App Annie—app analytics and market data platform—released the state of mobile 2019 report. It analyzes how markets evolve through mobile such as statistics on how many downloads happened worldwide, consumer spend and how much time an average user spent on mobile. It’s vital information on mobile due to the increasing investment in it—around 65 percent of digital ad spend was put into it last year.
When it comes to mobile marketing the report found paid ads do lead to an increase downloads, more advertisers are using ad platforms to acquire users and App Store Optimization practices such as description changes evolved in 2018.
The report found App Store Optimization (ASO) made a few changes last year. In 2017, 49 percent of description updates was the most common form of ASO—it was still the most standard method in 2018— but there was a small decline to 46 percent. Icon change was 30 percent of ASO updates and the least common way was a name change at 24 percent. In the U.S. this data is relevant to both games and non-gaming apps.
In addition to these updates, the report found publishers can gain more power through these updates using videos, screenshots, keyword bank and promotional text (both on iOS). Publishers can capitalize on traffic using major events such as Black Friday or even an app launch. In 2018, there was significant growth in the number of ad platforms used in both iOS and Google Play. The report believes it’s “an indication of maturation in the industry.” Games saw a bigger increase than non-gaming apps. In iOS, it grew 25 percent and Google Play saw a 45 percent growth. Apps also saw an increase, iOS used 25 percent more ad platforms and Google Play utilized 20 percent more. According to App Annie, advertisers can boost coverage by using more ad platforms to find the best advertising ROI.
It seems there is a payoff to investing in paid ads to get users to download your app. Last year, around four of every 10 downloads from among the top 100 apps and games were driven by paid ads. In the U.S., total download from paid ads grew 10 percent YoY across both app stores. They also found around 20 percent of top iOS game downloads came from paid user acquisition compared to Google Play.
The state of mobile report predicts 60 percent more apps will monetize through in-app ads, competing for a chunk of the $250 billion digital advertising market. They also forecast consumer spend in mobile gaming will grow to 60 percent market share across all platforms. Furthermore, they believe consumers app store spend will grow about 5 times as fast worldwide in 2019.
