picture perfect profits

Business

Mobile Signal

Trip.com (TCOM) is scheduled to report earnings on 12/14. User sessions of its suite of mobile apps are up 12.5% YoY and 23.6% QoQ. Dive deeper into TCOM with a free trial of our Bloomberg Terminal App.

App Acquisition

Jahez will be acquiring Chefz, a food delivery app operating in Saudi Arabia. The app has been installed 2.3 million times since launch in September 2016.

Musings

Through the looking glass

Yesterday I noticed that four out of the top five apps on the US iOS App Store were AI photo apps. You've probably seen these AI generated photos from your friends, colleagues and family all over your feed since Thanksgiving. The photos are usually artsy and make the person look like a superhero or a character from a video game. Here's a few from Digital Turbine's Jonathan Harrop.

Just like Prisma in 2016 and FaceApp in 2017, Lensa AI has kickstarted another AI generated photo app fad. Lensa is actually published by the same people as Prisma. While it launched in November 2018, it's just now generating a high level of revenue. While the publisher did start to pay for several keywords recently, I don't think that is the sole reason behind its sudden interest. I don't see much advertising activity from our Ad Intelligence either, which leads me to believe a few Instagram or TikTok influencers likely helped push the app here (potentially unpaid). Unlike some other apps, Lensa will not generate any photos for free. The minimum purchase is $7.99.

If you can't handle the heatmap...

As the year comes to a close, we wanted to provide you with a high level look at how industries are performing from a mobile perspective. This is a heatmap of download data for a plethora of industries, looking at year-over-year growth by month. I know it's hard to see but if you're on a laptop, just click on the image and it will pop out and give you a clear view. You'll notice Retail is a positive standout; Black Friday + Pinduoduo's Temu had such a big month that it boosted growth for the ecommerce category.

Insights & Updates

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.

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.