Hi Reader,

I was reading the AppsFlyer 2026 State of Subscriptions report last week(it’s free, there’s no email gate, you can click and read directly).

For fun. On a Sunday. I’m a lot of fun at parties.

One set of numbers has been living in my head rent-free ever since.

In Photo & Video, the top 5 apps’ share of UA spend dropped from 64% to 45% in a single year.

Every other category got more consolidated. This one went the other way.

New entrants took spend share away from incumbents, which in any subscription category happens about as often as a Meta rep picks up their phone.

One way to read this is as a product story. New AI features beat the incumbents. Differentiate your product and you win(I wrote about the product implications of this on LinkedIn).

That’s only a part of the story - in part because, well, ‘differentiate’ is easier said than done.

Al Ries and Jack Trout figured out the full story in the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: another book I also read for fun, because apparently this is who I am now.

Anyway, the dudes said a product’s position doesn’t live in the product. It lives in the mind of a specific person.

Read that again.

The same baking soda is baking ingredient to one person and refrigerator deodorizer to another. Two completely different positions. Same SKU. They called it one of the smartest marketing moves they’d ever seen.

Your (presumably non-baking) product works exactly the same way.

A stressed founder and a freelance designer might use your product every single day. Same app. Completely different job. Completely different fear. Completely different reason they’d never cancel.

Two distinct positions sitting in two distinct minds: and you’re probably only talking to one of them. And if you're making the connection, that’s why your creative fatigues.

Not the hooks. Not the format. Not the voiceover. You wrote one brief, claimed one position, and left the rest of the map completely blank.

Then you ran that one brief through fifty iterations and wondered why everything started looking the same.

Still the same brief. Still the same person. Still the same position. You’re repainting the same wall and calling it a creative refresh.

Creative diversity isn’t (just) a volume play. It’s how you find every position your product can own: one per mind, one per audience, held simultaneously.

You’re not testing creative. You’re prospecting for positions. Which audience is underserved? Which moment, which fear, which job-to-be-done is yours to claim before a competitor gets there first?

Each angle is a genuine claim on a genuine person the incumbents haven’t bothered talking to yet.

Turns out there are a LOT of them.

…and the beauty of post-algorithmic advertising is that you can talk to EVERY single one of them. BUT only if you tailor your messaging to every micro-audience: and make creative diversity a priority.

The question worth asking before the next brief goes out: what does your product mean to the specific person in a micro-audience: and how do we talk to them?

Anyway, all of these musings - and the stats that inspired it came from the AppsFlyer 2026 State of Subscriptions report(it’s free, there is no email gate, you can read directly).

The full thing has the category breakdown, the concentration data by vertical, and a pretty clear picture of where the subscription economy is headed. Well worth 20 minutes of your Saturday.

Or don’t. I’m sure the changing the CTA to a yellow button will work perfectly fine.

Later,

Shamanth