At Newton, we spend a lot of time thinking about what happens before, during, and after the moments marketers traditionally define as “peak.” Sneha Sharma, Associate Director of Marketing, sat down with Rati Mehra, Director at Newton, to unpack the changing festive cycle in India, when demand actually builds, why categories behave differently, and what this means for brands looking to capture intent on the App Store.
Read the full conversation.
Rati Mehra: I think the bigger misconception is treating the festive season as a spending event rather than a demand cycle.
AppsFlyer’s latest India report puts the scale at 2.1 billion installs, 5 billion remarketing conversions and $700 million in UA and remarketing spend across an 11-week window. But what is more interesting for marketers is when that demand materialises. Shopping activity builds ahead of Diwali, while Finance sees stronger momentum later in the cycle.
On iOS, Shopping’s non-organic installs fell 32% during Diwali week from their pre-Diwali peak, while Finance’s remarketing conversions jumped 124% in the week after Diwali. So yes, many brands are still over-concentrating budget and creativity around Diwali week, even though the data shows the highest-intent windows often land before and after it. Quick commerce behaves in the opposite direction. Because demand there is driven by immediate need rather than planned spend, the surge shows up during the festive days themselves - Diwali gifting, mithai, puja essentials, decor, fireworks, diyas, rangoli supplies - rather than before or after them.
For me, that changes the planning question. Instead of planning around just the Diwali week, marketers should be mapping where demand is building across the entire festive cycle and how. Geography, language, purchasing power, category maturity and cultural behaviour can all change what a “festive purchase” means to a user. The real USP is built when the creative strategy is specific enough to reflect those differences, but connected enough to learn, optimise and scale across the season.
Source: Appsflyer
Rati Mehra: The starting point is self-awareness about your customer. Every app has a different relationship with India’s festive demand when users enter the journey, what they search for, what triggers consideration and, ultimately, what makes them convert.
The data increasingly supports this. Shopping app categories can peak before Diwali, while Finance apps can strengthen after it, so the festive calendar alone is not a sufficient planning framework [1]. The more useful view comes from acting on combined granular insights on search behaviour, category and competitor signals, conversion windows and downstream outcomes to identify where intent is actually forming.[2]
As the Sales & Marketing Director of Newton, we’ve witnessed this pattern across our partnered brands such as Fibe, Goibibo and Nykaa. The common thread is to identify which intent stage is most valuable for that app.[2]
That becomes even more important as Apple Ads evolves in 2026 with Maximize Conversions bidding, expanded placements further down the ads in search results ads, and Search Match–driven automation [3] [4] that rewards tightly structured, intent-led campaigns in India. Beyond targeting, creative is having its own moment on the App Store. Brands are no longer boxed in by rigid formats - there's real room now to let the inner Ogilvy loose, whether that's a search results unit or a product page video, and use that creative freedom to actually earn the eyeball, not just occupy it.
Rati Mehra: Great question. Apple Ads 2026 updates are the essential case behind making relevance more actionable on the App Store. From more conversion-led optimization through Maximize Conversions [1] to the addition of 11 new App Store Indian languages [2], marketers now have more ways to match acquisition to the user, the search, and the market.
But with more ways to be relevant, the competitive bar rises too. For an app marketer, that makes knowing your own app inside out just as important: what is the core differentiator, which audience values it, and how clearly is that value coming through? Apple Ads' latest expanded creative capabilities across search results and product pages give marketers more room to express that distinction, but the opportunity is only as strong as the positioning behind it.
The other half is knowing what's happening around you: which keywords competitors are winning, what they're saying on their product pages, and which seasonal moments they're activating and gaining share from. The real test is whether your own distinction is actually coming through in the App Store experience, or getting lost in the noise. That's the gap we set out to solve at Newton with our recent launches of All-New Telescope and Prism, across Apple Ads and ASO.
Source: [1] Best Practices Maximize Conversions | [2] Language Update
Rati Mehra: Some of the most interesting shifts are happening at the edges of established categories.
Beauty is a good example. In India, the online Beauty & Personal Care market grew 2.4x from approximately ₹21,000 crore in 2022 to ₹52,000 crore in 2025, while Beauty & Personal Care GMV on quick commerce grew 22.5x over the same period [1]. It signals how quickly convenience and immediacy are changing where beauty and personal-care purchases happen.
Festive commerce is showing a similar divergence. In India’s 2025 festive e-commerce season, smartphones and appliances contributed 60 - 65% of GMV in the first 11 days, growing 18–20%, while fashion saw only low single-digit growth [2].
And the “when” is earlier and longer than most app marketers assume. AppsFlyer found that non-organic installs rose 22% week-on-week around Navratri, while categories like Gaming, Food & Drink and Shopping continued to show momentum after Diwali.[3]
Source: [2] Redseer | [3] medianews4u [Appsflyer derived data]