In the App Store, personalization is no longer a 'nice-to-have' feature; it's the price of admission. The long-standing strategy of a one-size-fits-all storefront is now a direct path to obscurity, meaning apps hoping to be discovered have to reframe what it means to be seen.

Lauren Park, Global Head of ASO at M&C Saatchi Performance, is shaping the strategies that determine which apps win. She built the agency's global optimization practice and has a frontline view of how personalization is becoming top of mind for ASO.

"Apple's recent WWDC announcement is a game changer for the ASO space," Park says. "We can now target organic keywords with Custom Product Pages. It’s probably the biggest change since custom product pages were launched four or five years ago, and it marks a fundamental shift in strategy."

A personal touch: That strategic shift catapults ASO from a static checklist into an intent-driven discipline. It's no longer about a single, generic storefront. Putting things into perspective from her own work, Park explains, "For a client like Headspace, this means we can build dedicated pages for users searching for ‘sleep,’ ‘focus,’ or ‘meditation'." As customers get used to hyper-specific content, there could be unintended consequences for brands that don't keep up. "If brands don't start tapping into this, consumers will be disappointed when their search doesn't line up with the page they land on," Park notes.

AI as gatekeeper: AI is emerging as a powerful and unavoidable gatekeeper of brand reputation. Park points to Apple's new AI-powered review summaries as a prime example. "App ratings were always something brands felt they couldn't directly influence, but now that sentiment is being surfaced so prominently, it’s a factor in a user’s decision to convert," she states. The only way to control the narrative is to influence the source material—the reviews themselves.