app.

Diagnosing Creative Success (or Failure)

For instance, if one of your video ads has a solid CTR, but users uninstalled right away, what do we learn?

Possible explanation: The ad creative is overpromising or misaligned with the app.

Or let’s say a static native ad has a low CTR, but a high install-to-action rate?

In these instances, the message might not grab initial interest, but it resonates strongly with users who do engage. This is a signal to iterate, not to throw away.

By mapping the performance of your creative to user behaviour once they have clicked on it, you can understand not just what is working, but why.

Creative Testing Frameworks for 2025

To remain nimble and data-driven, you will want to execute your creative testing in a structured way:

1. Control vs Variant Testing: Change one thing at a time—headline, CTA, or background—to understand what one thing is improving results.

2. Multi-Format Testing: Test the same message across native, playable, and interstitial formats to understand how any format distils your value.

3. Estimated Audience Segments: Compare performance on age, platform, location, and behavioral audiences to determine your best creative-audience matchups.

Track all your results and create an indexed resource directory of your creative performance library, thus turning historical data into future understanding.

Conclusion: Creative is the Growth Engine in 2025

In 2025, the mobile marketing landscape will be more competitive and personalised, and performance-driven than ever. And at the heart of all this evolution is one irrefutable realisation: your ad creative is your biggest lever of growth. 

Throughout this report, we discussed how in-app environments outperform other ad channels and why ad creatives specifically designed for in-app experiences yield more engagement, retention, and ROI. In-app ads are not only more engaging but also more effective because they are built to utilise platform behaviours and look and feel natively.

We also talked about how ad formats have changed. Native, playable, and interactive formats are supreme in performance benchmarks and your creative needs to take into account the unique qualities of each format. One-size-fits-all is dead.

From high-performing assets to leveraging behavioral psychology, we discussed how being creative depends on more than simply visuals; it depends on emotional connection, trust, and context. Strong hooks, relevant visuals, and timely CTAs can significantly impact user decision-making.

We also discussed how ad creative is produced in 2025: AI-driven templates, dynamic creative optimisation, and privacy-first are all table stakes. Creativity must be coupled with agility and compliance.

In summary, we discussed the creation of a complete ad creative strategy and covered segmentation by platform, budgeting, and testing methods. And since performance is only as good as your measurement, we summarized the key performance indicators and diagnostic tools you will want to track and optimize your creative.

from Apptrove https://apptrove.com/trends-of-ad-creatives-in-app-marketing/
via Apptrove