ATT opt-in is 39%. Adjust's retention report and the paid-to-organic ratio nobody budgets for

Adjust's retention report: what moved and what didn't

Adjust published a report on 10 March, "Gaming App Sessions Rose in 2025 as Retention Becomes a Core Growth Strategy," built from its own platform data. Two numbers stand out. First, session activity: strategy game sessions rose 57% year on year, casual sessions 37%, hyper-casual 31%. Second, and more consequential for budgeting: the global paid-to-organic install ratio rose 61%, meaning a materially larger share of installs across Adjust's dataset are now coming from paid acquisition rather than organic discovery.

The ATT figure sits between these two and explains part of why. Adjust puts iOS App Tracking Transparency opt-in at 39% in the first quarter of 2026, against 38% a year earlier. That is a one-point move, not a shift, and after four years of ATT it should not surprise anyone. What it confirms is that the opt-in rate has stabilised rather than continued eroding, which for a UA team means the addressable, trackable slice of iOS install volume is not shrinking further, but it is not recovering either.

The ratio nobody puts in a forecast

The paid-to-organic ratio is the number worth sitting with. A market where organic discovery is shrinking relative to paid is a market where every studio's baseline cost per user rises even if CPMs hold flat, because fewer installs arrive free. Most UA forecasting models still treat organic as a roughly stable multiplier on paid spend, often built years ago and never revisited. If Adjust's dataset is representative, that multiplier has been drifting down, and a forecast built on last year's organic assumption will systematically undercount the paid budget required to hit the same total install number this year.

This matters more for strategy titles than for hyper-casual, and the session data explains why. Strategy sessions rose fastest, which fits a market compounding around a smaller number of retained, high-session players rather than a constant refresh of new organic arrivals. Hyper-casual, growing sessions more slowly, sits closer to its historical organic-heavy pattern, though likely still feeling the same directional pressure.

What to check in your own numbers

Before adjusting a budget off a vendor's aggregate report, pull your own paid-to-organic ratio for the trailing twelve months and compare the trend line, not the absolute level, since Adjust's book of business skews toward its own customer mix. If your organic share is falling faster than 61% would suggest, your forecast needs the correction sooner. If it has held flat, the aggregate number may be driven by a handful of large advertisers pulling the average, and your own budget conversation should say so explicitly rather than borrowing an industry figure that does not describe your game.

Either way, the flat ATT rate is the more actionable line for iOS measurement specifically: with opt-in stable at roughly two in five users, postback and modelled conversion strategies built around that ratio are now a known, budgetable constant rather than a moving target, at least for one more quarter.

That stability is worth using while it lasts. A UA team that has spent the past year treating iOS opt-in as an unpredictable variable now has a reasonable case for locking down its SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit conversion value schemas and modelled-conversion assumptions for a full quarter without expecting them to be overtaken by a sudden swing in the opt-in rate. The organic-to-paid shift is the number that deserves the unstable-variable treatment instead, and it is the one most measurement stacks are currently not built to flag on their own, since it requires comparing a ratio over time rather than reading a single dashboard figure.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• Q1 2025 Operating Brief: Mobile UA Industry Trends So Far
• The organic baseline you are not tracking