The State Of Apps H1 2024
I found this an interesting deep dive into the most important apps and app markets, from downloads to revenue the whole industry has continued to move and shift to the Markets.
Gaming is critically important to app stores while social media and dating gains a lot of attention, this deep look emphasises how usage doesn’t always translate into revenue.
Dating Is Social?
The area that might be of most interest is the social space and revenue.
It is pretty obvious dating is an incredibly powerful market but with Match Group owning the top-grossing apps Hinge & Tinder how small the ecosystem is despite its competition.
Have a look through the gallery of images below (or flip to slides 35+ above) in and see how many apps don’t make money (especially chat apps) and how dating isn’t in the top number of downloads but commands much of the revenue.
It is important to note services such Telegram offers its own bitcoin offering (TON) and have been incredibly successful which might not be tracked. in these states, as has many developing nations have the option to natively transfer money (via WhatsApp’s native service).
Facebook’s dominance on Android is not be overlooked especially with its DAU numbers on image 5 - Meta’s ownership of conversation and shift into Groups and WhatsApp Channels might well be their next revenue play.
Social media, dating and gaming often go hand in hand, however, these show how difficult it can be to monetise or how important advertisers are within these spaces. We are likely to see more investment in H2 and see if social media apps can monetise more effectively.
Lets see how iOS18 launch impacts the space and how it could upend a number of services.
If you enjoyed this article, enjoy the following ↓
Google’s AI Ad Problem
Google’s Issue Is It Put Product Ahead Of Their Audience In A Tasteless Way
You know an ad has caused controversy when the brand turns off comments on their YouTube upload… and then Thursday (1st August) night pulls the ad completely.
Dear Sydney (ad below) is one of those ads that has blown up and not in a good blown up way.
A simple ad suggesting how to use their new Gemini AI product has highlighted several issues with how the general public is reacting to AI and how it will influence parenting in the future.
What Google has failed to see is much fear around AI and its potential impact, especially on parents’ hands on / hands off approach to tech and how many fear lazy parenting and over reliance on tech will impact us all.
Google has forced their AI tech into a sporting event without thinking of the second and third-order effects of the ads.
In some respects, Google has done exactly what an ad is supposed to do, create conversation, on the other hand it has been tone deaf to how people are viewing AI.
Did It Miss The Mark Or Was For The Wrong Ad Audience? Google’s media quote is quite telling: "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it," I feel for Google ad communications manager Alana Beale who had to respond to media requests on an ad that missed the mark. Being in-house and responding to advertising campaign concerns or issues is not an enjoyable place or position to be in.
Gemini Gone Too Far? If Google Gemini had just helped the father tweak the say ‘sorry-not-sorry’ line for breaking Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s record that would have landed much better, unfortunately, this shows this ad might just be for investors and shareholders over consumers.
Keep an eye out for the next series of AI apps and chatbot ads, as the feedback, commentary and kickback will be telling in how AI tools might have to be advertised and targeted moving forward.
>> If you liked this post, read about Google’s AI battle. And how Apple’s approach to AI is likely going to win them the long-term AI battle.
Google’s Next Battle - AI, Gemini & Customer Happiness
Google’s Secret → Habitual Product, Slow AI Timing & Narrative Builds.
In Tuesday’s quarterly earnings call Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said:
“Gemini is making Google's own products better. All 6 of our products with more than 2B monthly users now use Gemini. This means that Google is the company that's truly bringing AI to everyone”.
This was a smart comms line.
This statement was made for shareholders and investors to buy into their AI push and ignore the stories coming out of the internal team cultural battles and reduce the friction around Google’s less flashy approach to AI and right now a slight let-down in terms of features and improvements for paying customers.
What Google is doing well is pushing the narrative that their AI product is the first to be in consumers’ and corporate customer’s lives to send a shot across the bow to Apple (who were the first to embed this from their recent event with their Apple AI partnership approach). Android vs iOS is going to be a long battle especially in the next device to replace smartphones and in AI space, which might blend into one…
Google Wins Are Potentially Google’s Next Big Issue:
What many tend to miss is the incredible results (Alphabet reported $84.7bn in revenue with $24 Billion quarterly profit, from an incredibly strong Search (ads business) and Cloud revenues) Google and competitors can win have arguably declining products: Google’s example is their organic search product (their SERPs are an absolute mess right now) and increasing Google Workspace & Google Cloud pricing for no extra customer benefits, while benefiting from increased ad pricing and ad placements.
Battle 1 Alphabet’s share price dropped Wednesday reacting to the market news and slow adoption in AI, one major concern is failed cloud acquisitions in HubSpot and now Wiz.
But Time Is On Their Side: Google, Apple and Amazon’s secret is almost always timing, especially with AI and not rushing into AI - this is going to win the mass market for them while others rush, crash and burn.
Battle 2 Google’s Ask Fatigue & Friction: Google’s asks from customers will lead to ask fatigue and churn, asks will continue to increase, Google will continue to ask for more budget from advertisers with different targeting (soon to be less opaque) options, more company to upgrade users to Gemini AI and ask consumers to pay for more storage for Gmail use.
If you have ever worked inside of a big company or a listed company you have core workstreams (projects that take company-wide priority) and internal politically driven decisions that to the outside don’t make much sense. If your workstream (say organic search or improving Google Workspace features) doesn’t make the OKR sign off it won’t have any resource assigned or budget for quarters ahead.
Google’s next battle is how to improve their search results (away from optimising the number of ads) while facing competition from answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity and cramming in more ads at increasing prices to keep investors happy.
Here’s a good graphic via Reddit for Alphabet’s results last quarter - take a look at traffic acquisition costs $13.8b — paying for defaults on iPhones and Samsung devices is not cheap.
>> Are you a heavy Google Workspace user? Here are my favourite Google Workspace shortcuts and hacks to improve your productivity
My Top 7 Google Workspace Hacks
Improve Your Productivity In Google Workspace
Many people especially leaders struggle when it comes to working more smartly with tools, they don’t learn the tools, they are never taught them and when it comes to time many just won’t invest a few minutes to save themselves hours.
So I wanted to share my favourite Google Suite/Workspace hacks to make your life easier and more effective in and around the suite.
Quick URL → Get Creating: Writing into the browser to create brand new docs straight away
slides.new - for Google Slides
sheets.new - for Google Sheets
docs.new - for Google Docs
cal.new - for new calendar event
Quicker Actions: Use the search feature in the left-right side to take the action / command you would like to from styling to adding a table in docs, a pivot table in sheets, to adding a diagram in slides
Preview > Edit: Link into a Google Slides rather than send to edit interface - With your Google Slides URL, look at the URL string and replace /edit with /preview and this link sends the viewer into that slideshow directly without the default edit view (shown below)
Mute: Use the Mute feature to slience noisy email chains or where you are CC-ed in for no real reason - tick email, go to the three dots and select mute
Hide Guestlists: Hide guest list (often this can be helpful with management meetings, big meetings and external meetings) - go into your calendar invite, edit event and untick "See guest list."
Better speaker than writer? In Google Docs - Go to ‘Tools’ and then select ‘Voice typing’.
Get Ahead With Your Daily Agenda: Have your daily schedule emailed to you In Google Calendar settings > Other notifications > Daily agenda