Pick up your phone. Before you unlock the screen, there is almost certainly a food delivery offer expiring in two hours, a payment app nudging you to invest, a shopping app reminding you of something you left in your cart three days ago, and an over-the-top (
OTT) platform telling you that a new show has dropped. None of these was requested. All of them were carefully designed to capture attention.
According to DataReportal, a research platform that tracks global digital adoption trends, India had 1.06 billion active cellular mobile connections in late 2025, with internet penetration reaching 70 per cent of the total population. As apps compete for attention on over a billion screens, the push notification has become one of the most widely used tools in the country’s app economy — a free, instant, always-on channel that sits directly on a user’s lock screen.
Mumbai-headquartered customer engagement platform CleverTap analysed over 300 billion push notifications and reported that nearly 30 per cent of consumers delete an app specifically because of excessive advertising and notifications. The same tool companies use to keep users engaged may also be pushing them away. Yet notifications remain a central part of how apps compete for attention.
Why notifications matter
Most apps are free to download, meaning companies must find other ways to make money. Some rely on advertising. Others generate revenue through subscriptions, financial products, shopping transactions, or commissions. Regardless of the business model, one challenge remains constant: users need to keep returning.
A user who downloads an app and never opens it again has little value to a company. A user who returns every day, however, may watch ads, make purchases, subscribe to services, or recommend the platform to others. This is where notifications become valuable.
Unlike advertisements that require companies to pay for visibility, push notifications create a direct communication channel between an app and a user. Once permission is granted, companies can reach consumers instantly and at virtually no additional distribution cost.
An industry report from AppsFlyer describes engagement and retention as among the most important metrics for mobile app businesses, with re-engagement channels such as push notifications playing a central role in bringing users back into apps. For app companies, every notification is essentially an invitation to return.
Economics of retention
The importance of notifications becomes clearer when viewed through the economics of customer acquisition. Acquiring a new user has become increasingly expensive.
Companies spend heavily on digital advertising to persuade users to install their apps. Once those users arrive, businesses must ensure they remain active. If a user stops opening an app after a few weeks, the acquisition investment may never be recovered.
As a result, retention has become almost as important as acquisition itself. For many businesses, it is cheaper to bring back an existing user through a notification than to acquire an entirely new one through advertising campaigns. That economic reality explains why notifications have become embedded in nearly every category of mobile application.
For Indian apps competing in one of the world’s most downloaded-but-discarded markets, this is not an abstract statistic. According to a Ken Research report on India’s app market, approximately 70 per cent of app users in India uninstall an app within 30 days of downloading it, with excessive notifications cited as one of the primary reasons alongside poor user experience and lack of compelling content.
How notifications drive business
The link between a notification and a company’s bottom line is more direct than it might seem. When a user opens an app in response to a push alert, the clock starts. Time spent in-app translates to ad impressions, which translate to revenue.
CleverTap’s cross-channel research, published in 2024, found that push notifications contribute to a 26 per cent uplift in first-transaction rates for fintech apps when combined with in-app messaging.
The same report found a 6 per cent increase in e-commerce conversions when push notifications were part of a broader multi-channel engagement strategy. These are not marginal gains; at the scale of platforms with tens of millions of users, a 6 per cent conversion bump can mean hundreds of crores in additional gross merchandise value.
India’s spending on remarketing, or re-engaging users who have already installed an app, grew 118 per cent year-on-year in 2025, the fastest pace among major global markets, according to AppsFlyer. The surge highlights the growing challenge of retaining users in an increasingly crowded app ecosystem. As competition for attention intensifies, companies are investing more heavily in efforts to bring inactive users back to their platforms.
Engagement drives revenue
Notifications are not merely about keeping users informed. They are designed to influence behaviour. An e-commerce app may alert users about a limited-time sale. A fintech platform may encourage users to complete a payment or investment. A social media company may highlight new interactions to trigger another session.
Each notification aims to create a small action that eventually translates into business value.
The connection is particularly important for advertising-supported platforms. Advertising revenue depends heavily on user engagement. More time spent inside an app often means more advertisements viewed and more monetisation opportunities.
Notifications do more than keep users informed; they are designed to influence behaviour. A shopping app may promote a flash sale, a fintech platform may remind users to complete a payment or investment, while a social media app may highlight likes, comments, or new followers to draw users back. For app companies, every interaction has value. The more frequently users return, the more opportunities there are for purchases, transactions, subscriptions, or ad views. This is especially important for advertising-supported platforms, where higher engagement often translates directly into greater revenue.
This creates a direct relationship between engagement and revenue. The more often users return, the more valuable they become. That is one reason app marketers continue investing heavily in retention and re-engagement strategies.
How different apps use the same tool differently
Not every notification is built the same. The way e-commerce, fintech, and social media apps use push alerts reveals how differently the same tool can be deployed — and how differently users respond.
E-commerce: Creating urgency
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Shopping apps such as Meesho, Flipkart, Myntra, and Nykaa primarily use notifications to drive purchases. Common alerts include flash sales, price drops, abandoned cart reminders, and low-stock warnings.
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The goal is to create a sense of urgency and encourage users to act immediately.
Fintech: Delivering useful information
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Payment and financial apps use notifications for transaction confirmations, UPI payments, EMI reminders, SIP updates, and account activity. Unlike promotional alerts, these notifications provide information users actively want and expect to receive.
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This makes notifications a trusted communication channel for fintech companies.
The challenge for fintech apps arises when trusted transactional channels are used for marketing. Loan offers, insurance promotions, and credit card pitches can dilute the value of notifications that users rely on for important financial updates.
Social media: Driving engagement
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Social platforms use notifications to bring users back into the app. Alerts typically revolve around likes, comments, follows, messages, and friend recommendations.
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The objective is not a transaction but increased time spent on the platform
India’s notification overload
India’s notification overload is closely tied to the scale of its app economy. With more than a billion mobile connections and millions of users spread across shopping, fintech, entertainment, and social media platforms, notifications have become one of the easiest ways for companies to reach consumers directly. As businesses compete for engagement, retention, and transactions, the volume of alerts landing on users’ lock screens continues to grow.
This easy access to users also helps explain why notification volumes remain high. According to a Ken Research report, around 70 per cent of Indian users uninstall an app within 30 days of downloading it. Yet product teams are measured on engagement and app opens, creating a strong incentive to send more notifications even if they risk frustrating users over time.
Too many notifications, too many uninstalls.
Personalisation
CleverTap in its report stated that basic personalisation can increase open rates by 9 per cent, while adding emojis can boost click-through rates by another 9.6 per cent. The findings suggest that relevance, rather than volume alone, plays a key role in how users respond to notifications.
Users generally dislike irrelevant notifications, not notifications themselves. Personalisation aims to make alerts more relevant based on a user’s interests, purchases, and behaviour.
Indian apps are increasingly using AI and customer data to improve notification targeting.
According to CleverTap’s 2024 cross-channel engagement report, brands with higher AI adoption achieved conversion rates up to four times higher than those using basic broadcast methods.
Personalisation remains challenging because users interact with multiple apps, and each platform has only a partial view of their behaviour. Even relevant notifications must compete with dozens of other alerts on an already crowded lock screen.
When notifications are relevant, conversions follow.
Limits of the notification strategy
Attention is finite: Every app is competing for the same limited resource — user attention.
Notification overload reduces effectiveness: As more apps send alerts, individual notifications become easier to ignore.
Users are fighting back: Consumers increasingly mute, filter, or disable notifications they consider unnecessary.
Platforms are adapting: Features such as Apple’s Focus Modes and Android’s notification controls give users greater control over interruptions.
Regulatory scrutiny is growing: Authorities are paying closer attention to dark patterns and manipulative engagement tactics.
Retention is becoming more expensive: Companies are spending more on remarketing and re-engagement to bring inactive users back.
Losing attention has a direct cost: Disengaged users mean lower engagement, fewer transactions, reduced ad revenue, and higher marketing expenses.
The next challenge is relevance: Companies must find ways to stay visible without overwhelming users with excessive notifications.
The next competitive edge
The companies most likely to win the next phase of India’s app economy are not the ones that figure out how to send more notifications. They are the ones who figure out how to send fewer and make each one count. That requires a shift in how success is measured, with greater emphasis on notification quality, including open rates, conversions, and retention impact, rather than the sheer volume of messages sent.
A handful of Indian platforms are already moving in this direction. Better AI tools, richer behavioural data, and growing user sophistication are creating new opportunities for more targeted engagement. This is particularly true among users in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, many of whom are entering the app economy for the first time and are still deciding which platforms they trust. For companies, that creates an opportunity to build a more valuable and less intrusive relationship with users.
For the billion-plus smartphone users in India, the notification wars are not going anywhere. But the terms of engagement are slowly starting to shift. The apps that treat the lock screen as a billboard will keep losing users. The ones that treat it as a conversation may be the ones worth keeping.
