In January 2021, Telegram was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide with over 63 million installs, 3.8 times its downloads in January 2020. India contributed 24% and Indonesia 10% of Telegram's installs. TikTok ranked second with nearly 62 million installs, driven by China (17%) and the US (10%).
Signal, Facebook, and WhatsApp completed the top five. Data from Sensor Tower excludes Apple and Google pre-installed apps, counting unique installs on App Store and Google Play. The report provides insights for app marketers on trends and geographic distribution.
Attribution identifies user sources via third-party SDKs. Deep linking uses that data to route users to specific app content. Deterministic matching offers 100% accuracy; probabilistic uses statistics. Key mechanisms include URI schemes, Universal Links, and App Links.
Mobile ad fraud wastes billions yearly. Categories: attribution hijacking (real users, fake clicks) and fake installs (bots, device farms). Fraudsters evolve, exploiting industry complexities. Key to combat: education, secure SDKs, post-attribution detection.
In 2020, mobile app consumer spending hit $111B globally, up 30.2% YoY. Games drove 71.7% of revenue. First-time installs reached 143B, up 23.7%. TikTok and Zoom saw huge growth among non-game apps.
Global consumer app spending to reach $270B by 2025, driven by 19.5% CAGR. App Store leads with 21% CAGR, non-game apps to surpass games by 2024. Europe shows strong growth.
Only 2% of App Store games revenue comes from publishers earning under $1M. Apple's new 85/15 split for small developers benefits few, while top earners (2.7% of publishers) account for 97.4% of revenue.
AppsFlyer’s 2026 creative data shows video and static image ads reward opposite creative qualities, so ad ops teams should plan, budget, and test them separately. Video spend is concentrating: gaming’s top 2% of video creatives captured 60.7% of spend, up from 53.5%, while image spend spread out. Top spenders are testing far more variations, widening the testing gap. Action/Strategy and Puzzle/Lifestyle show format-specific tone and social-proof reversals; Finance is the exception. Teams should use AI-assisted variation, analyze video winners deeply, keep broad image testing, and measure performance at attribute level.
In February 2021, PUBG Mobile led global mobile game revenue at $250M, up 16.2% YoY, with 66.5% from China. Honor of Kings followed with $218.5M, up 57.2% YoY, 95.6% from China. Genshin Impact, Pokémon GO ($124.2M, +95% YoY), and Roblox ($101.6M, +84.8% YoY) rounded out the top five. Data from Sensor Tower.
Adjust has expanded store detection and verification across multiple app storefronts, making Store Type the primary dimension for identifying where an install originated rather than relying on platform or OS alone. For ad ops teams, this means campaign performance can now be analyzed at the store level across Huawei AppGallery, Xiaomi GetApps, Samsung Galaxy Store, Vivo Appstore, and Google Play variants, with independent verification of install origin. Newly detected stores are flagged in AppView with a direct route to configuration, and store-level data flows automatically into reporting, raw data, callbacks, and CSV exports, plus Conversion Rules via Store Rule conditions.
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