Mobile App Purchase Trends & Industry Analysis in the First Half of 2020

Recently, Reyun Data released the "White Paper on Mobile App Purchase Volume in the First Half of 2020", which provides an in-depth analysis of the mobile app purchase volume trends and various growth industries during the epidemic in the first half of 2020. This article is an excerpt from the white paper.

1. Overview of the mobile app market during the epidemic

At the beginning of 2020, affected by the new coronavirus epidemic, various industries underwent tremendous transformation and change. According to monitoring data, the top three mobile app types with the largest declines in creative advertising in Q1 are all related to the degree of association with offline entities. It can be seen that based on the mobile App delivery side, the damage caused by this epidemic to the real economy is more obvious.

Judging from the user behavior of mobile apps, the time spent online by netizens has increased significantly during the "stay-at-home economy" period. As of March 2020, the average weekly online time of Chinese netizens was 30.8 hours, an increase of 2.9 hours from June 2019. This will bring new opportunities for accelerating the development of the home economy industry.

According to the monitoring of the domestic mobile app buying volume market, the number of domestic buying volume apps has maintained a steady growth trend since the beginning of this year. Especially in the post-epidemic stage, various industries are gradually entering a recovery period, and industry competition for buying volume will be further escalated, with more emphasis on adjustments in marketing methods, cost control, operational strategies, technological innovation, etc., to maximize the ability of companies to resist the epidemic and quickly realize cash.

During the epidemic, the pan-entertainment industry entered a period of counter-cyclical growth.

Data shows that the user growth rate of the pan-entertainment live streaming industry increased during the epidemic. On the one hand, as users are isolated at home, their demand for pan-entertainment products such as short videos and mobile games increases, and their stickiness strengthens; on the other hand, the two-way deep penetration of pan-entertainment platforms and live broadcast platforms has further improved the user retention rate of pan-entertainment apps.

However, judging from the overall data, the scale of pan-entertainment live broadcast users has fluctuated slightly, basically maintaining at the level of 160 million. The market is about to enter the inventory stage and competition will become more intense.

Due to the fierce competition among pan-entertainment apps for users' usage time during the epidemic, there is also a tense competition for buying traffic among pan-entertainment apps.

According to monitoring, as of the first half of this year, the number of pan-entertainment apps purchased was close to 5,000, accounting for 71% of the total mobile app purchases in the first half of 2020. However, judging from the proportion of sub-types of pan-entertainment apps, mobile game purchases still account for the majority of pan-entertainment apps , but their proportion has decreased compared to last year.

It can be seen that based on the large amount of online time contributed by the "stay-at-home traffic" caused by the epidemic, pan-entertainment apps other than mobile games are also increasing their investment in buying traffic and acquiring customers.

According to the trend of the proportion of creative groups among various types of pan-entertainment apps in the past six months, the combined proportion of mobile games and social apps (including short videos) has basically reached about 90%.

In contrast, social apps still relied on the "traffic entrance" of super apps in this category and the "prevalence of live streaming", and saw a concentrated outbreak of buying traffic from the outbreak of the epidemic to the resumption of work (January to April). During May and June when the epidemic prevention and control gradually stabilized, the proportion of mobile game launches increased.

It can be seen that as the epidemic prevention and control situation becomes increasingly stable and people gradually return to work, the proportion of mobile game investment has begun to increase steadily. During the first golden week after the outbreak of the epidemic, the mobile game purchasing market ushered in a new growth inflection point.

2. The supply of mobile game purchase volume market is generally declining

“Light + Social” Mobile Games Have Become Popular

From the supply side, given the severe situation of the epidemic, the new growth rate of the mobile game purchasing market in the first half of 2020 was generally lower than the same period last year.

Judging from the data, in the first half of 2019, due to the industry's cold winter and factors such as game licenses, the new addition rate was only 20%; on the other hand, the average new purchase rate in the first half of this year has further decreased.

The reasons for this phenomenon, in addition to the epidemic itself, are due to the continued high pressure of Apple's AppStore and Pangolin on the "version number policy" on the one hand; on the other hand, with the entry of major manufacturers and the increasing dominance of mainstream distribution platforms, the cost of buying volume for mobile game releases has also begun to rise steadily.

From the perspective of the effect of buying volume, the activation rate of mobile game buying volume in the first half of the year ended the downward trend after last summer vacation due to the strong traffic dividend. However, given that most mobile game manufacturers over-exploited the game operations in Q1, this has to some extent squeezed the space for incremental activation and payment data among mobile game players in April.

Afterwards, thanks to marketing events on holidays such as "Labor Day", "Mother's Day" and "520", the data on the effectiveness of mobile game purchases began to improve in May.

During the epidemic, the purchasing performance of "online money-making" and "leisure" mobile games in the mobile game purchasing market was the most eye-catching.

The top three types of mobile games in terms of overall new purchase volume in the first half of the year were all “light-category” mobile games, especially online earning mobile games, with a new purchase rate of over 40%. Whether it is the manufacturers' increasing sophistication in the "money-throwing" tricks, or the gradual formation of a scale of volume purchases, online money-making mobile games have gradually broken away from the previous dependent relationship of "game type + online money-making" and have become a genre of their own.

The launch of casual mobile games also surged during this epidemic. Not only is it ranked second only to the online earning category in terms of new addition rate, but judging from the top 5 creative group types launched in the first half of this year, its launch volume has surpassed the business simulation category, ranking second.

It can be seen that whether in terms of the number of products launched or the number of creative groups launched, casual mobile games have begun to impact the next target - the No. 1 role-playing mobile game.

In the first half of this year, the trend of head-end market in mobile game purchasing has become increasingly obvious. In particular, the big company effect has obvious advantages in buying volume under the policy environment of "high pressure on game licenses" during the epidemic.

According to the data, among the top 500 mobile games launched in the creative group in the first half of 2020, only 50 games had new purchases this year, which is far lower than the level of the same period last year.

According to the "Heat map of various mobile game media types in the first half of 2020":

RPG, MMO and card games in the heavy-duty mobile game category are more likely to be produced by "big companies" and have sufficient budgets for advertising, so they are more popular in comprehensive video and short video media.

Simulation management, sports, and racing mobile games that are closely related to real-world industries have a higher preference for placement in community or vertical media in the corresponding industries.

Due to the influence of sensitive factors such as policies, chess and card games and online money-making mobile games tend to be placed in more relaxed mobile tool media.

3. The head-to-head effect of social apps is intensifying

Douyin and Kuaishou have extended the war overseas

Social apps are also experiencing explosive growth driven by the stay-at-home economy. Taking short video apps as an example, affected by the dual factors of "epidemic + Spring Festival" in Q1, Toutiao, Tencent, Kuaishou, Baidu, etc. have all joined the "battle" in the short video industry.

According to public data, as of March this year, the time users spent on short video apps increased by 80% year-on-year. At the same time, in the buying volume market, the launch volume of social apps has also increased at an astonishing rate. According to Reyun data on the distribution of the number of products launched in various types of application apps in the first half of 2020, social apps have surpassed life services and online shopping apps, ranking second.

The phenomenon of head-on buying volume in short video apps is very obvious.

According to the monitoring of the number of creative groups launched by Douyin and Kuaishou, the total number of creative groups launched by these two apps from January to June accounted for three-quarters of the cumulative number of creative groups launched by short video apps. In addition, leading short video apps such as Toutiao and Kuaishou will also further accelerate the layout of their own advertising commercialization systems by leveraging the explosion of traffic during this epidemic.

Affected by this year's epidemic, the growth rate of the entire Internet advertising industry has slowed down significantly, and the head effect among Internet giants continues to intensify. Public data predicts that in 2020, the leading domestic Internet companies will occupy 80% of the domestic Internet advertising market share, while Toutiao and Kuaishou will account for about a quarter.

At the same time, short video giants are also actively exploring advertising monetization methods that are different from traditional ones . On the one hand, Douyin, Kuaishou and other apps have increased their investment in live streaming with their massive traffic, and "live streaming with goods" has quietly become the most efficient tool for monetizing traffic; on the other hand, short video apps seem to be gradually getting tired of the customer acquisition strategy of "speedy version apps attacking the domestic sinking market" and have begun to turn their attention to overseas markets.

As overseas traffic becomes increasingly mature, Douyin has made significant progress in overseas regions such as North America and India; Kuaishou has accelerated its business expansion in countries such as Russia and Brazil. The overseas versions of the two apps also achieved very good results during the first half of the epidemic.

This shows that during this epidemic, both at home and abroad. The competition for buying short videos is gradually intensifying. The battle for traffic among the top apps is already in full swing .

4. Online education apps continue to become more sophisticated in acquiring customers

Pre-K12 becomes a new "overtaking" track

After experiencing a relatively low-cost customer acquisition period in the early stages of the outbreak, the online education industry has seen its customer acquisition costs gradually increase in the post-epidemic era as competition has intensified. It is also facing the same problem as offline promotions: “high customer acquisition price and difficulty in conversion.”

Against the backdrop of a significant increase in short-term online penetration rates brought about by this round of epidemic, it remains unclear who will be able to better improve user retention and renewal rates and hold on to the fruits of victory in this bonus period to the greatest extent in the future. Therefore, for the online education industry, how to design a good traffic funnel model and the problem of efficient conversion between various links has always been the focus of continuous attempts and explorations in the online education industry.

According to industry data from the A/B Testing platform, judging from the industry distribution of the number of optimization tests conducted on landing pages during the Q1 epidemic, 20% of the "landing page optimization test data" came from the education industry , second only to e-commerce. It can be seen that the online education industry attaches great importance to refined operations for customer acquisition.

Not only in terms of customer acquisition, the online education industry is also facing the dual challenges of refinement and homogenization of user experience in order to improve the final monetization efficiency. Therefore, only efficient and accurate multi-dimensional data analysis is an important prerequisite for continuously and deeply exploring key optimization factors, thereby improving the retention and conversion rate of each link between "click-to-payment" on the Web or App side of online education.

Combined with the online education industry's emphasis on content delivery and the aforementioned emphasis on the browsing experience of potential target customers, information flow advertising has become a must-have for the online education industry to buy traffic .

According to data from relevant research institutions, the top advertisers in the education and training category in 2019 spent 80% of their advertising budgets on information flow advertising. According to product monitoring, during the epidemic period in the first half of this year, nearly 280 online education apps purchased traffic, and the number of creative groups released each month has been rising. Especially in June before the summer training peak season, the number of creative groups released by online education apps in a single month was close to 400,000.

K12 education apps are undoubtedly the vertical type with the most intense competition for online education buying volume.

According to Tencent’s data, the epidemic directly drove the penetration rate of K12 online education’s target population from 37.5% to 56.7%. On the one hand, newly emerging giants such as Toutiao have entered the market strongly; on the other hand, some "old-fashioned" K12 education apps have further segmented the track, gradually turning their attention to the preschool group (Pre-K12) and have successively put up the sign of "AI intelligence".

According to the distribution of the top 5 creative groups for each vertical type of online education in the first half of the year, the long-tail degree of K12 apps is second only to English apps. But it is worth noting that a considerable number of apps in the English category are also aimed at the “Pre-K12” of the English subject. Therefore, generally speaking, K12+Pre-K12 is the most common type of education app in terms of buying volume competition.

From the incremental trend of Aρp of various types of education:

K12 Apps: Undoubtedly, this is the type of App with the highest average growth rate in the first half of the year. In addition to the reasons of the epidemic, winter and summer holidays also play an important role in increasing the release of K12 education apps.

Adult/professional title apps and interest/skill apps: Judging from the data from the "post-epidemic" period from March to June, as the resumption rate of work gradually increased, the number of educational apps for non-examination courses began to increase significantly. Among them, the launch of driving test and finance/finance-related professional title examination apps has increased the fastest after the resumption of work; for young users, as the epidemic prevention and control situation becomes more stable, the increase in the launch of interest/skill education apps has gradually shifted from musical instrument accompaniment to children's programming and art courses.

English apps: During the outbreak period (January-February), adult English training apps were the main focus. As the epidemic gradually stabilized, the proportion of apps targeting the new Pre-K12 track gradually increased.

5. Live streaming e-commerce promotes rapid upgrade of e-commerce

618 becomes the best entry point for industrial transformation

Compared with the severe blow to offline physical retail during this epidemic, the e-commerce industry has been relatively less affected .

Although the policy control on logistics during the epidemic caused the e-commerce industry to stagnate for a period of time; but overall, this epidemic has both opportunities and challenges for the e-commerce industry. Since May, the business volume and revenue growth rates of China's express delivery industry have both increased by more than 30% year-on-year. Behind this is more the increase brought by live streaming e-commerce and post-epidemic consumption.

According to monitoring, the total number of creative groups launched by e-commerce apps in the first half of 2020 accounted for 80% of the total application apps. Its status as a “big buyer” is still very obvious. Especially during the first "Golden Week" and "618 Shopping Festival" after the outbreak of the epidemic, the proportion of e-commerce apps' own launches further increased.

E-commerce apps are increasingly showing a trend of segmentation. The proportion of vertical e-commerce apps has increased significantly. According to the top 3 vertical e-commerce app launches in each month in the first half of the year:

Fashion shoes and clothing apps have always been at the top . Even though the epidemic is raging, it has not stopped users from preferring fashion shoes and clothing, a traditional e-commerce category.

The number of idle apps increased dramatically during the outbreak . It seems that regarding the "street stall economy", the e-commerce industry's "online stall economy" is more advanced.

Luxury goods and jade/ pressed stone apps returned to the top 3 during the stable period of the epidemic . As the epidemic prevention and control and social resumption of work gradually stabilize, users' consumption capacity has been alleviated, and the demand for "high unit price" categories has been released to a certain extent.

A comparison of keywords in the two apps' placement texts during the 618 Shopping Festival also reveals the difference in customer acquisition strategies between the two apps: Taobao, based on its platform advantage in clothing products, focuses on "new summer styles" and "seasonal foods", and on the other hand, encourages new users through benefits; while JD.com relies more on the platform's consistent reputation for "quality and service" to expand its product categories, with "shoes" occupying 3 spots in JD.com's Top 10 placement texts.

Looking at this year's 618 Shopping Festival, the social attributes of e-commerce have been upgraded again, and live streaming has become a new driving force for online shopping.

In terms of user demand, the rapid increase in the popularity of live e-commerce users, coupled with the generally high conversion rate of live streaming, has brought significant growth to e-commerce live streaming and has become the core force driving the overall market growth.

According to data from relevant research institutions, the scale of live e-commerce is expected to reach 961 billion in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 122% . The epidemic has significantly increased users' willingness to shop online, and users' habits of using online shopping channels during the epidemic are expected to continue after the epidemic.

On the platform level, Tmall and JD.com reported performance figures of 698.2 billion and 269.2 billion respectively for the 618 Shopping Festival. Among them, a total of 600 brand and merchant presidents participated in the 618 Taobao live streaming sales during Tmall’s 618 consumption season. As of 7:00 a.m. on June 17, the transaction volume guided by Taobao Live increased by more than 250% year-on-year, with 13 live broadcast rooms exceeding 100 million yuan; and 2 minutes after the start of JD.com’s 618, JD.com’s live broadcast sales exceeded 100 million yuan. On June 16, JD.com and Kuaishou jointly launched a special quality shopping event, and the celebrity anchor’s live broadcast sales in a single day reached 1.42 billion yuan.

Specifically, Taobao's e-commerce activities during this year's 618 Shopping Festival mainly focused on the live broadcast matrix and emphasized social gameplay. In order to increase user acquisition and stickiness, Taobao Live has newly introduced live broadcast sharing fission coupons and red envelope interactive gameplay to improve user retention. In addition, Taobao Live has formed an official super anchor matrix with the top 1000+ anchors, providing them with support such as product support, traffic support, and official honors. JD’s 618 event introduced JD’s birthday party and brand lucky bag activities, attracting users to participate in the 618 promotion through interactive games and other means. At the same time, through activities such as gold coins + brand coupons, it helped merchants to accumulate brand members.

Many live-streaming e-commerce platforms have shouldered more social responsibilities during the epidemic. During this year's "618" shopping festival, many e-commerce platforms have, as always, created special areas for consumer poverty alleviation. With the content-based and immersive marketing scenarios built by the "live streaming + e-commerce" model, farmers only need a mobile phone and a selfie stick to use the "new agricultural tools" to get rid of poverty and benefit from this new path of consumption-driven poverty alleviation. Major e-commerce platforms also demonstrated their platform value and social value during the "national anti-epidemic" period.

6. Summary

Throughout the epidemic, live streaming tools have become an indispensable tool for companies in various industries in their self-rescue process. Live streaming, with its strong interactivity and sense of presence, attracts a large number of users to participate, and has become the closest form of interaction between companies and users. As users' living and consumption habits gradually take shape, live streaming will become an indispensable part of the development process of enterprises in more industries.

At the same time, more and more companies are joining the live broadcast industry, market competition is becoming more intense, and companies will invest more energy and money in mobile marketing. In addition, with the shift in user interests and lifestyles, companies need to carry out more in-depth and refined operations and explore new marketing methods.

Author: Hot Cloud Data

Source: Hot Cloud Data