Generative AI applications experienced explosive growth in H1 2025, reaching 1.6 billion downloads and $1.2 billion in in-app purchase revenue.
Revenue growth significantly outpaced adoption, with a 200 percent increase in in-app purchase revenue and a 67 percent rise in downloads compared to H2 2024.
The user base is heavily skewed toward younger males, with approximately 60 percent of users being male and nearly 70 percent under the age of 35.
While flagship services like ChatGPT and Google Gemini maintain broad appeal, niche AI apps such as Grok and DeepSeek are increasingly associated with privacy-focused, crypto-trading, and gaming demographics.
OpenAI has become a top-ten advertising spender in major markets including the United States, India, and South Korea.
AI marketing strategies are shifting toward light-hearted, animal-centric visuals that emphasize practical, everyday utilities like recipe generation and vehicle guidance.
The analysis quantifies the rapid expansion of generative‑AI applications in the first half of 2025, documenting 1.6 billion downloads and $1.2 billion in in‑app‑purchase revenue. This represents a 67 percent increase in downloads and a 200 percent jump in revenue compared with the second half of 2024, indicating a pronounced acceleration in user adoption and monetisation. Engagement metrics rose in tandem, underscoring the sector’s heightened activity during this period.
User demographics reveal a pronounced male and youth bias: roughly 60 percent of users are male and nearly 70 percent are under 35. While flagship services such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini attract comparatively balanced audiences and exhibit strong cross‑app overlap, niche offerings—including Grok and DeepSeek—tend to cluster with privacy‑focused, crypto‑trading, and gaming user personas. This segmentation highlights divergent appeal across the generative‑AI landscape.
Advertising investment intensified, with OpenAI’s major campaign propelling it into the top‑ten spenders in key markets such as the United States, India and South Korea. AI‑driven ad creatives increasingly employ light‑hearted, animal‑centric visuals while emphasizing concrete everyday utilities, exemplified by Google Gemini’s car‑warning guidance and Microsoft Copilot’s quiz‑making and recipe‑generation tools. Spend estimates, tracked across U.S. platforms including Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube, illustrate the breadth of digital‑advertising channels leveraged.
Overall, the findings portray a sector experiencing explosive growth, a skewed yet evolving user base, and a surge in AI‑powered marketing activity across major global markets during H1 2025.
