Moburst’s Monthly Mobile Marketing Roundup #25
Welcome back to the 25th edition of Moburst’s Monthly Mobile Marketing Roundup!
September brought a wave of updates that redefined how brands operate across AI, app stores, and content platforms. From OpenAI’s move into e-commerce to YouTube’s AI-powered creator tools and Apple’s new design framework, this edition breaks down the most significant developments shaping mobile growth for Q4—what changed, why it matters, and the actions brands should take now to become category leaders.
Industry News
ChatGPT Instant Checkout: The E-Commerce Revolution No One Saw Coming
On September 29, OpenAI introduced Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT: a feature that allows users to purchase products directly within the chat experience. Powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (developed with Stripe), it lets businesses integrate their storefronts, process payments, and retain control of customer relationships. The rollout begins with Etsy sellers in the U.S., with Shopify merchants such as Glossier and SKIMS, and additional regions expected soon.
This marks the first time a major AI platform has connected product discovery and purchase in one flow. The shift points to a broader change in how consumers interact with brands: instead of browsing websites or search results, purchasing decisions are starting to happen within AI-driven environments.
The Takeaway: Your products need to be found and trusted within conversational environments—classic SEO is no longer enough. If your product data and brand messaging aren’t optimized for AI-driven platforms, you’re invisible at the moment of purchase.
Moburst’s AEO service ensures your products and content show up whenever and wherever AI recommends—inside chatbots, voice assistants, and answer engines like ChatGPT. We structure your feeds, data, and messaging for maximum discoverability and authority.
Ready to make AI-native commerce work for your brand?
Moburst’s growth experts can help you optimize your visibility and conversions inside ChatGPT, App Stores, and beyond.
OpenAI’s Double Play: Smarter Search and Seamless Teamwork
OpenAI delivered two additional updates that significantly impact digital strategy and enterprise efficiency.
First, they announced improvements to search within ChatGPT, focusing on three core pillars: factuality, shopping, and formatting. ChatGPT search results are now claiming to be more accurate and reliable, with fewer “hallucinations” and a generally improved answer quality. Crucially for marketers, the search function is now better at detecting shopping intent, displaying relevant products when appropriate while keeping other results focused. Answers are also better formatted for quick understanding, balancing detail with quality.
Second, and perhaps more vital for large companies and startups past Series A, is the emphasis on team functionality. OpenAI rolled out project sharing in ChatGPT, allowing teammates in a workspace to share projects, files, and instructions to guide ChatGPT’s responses toward a shared goal.
This is designed to keep ongoing work, such as client management, content creation, and reporting, consistent in tone and context. They also rolled out upgrades to Codex, now calling it a “teammate that understands your context, works alongside you, and reliably takes on work for your team,” which is a huge boost for product development teams.
The Takeaway: These changes mean brands must treat AI-driven platforms as critical conversion channels—not just sources of traffic. It’s no longer enough to be present in search; you need to be optimized for how AI parses, recommends, and delivers your content to real users and real teams.
Moburst specializes in AEO services designed for these environments: we tailor your brand’s content, product data, and collaborative workflows so you stand out as the authoritative answer—no matter where or how AI-driven decisions happen.
YouTube’s Creator Revolution: Professional Production for Everyone
At its “Made on YouTube 2025” event, YouTube introduced a new generative AI toolkit for creators, especially for Shorts: Veo 3 Fast, Edit with AI, Speech to Song, and enhanced controls on the use of creator likeness.
Key features include:
- Veo 3 Fast Integration: Allowing creators to easily generate video backgrounds or short clips with sound, complete with capabilities to apply motion, restyle videos, and add props.
- Edit with AI: A new function designed to transform raw footage into a polished first draft, drastically streamlining the editing process.
- Speech to Song: This fun new tool turns video dialogue into a unique, custom soundtrack for a Short, opening up new creative avenues.
For creators and brands leveraging the platform, these are massive efficiency multipliers. By automating the most time-consuming creative tasks—like background generation, first-draft edits, and soundtracking—YouTube is freeing up creators to focus on the narrative and strategic content.
They’ve also expanded their likeness detection tool for YouTube Partner Program creators, allowing them to manage videos made with AI using their facial likeness.
The Takeaway: To transform your digital presence, your brand needs to treat these new tools as a massive creative budget multiplier. Immediately begin testing the Veo 3 Fast and Edit with AI features to increase your video output volume and velocity.
More polished, strategically targeted content means more opportunities for measurable performance and connecting with highly targeted audiences. Don’t wait for your competitors to master AI video generation, be the first to flood your category with high-quality, AI-assisted Shorts.
Want to scale content production without scaling costs?
Leverage Moburst’s expertise to turn AI-powered tools like YouTube’s new suite into a growth engine for your brand.
App Store Updates
Submissions Are Open: iOS 26 and a New Era of Design
Apple officially opened App Store submissions for the latest OS releases, including iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26. This is arguably Apple’s most comprehensive design update yet, highlighted by the new Liquid Glass aesthetic.
This design philosophy, which blends the optical qualities of glass with a sense of fluidity, is meant to make apps more expressive, delightful, and immediately familiar to users. Beyond the aesthetic, the new OS rollout emphasizes core platform advancements:
- Foundation Models Framework: Developers can tap into the on-device Apple Intelligence model, enabling the creation of intelligent, privacy-protecting, and offline-available experiences.
- Xcode 26: Now integrates large language models to help developers build beautiful, modern apps with speed.
- App Intents & Visual Intelligence: App Intents now supports visual intelligence, allowing apps to provide visual search results within the visual intelligence experience.
The Takeaway: The immediate, non-negotiable step is this: Developers should build their apps and games using the Xcode 26 Release Candidate and the latest SDKs, then test them rigorously with TestFlight before submitting for review.
You need to ensure full compatibility, but more importantly, you should actively integrate the new Liquid Glass design principles and the Foundation Models framework. This is how you future-proof your product, maximize your KPIs, and deliver a superior, intelligent user experience that resonates with Apple’s new design language.
Global Pricing Shift: Mastering the New Tax Realities
Apple recently introduced updates to tax regulations and foreign exchange rates that directly impact your bottom line and demand immediate attention for effective mobile success on the App Store. To ensure uninterrupted scaling and consistent pricing across 175 storefronts, Apple implemented adjustments to prices and developer proceeds in several key markets.
Key Regional Updates:
- Asia Pacific: The Philippines saw a VAT introduction of 12% for developers based outside the country. Vietnam had VAT rate increases and introduction of Personal Income Tax (PIT) for individual developers based outside the country.
- Europe & South America: Estonia and Romania saw VAT rate increases. Brazil’s Imposto sobre Operações Financeiras (IOF) increased to 3.5%. Canada’s proceeds were modified due to the Digital Services Tax (DST) no longer being applicable.
- Price Equalization: Starting September 8, App Store pricing for apps and most In-App Purchases in the Philippines and Vietnam were automatically updated to account for these tax changes, unless you had previously selected one of these as your app’s base storefront. Auto-renewable subscription prices were exempt from this automatic change.
The Takeaway: Log into App Store Connect and immediately audit your apps’ Pricing and Availability section. Verify the new localized prices in affected regions to ensure they align with your revenue goals.
If you rely heavily on auto-renewable subscriptions or manually manage prices, note that their prices were not automatically adjusted. Manually review and adjust your subscription tiers in high-impact markets to maintain your expected proceeds.
Play Store Updates
The Performance Edge: Optimized Resource Shrinking with R8
In a win for app performance, Google announced the introduction of optimized resource shrinking via the R8 app optimizer in version 8.12.0 of the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP).
Resource shrinking isn’t new, but this update is a game-changer because it fully integrates resource shrinking with the existing code optimization pipeline. In the past, the two processes were separate, often resulting in unnecessary code and resources being kept. The new, integrated approach ensures that resources referenced only by unused code are also identified and removed.
This technical update delivers powerful results for mobile success:
- Smaller App Size: Leading to faster downloads and installations.
- Improved Performance: Translating to faster startup times, improved rendering, and fewer Application Not Responding (ANR) errors.
- Significant Gains: Apps that share significant resources across different form factors have seen size improvements of over 50%.
The Actionable Takeaway: This is a clear opportunity for measurable performance improvement. Product and development teams should prioritize enabling the new optimized resource shrinking pipeline in their project’s gradle.properties file before the AGP 9.0.0 update makes it the default behavior. Smaller apps get downloaded more often, install faster, and use less battery—all of which are critical signals for Google Play’s ranking algorithms and, ultimately, key drivers of user retention.
Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2: Developer Verification and Custom Icons
Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2 arrived with a mix of developer-focused tools and user-facing customization that impact how your app is viewed and installed.
For developers, the biggest feature is the inclusion of new APIs to support developer verification during installation. This is part of Android’s new requirement to make app installation safer by preventing the spread of malware and scams. While the verification is primarily a security measure, the new APIs allow developers to simulate success and failure to understand the end-to-end user experience and prepare before enforcement begins. The update also included an enhancement to the Android Runtime (ART) with a new Garbage Collector, aiming for reduced CPU usage and a smoother user experience.
For the user experience, the Beta allows users to select from a list of custom app icon shapes that apply to all app icons and folder previews.
The Takeaway: To maximize your KPIs, every brand must embrace a defense-first strategy in mobile. Your dev team should use the new adb command to test the developer verification flow and ensure your app does not trigger an “unsuccessful verification” alert in the final user experience. A verification failure is an instant conversion killer.
Furthermore, confirm that your adaptive app icon renders flawlessly across all the new custom icon shapes. A broken or poorly-aligned icon creates a friction point that can discourage an install. Your app’s digital presence should always be polished to a “Liquid Glass” standard, regardless of the OS.
Struggling to keep up with platform changes?
Our team helps brands adapt fast to Apple, Google, and AI platform shifts to protect margins and scale growth.
Ready to capitalize on these changes? Contact Moburst to develop a strategy that leverages these new opportunities for your brand’s hypergrowth!
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