Cracking the Code: Top US Apps of the Month Revealed Through an Unconventional Revenue Analysis
Top-Grossing Mobile Apps in the United States: A Unique Look at Programmatic Ad Revenue
When it comes to the top-grossing mobile apps in the United States, there’s more to the story than just sheer number of installs or revenue generated by paid apps. In fact, some of these apps may not be familiar to you because they thrive on a different measure of success: programmatic ad spend. This type of advertising is driven by automated bidding, where the highest bidder wins the auction in real-time, and doesn’t rely on negotiated deals with publishers.
According to Pixalate, a leading provider of in-app advertising measurement and optimization technology, the top-grossing apps in the United States generate the highest amount of programmatic advertising revenue. This data is calculated based on estimates of programmatic monthly active users (MAU), average session duration per user, average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for the store category of a given app, and ad density.
The Top-Grossing Apps in the Apple App Store
Let’s start with the Apple App Store, where the top-grossing app for November in the United States was Vita Mahjong, a tile-matching game that generated $4 million in programmatic ad spend during the month. As part of the Board category, it has the second-largest number of installs, but was developed with older Americans in mind.
The next four top-grossing apps in the Apple App Store each generated $3 million in programmatic ad revenue in November:
- Happy Colors by Number Game, a colors-by-numbers app that is the 28th most popular in the Board category.
- Musi Simple Music Streaming, which has been removed from the App Store for violating YouTube’s terms of service.
- TuneIn Radio Music & Sports, which streams sports talk, play-by-play, and music from radio stations and is the 53rd most installed Music app in the App Store.
- Solitaire, a solitaire game that is the 10th most installed app in the Board category.
The Top-Grossing Apps in the Google Play Store
In the Google Play Store, the top-grossing app with $5 million in programmatic ad spend in November was Audiomack: Music Downloader. The music streamer provides download access and unlimited streaming to the newest and hottest tracks, right at your fingertips. With $3 million generated from the app in November from ads selected by automated real-time bidding, music streamer Pandora Music & Podcasts was next in the Google Play Store.
Other notable apps in the top ten of the Google Play Store’s top-grossing lists include SoundCloud: Play Music & Songs, which generated $2 million in programmatic ad revenue in November, and Tumblr-Fandom, Art, Chaos, which also generated $2 million in the same period.
These apps may not be as well-known as some of the top-grossing apps in terms of overall revenue, but their success is a testament to the power of programmatic advertising. By leveraging automated bidding and real-time advertising, these apps are able to generate significant revenue and attract a loyal user base.
