bright and fast

Business

Mobile Signal

McDonald's (MCD) is scheduled to report earnings on 1/31. Downloads of its global suite of mobiles app are up 16.3% YoY but down 0.6% QoQ. Dive deeper into MCD with a free trial of our Bloomberg Terminal App.

App Acquisition

Strava has acquired Fatmap, a 3D map app designed for people doing outdoor activities. The app has been installed 3.72 million times and has generated $2 million via IAP revenue since launch in April 2018.

Musings

Till next time

Like I said in a previous edition of this newsletter, Lensa AI started another photo app fad, accelerated by social networking apps, just like FaceApp and others had done before it. These fads burn bright and fade quick. There's always one leading apps and a bunch of smaller ones it takes on a ride. We're seeing that exact pattern play out here in terms of both demand (downloads) and revenue generation. There's nothing wrong with that though if you just want to make a cool $22 million in three months like Lensa has.

It's not spring but the bunnies are out

Hopper will end January 2023 with more downloads than it has ever had in a previous January, capping off a six month run of growth. With 6.1% of the OTA downloads market share in July, Hopper has come roaring back to now own 20.2%, more than any other app in the month. Hopper, along with other smaller players, look to have eaten away at the share of Expedia and Booking.com. Airbnb's performance has essentially been stagnant over this period of time. For Hopper, almost 100% of its advertising efforts have been focused on social video ads between Facebook and TikTok, with TikTok taking a much larger share of impressions on iOS lately. For more on Hopper's UA efforts you can listen to this interview I did with its head of UA, or check out this recent Twitter thread by him (Makoto Rheault-Kihara) speaking to creative.