Related Documents
Report
Digital Market Index: Q2 2025
The global digital landscape reached a significant milestone in the second quarter of 2025, as in-app purchase revenue hit a record $40 billion. This period marked a historic structural shift in the mobile economy, with non-gaming applications accounting for 52% of total consumer spending, surpassing mobile games for the first time. While total downloads stabilized at 37 billion, the market displayed clear signs of maturation; gaming downloads contracted by 6.8% year-over-year, while AI-driven productivity tools and short-drama streaming platforms emerged as the primary engines of growth. The United States maintained its position as the premier revenue market at $15 billion, though emerging regions such as Brazil and various African nations are increasingly vital for download volume and monetization expansion. Within the gaming sector, Strategy titles overtook RPGs as the highest-grossing category, achieving a 23% year-over-year increase. However, the most significant individual performance came from ChatGPT, which became the fastest application to reach one billion downloads and secured a position among the top five global revenue earners. This surge in AI utility was mirrored in the advertising sector, where U.S. digital ad spend rose 12% to $34 billion. Major technology firms including Microsoft, Google, and Adobe significantly increased their marketing budgets to promote AI integrations like Copilot, contributing to a landscape where social media maintains a 72.5% share of total ad spend. Retail media has solidified its role as a critical advertising channel, with U.S. impressions rising 29% to 65 billion across various retailers. Despite this broad growth, Amazon remains the undisputed leader in the space, generating nearly 80 billion impressions and outperforming all other tracked retailers combined. These findings are supported by expanded tracking capabilities across key Asian markets and diverse digital channels, though the data specifically excludes certain year-over-year Amazon metrics due to recent tracking implementation. Overall, the quarter reflects a pivot toward high-utility AI applications and a diversifying advertising ecosystem dominated by social and retail platforms.
Sensor TowerAug 2025
Report
Digital Marketing Index Report: Q4 2025
The analysis evaluates global digital‑marketing dynamics for the final quarter of 2025, emphasizing shifts in channel performance, the rise of generative‑AI as a discovery source, and the concentration of retail‑media reach among dominant platforms. Growth patterns reveal a stark regional divide: India stands alone among the five largest markets as the only one posting positive overall change, while other leading economies recorded declines or stagnation. In the United States, retail‑media impressions expanded 13 percent quarter‑over‑quarter to reach 123 billion, with Amazon accounting for the entire volume and delivering more than six times the impressions generated by Walmart. This concentration underscores Amazon’s expanding role as the primary conduit for retail‑media exposure in North America. Across the same period, generative‑AI referrals, although still representing less than one percent of total traffic, surged dramatically—up 133 percent year‑over‑year in the United States, United Kingdom and France, and 126 percent in Canada. The rapid acceleration signals that chat‑based assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are emerging as significant discovery engines despite their modest share of overall visits. Conversely, traditional organic search experienced the only decline among major acquisition channels, falling four percent year‑over‑year. Paid advertising, email marketing and other performance‑driven tactics continued to post gains, reinforcing a broader transition toward paid and AI‑augmented pathways for user acquisition. The findings collectively illustrate a digital‑marketing ecosystem increasingly dominated by platform‑centric retail media and AI‑driven referral mechanisms, while legacy search channels lose ground in mature markets.
Sensor TowerOct 2025
Report
Q1 2024 Digital Market Index
In the first quarter of 2024, the mobile gaming market showed a clear shift away from hyper‑casual titles, which experienced a year‑over‑year decline of more than ten percent across all major platforms. At the same time, niche sub‑genres—particularly those emphasizing deeper mechanics, social interaction, and regional cultural themes—registered modest growth, indicating that players are gravitating toward more differentiated experiences. Revenue concentration continued to favor the top‑tier publishers, whose combined share of global digital game sales rose to just over 45 percent, while mid‑size and indie developers struggled to maintain market visibility amid rising user acquisition costs. Geographically, North America and Western Europe together accounted for roughly 38 percent of total spend, but the fastest growth rates were observed in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where mobile penetration and improved payment infrastructure drove double‑digit increases in both downloads and in‑app purchases. The overall market size reached $23.7 billion in Q1, representing a 4.2 percent increase from the same period a year earlier, with the majority of the uplift coming from subscription‑based models and live‑ops monetisation strategies. The data also highlighted a maturing ad‑tech ecosystem: programmatic video ads delivered higher eCPMs than traditional interstitials, while rewarded ads maintained the strongest user retention metrics. However, ad fraud remained a concern, with industry‑wide estimates suggesting that up to 7 percent of ad impressions were non‑genuine, prompting publishers to invest more heavily in verification tools. These trends suggest that the digital gaming landscape is moving toward higher‑value, more engaged user bases, with regional diversification and sophisticated monetisation approaches shaping the next phase of growth.
Sensor TowerMar 2024
Report
Digital Market Index: Q4 2024
Global digital markets reached a significant milestone in the final quarter of 2024, with in-app purchase revenue hitting a record $39.4 billion. This growth was primarily fueled by a 28.2% year-over-year surge in non-game applications, exemplified by TikTok becoming the first app to surpass $6 billion in annual revenue. While the iOS ecosystem remains the primary driver of monetization by capturing 70% of total revenue, Google Play maintains its dominance in scale, facilitating nearly three-quarters of the 34.1 billion global downloads recorded during the period. The mobile gaming landscape underwent a notable structural shift as consumer preferences migrated from traditional RPGs toward Strategy and Puzzle titles. Strategy games experienced a 26% year-over-year increase in downloads, helping to offset regional revenue declines in major markets like Japan and South Korea. Despite these shifts, Japan’s mobile sector showed signs of overall recovery, while emerging Android markets in Indonesia and Pakistan continued to expand rapidly. The successful launch of high-profile titles like Pokémon TCG Pocket further stabilized the gaming sector during this transition. Advertising and retail media also reached unprecedented levels, with U.S. digital ad spend hitting $34 billion. Social media channels dominated this space, accounting for 77% of total expenditures as major retailers like Amazon and Walmart increased holiday investments. Retail media specifically generated a record 75.4 billion impressions, driven by high demand in consumer electronics and personal care. Strategic co-branded partnerships, such as the collaboration between Best Buy and Samsung, emerged as critical drivers of visibility, cementing the role of retail platforms as essential components of the broader digital advertising ecosystem.
Sensor TowerDec 2024