early bird gets the streams

Business

Mobile Signal

Chewy (CHWY) is scheduled to report earnings on 12/8. User sessions of the mobile app are down 14% YoY and 2.4% QoQ. Dive deeper into CHWY with a free trial of our Bloomberg Terminal App.

App Acquisition

Equals Group Plc has acquired Roqqett, a peer-to-peer payment app. The mobile app has been installed about 8k times since launch in October 2020.

Musings

We found users in a noisy place

Our Ad Intelligence shows FOX Sports and FIFA+ launched World Cup ad creatives in September, before any of their competitors. This built consumer awareness prior to when people were ready to download an app to stream the cup, and it paid off for both streamers. For three weeks, FOX Sports ran World Cup ads alongside no competitive streaming apps besides FIFA+. Its market share of Downloads increased by 17 points in the last seven days of the competition.

The apps losing the most market share, Tubi (-9), Hulu (-7), had the majority of their ad creatives focused on movies and TV series. It’s possible that Hulu is not allowed to advertise for the World Cup – despite the fact that Hulu TV Plus subscribers have access to the games – due to its partnership with ESPN, which lost streaming rights to the World Cup in 2011. Similarly, Tubi is owned by Fox and may have been limited on purpose to let FOX Sports thrive. Tubi did launch a couple World Cup creatives after November 15, but it does not look to have converted a high volume of World Cup viewers.

An uber good rebound

New drivers for both Lyft and Uber started falling in 2019, before the pandemic, and then continued that trend more sharply once the virus spread. Uber started attracting more drivers in 2021, growing above 2019 levels but Lyft never got there. I came across this by chance and can't pinpoint why Uber is outperforming Lyft here. It could be less budget for attracting drivers or less enticing signup incentives. It may also be that Uber has been placing more emphasis on Uber Eats. Looking at our Review Intelligence, there are plenty of reviews for both apps saying the other platform treats their drivers better and pays better. Basically no one is happy in the reviews for either app so it gave a whole new meaning to doom scrolling.

Insights & Updates

3 Mobile Ad Strategies that are Winning World Cup Viewers

If you’re a mobile marketer, you can look to World Cup advertising activity for inspiration on how to approach marketing around other major sporting events. In our analysis of the performance of the Streaming Entertainment apps with World Cup coverage, three takeaways emerged that can be applied to any app category promoting a product or service tied to the next big game.

Sam's Club's app success is product driven

Turns out, everything in Vipul Govil's life has been leading him here to this moment with me on the Somewhat Mobile podcast. Vipul is the VP of Product Management at Sam's Club so naturally we talked about the features and functionality of the Sam's Club app (think Scan & Go), why those mobile app investments were made and how they're working out for the company. We then chat about the role the app plays in customer loyalty and the difference in customers who use the app versus those who don't.