White Paper on Mobile Advertising Traffic Observation in the First Half of 2021

In the first half of 2021, many new opportunities have emerged in the advertising industry, such as the popularity of Douyin's interest e-commerce, Kuaishou's trust e-commerce, the continued growth of live streaming, Apple's upcoming opening of its ASA business, and interactive advertising gradually entering the public eye. All these also require people involved in advertising to have a longer-term vision, and even learn how to seize opportunities in the trend and achieve counter-cyclical growth.

We deeply interpret the development and changes of the mobile advertising market during the first half of 2021 (01.01-06.30) from three aspects: market size, advertising and download conversion , and jointly with the top traffic platforms: Tencent Advertising and Baidu Information Flow, we hope to gain insight into new trends in advertising through the perspective of the top platforms and help mobile advertising practitioners understand the new direction of online marketing promotion in 2021.

01. Overall traffic volume in the first half of 2021

The number of advertisements is showing a clear upward trend

In the first half of 2021, App Growing monitored a total of 89 million+ advertisements running across the entire network. Among them, advertising in the game, software application, and life service industries is strong, and the proportion of advertising has increased to a certain extent. In the post-epidemic era, offline office work has resumed, and industries such as system services and office management are facing challenges.

In the first half of 2021, App Growing tracked more than 13,000 mobile games under investment, of which more than 20% of the top 50 mobile games were casual and online earning mobile games. The popular mobile game "Emerald Master" during the Spring Festival topped the list of casual mobile game downloads.

02. Analysis of advertising placement in key industries

App Growing focuses on analyzing industries such as games, education and training, novel reading, comprehensive e-commerce, and finance .

Among them, the gaming industry’s buying power for newly launched mobile games is relatively strong. Among the overall education and training advertisements, K12 online education has entered a "cold winter", while the advertising intensity of preschool education apps has increased.

The number of advertisements for novel reading in each month has decreased compared with last year, and the decline in January-March was more obvious. On the other hand, the advertising efforts of e-commerce apps that focus on “low prices and affordable prices” cannot be ignored. Stock and financial management apps in the financial industry are also increasing their advertising.

03. Traffic platform/media placement insights

In the advertising placements of Bytedance and Tencent Advertising Platform , the gaming industry accounts for the largest share. The culture and entertainment, and education and training industries have strong advertising presence on Baidu's information flow, ranking as the top two industry advertisers.

In the first half of 2021, mobile advertising revenue of medium and long video platforms increased, and advertisers began to pay attention to increasing their spending on medium and long video platforms.

04. Analysis of key advertisers’ placements

App Growing analyzed the key apps with a significant increase in advertising in the first half of 2021 and found that "Wifi Companion", "Xianyu", "Bellehu Children's Songs" and "TT Voice" were all concentrated on Bytedance . "Xingfuli", "MiDu Express Edition" and "Kuaishou Express Edition" mainly choose Tencent advertising platform to place advertisements.

05. Industry insights

The following is an interpretation of the changes in the advertising market in the first half of 2021 from the perspective of leading platforms and industry practitioners:

Data from AppGrowing, MobTech, Qimai Data