Here is AppGrowing's analysis of the global mobile App advertising markets in September 2023, based on advertising data from 25 global media platforms in 50 countries/regions.
01 Advertising Trends
The ad volume and app volume peaked in late September, with Week 4 and Week 5 ad volume approaching 1.80M+ and app volume exceeding 15K. Creative volume showed a growing trend, except for Week 1, the rest of the weekly data are more than 600K.
The highest single-day ad volume and app volume occurred on September 22, with the former exceeding 1.02M and the latter at 16,099, a significant increase compared to August.
By region, the Top 3 in terms of ad volume are North America, Southeast Asia and Latin America, accounting for 34.6%, 25.8% and 24% respectively. In addition, the Middle East and Western Europe accounted for more than 20% of the ad volume.
On the TOP10 region list, the USA remained at the top, with 21.3% of ads, a drop of 18.2 percentage points compared to August. Canada and the UK followed with 13% and 12.5% respectively. Compared to August, app developers directed more ads to T1 markets such as Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea in September.
In terms of categories, Shop replaced Tools as the top category in September with 15.4% of ad volume. Tools and News followed with 13.6% and 9.6% respectively. The most share of app volume continued to be in the Shop category, with 12.4%, followed by Finance and Tools, both with more than 10%.
In terms of average ad volume for a single app, News remained No. 1, with a 69.7% surge MoM. Books & Reference, Photo & Video, Tools, and Social followed, with rankings unchanged from August.
Looking at media. According to AppGrowing, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Meta Audience Network are the TOP 4, with over 70% of ad volume, with Facebook at 81.3%. Specifically on Facebook's categories, Shop, Tools, News, Books & Reference are the main categories.
In terms of the main sources of app developers, China‘s mainland continued to account for the largest share of ad volume in September, while the Top 1 in terms of app volume was the USA. It is worth noting that Indian developers ranked No.3 in terms of ad volume and app volume share, with significant growth.
The Top App developers list is topped by Paticle Media, SHEIN, and ByteDance. Newcomer Lara Pollar, with a focus on Tools, has seen impressive growth in ad volume in September.
02 Most Advertised Apps
In the most advertised apps for Google Play, Shop apps are the most listed with four. News app NewsBreak held on to No.1 and SHEIN returned to No.2. Two Navigation Apps hit the Top 15.
On the App Store, the most charted category continued to be Books & Reference, with 4 titles, down from August, and NEW READING's GoodNovel jumped to No. 3. News, Shop, and Entertainment were also the most listed categories.
AppGrowing selected 4 key categories for specific rankings: Shop, News, Tools, and Photo & Video.
In the Shop category, SHEIN is the most heavily advertised App on both Google Play and the App Store, with TEMU following closely behind. In the News category, NewsBreak is undoubtedly the Top 1, and both versions of Digital Trends Video are in the Top 5.
In the Tools category, Calculator Vault took No.1. In the Photo & Video list, PhotoRoom AI Photo Editor hit the Top 3 in both stores. TikTok Lite came in at No. 8, indicating that ByteDance promoted the lighter version heavily.
03 Case Analysis
Uber Eats: Food Delivery is a takeaway App launched by Uber, its main advertising regions in September are the USA, the UK, Taiwan of China, Australia and Spain, and the creative type is mainly images, accounting for more than 90% of the total.
Creatively, Uber Eats: Food Delivery mainly aims to highlight the platform's strengths, and is packaged richly with the use of live action and cartoon animation.
For example, the cartoon animation shows the App mascot, expressing the fast and safe delivery of meals, and the cute image increases the interest.
Live action takes up a large portion of the video creatives, mostly exporting content through sitcoms, such as the following one. It shows a son proposing to his mother to order takeout and opening the app to show the abundance of stores and meals, expressing the app's features and benefits.
Creatively, Doping Hafıza also conveys the platform's values through live action and UE animation. Take this video, for example, the MG animation introduces the core features and advantages of the App, which is concise and interesting, and imparts a professional and authoritative impression to the users at the same time.
In the live-action videos, apart from the usual introductions and sitcoms, Doping Hafıza made some other attempts to enrich the content dimension. For instance, the live-action video showing a user using the app to assist in learning. The first perspective enhances the sense of immersion, and combined with the text above the screen to supplement the product features and selling points.
