A recent post by the app consulting and analysis company Flurry revealed that the monthly number of people using apps now exceeds the number of people using desktops and laptops. Each month, roughly 224 million people now use apps, as opposed to 221 million people that use desktops and laptops.
It’s interesting to compare these growing app audiences with those reached by traditional media outlets. For now, a single television show still reaches far, far more viewers than a single app. For example, the top three television shows, put together, reach an audience of about 50 million people. To reach this same audience via apps, it takes about 500 of the top apps.
This comparison may seem silly, but for businesses and advertisers, there’s a hidden difference that shouldn’t be ignored: apps allow for extraordinary segmentation and targeting. Advertising on prime-time television shows is extremely expensive and usually leads to a fair amount of waste. Viewership is broad, and can include many segments that are not relevant to a particular advertiser. Advertising on apps, in contrast, is cheaper and can deliver a better value if done properly, because a tighter user segment can be targeted.
For these reasons, in-app advertising has become a major channel for business promotion. 88% of all apps downloaded are ad-supported, and total revenue for in-app ads is projected to reach $2 billion this year.
“But wait,” you say, “I hate those little ads in my apps, and I never click them!”
The advertisers have heard you, and their “ads” are changing to adapt to the new medium of apps. As Mashable reports, sponsors are testing a number of strategies to avoid irritating people with their ads, including 1) appearing as a part of game apps themselves, 2) paying viewers for ad views, and 3) making more inventive ads that depart from the old-school static display model (e.g. an ad for the Westin Resorts appeared as a frosted screen, which the user could wipe with a finger to reveal a tropical paradise in the background).
For businesses, the message is clear: the aggregate app audience has hit another milestone of growth, and is quickly becoming a major channel that should not be ignored.