Dive Brief:
- AppsFlyer tracked 2.5 billion app installs from October 2015 to January 2016, and found that Facebook was the top marketing option for app developers.
- Facebook led app installs across metrics including geographic region, app user retention, and gaming versus non-gaming apps.
- Venture Beat pointed out that the AppsFlyer report illustrates Facebook’s success in shifting its focus from the desktop to mobile. Mobile accounts for 80% of the social network's advertising revenue per its latest earnings report, up from 69% year-over-year.
Dive Insight:
"Facebook is the undisputed leader in mobile advertising," the AppsFlyer report declared. "A consistent placing in the global top five media sources for retention, coupled with its unrivaled scale, place the social giant number one in the power rankings for every category and region among platforms included in the study."
App marketing is grabbing a lot of ad dollars. EMarketer research has found mobile app install ads were expected to reach $3 billion last year, accounting for more than 10% of mobile ad budgets with an 80% year-over-year increase in spending.
Last year, Chris Cunningham, global head of mobile and brand partnerships at apps data and analytics company IronSource, told Digiday, "The app-install ecosystem is actually what’s responsible for growing that space for Facebook, Google and every other company. What’s driving mobile budgets is not brands like Coca-Cola but gaming companies and lifestyle apps."
And Nancy Hua, CEO of mobile A/B testing service Apptimize, told Marketing Dive, "This is a quickly growing and developing industry."
That being said, marketers still have room to improve in terms of getting the most out of the apps they develop. Teaming up with Facebook could help them find success across the categories AppsFlyer's report revealed have already been strong.
