Australia’s Engagement With Entertainment Apps Grows

Despite Australians being less housebound this year, engagement with entertainment apps continued to rise, according to the latest Australian Mobile App Report.

However, the installation of new apps decreased and 2022 showed just a 2% rise from pre-pandemic levels in 2019 as consumers still checked out new apps hitting the market.

The growth figure was 8% in 2020 when lockdowns began.

“We’re still seeing double digit year-on-year growth in Australia within that space – and entertainment and shopping are the key battlegrounds,” said Bobbie Gersbach-Smith, planning director of APAC at M&C Saatchi Performance, which compiled the report with app monitors Branch and data.ai (formerly App Annie).

Daily times spent by Australians on across-the-board apps during Q2 2022 topped 4.9 hours, translating to 30% of waking hours spent on mobile apps.

That was a 40% growth, equalling Singapore, and exceeding those in the U.S., Japan, the U.K. and Germany.

The 16—34 age group’s time on mobile was the highest, with over three hours daily. But the figure was greater for entertainment, which the report places as the third biggest category.

Gaming was the most sought after, making up one-third of app downloads in Australia (mirroring the global market) and followed by tools.

After entertainment came shopping, photo & video, health & fitness, social & finance.

Jesika Dalal, Branch’s director of marketing for APAC and MEA, said of entertainment’s faster rate of engagement: “It’s growing month on month. Australians still have an appetite for video and audio app entertainment even though we’ve come back to normalcy.

“This is being driven largely by the younger generation, the 18 to 34s, who are actually flocking to streaming platforms.”

Dalal pointed out that while the average Australian time a day on mobile apps is 4.9 hours, “if you look at the entertainment perspective, Australians are spending 11 hours a month on an average, consuming livestreaming, music and OTT apps.

“Streaming apps have a highly engaged user base.

“However, the battleground is shifting from mass user acquisition to user retention.”

But retaining entertainment app users is a big challenge for mobile marketers.

The report showed that users tried out many latest entertainment apps but close to 75 per cent of installs were lost in the first three days.

This further declined to nearly 82 per cent within 30 days.

Suggested ways to offset this was for marketers to increase their ROI (Return on Investment) during the critical first 3-7 day period by focussing on a good user experience.

This was by personalising users’ experiences and removing redundancy in user interactions, fixing touchpoints and creating connected, cohesive opportunities with deep linking for users to interact with the app no matter what channel, platform, or device they’re on.

Another best practice was to make product interaction easy to build trust and preference.