Walmart and Amazon were both ready for battle this holiday shopping season. Amazon thought it'd beat everyone with its second Prime Day event of the year. That didn't exactly work, and while it was planning, Walmart had similar plans. It just started a bit later.
We're seeing the results of Walmart's strategy in this month's downloads -- and they're good!
So far in November, Walmart is beating Amazon in downloads on both the App Store and Google Play. Looking at how close the numbers are though, I suspect Walmart is following Amazon's downloads and pushing with ads and promotions as much as needed to beat them.
The trends are interesting! Walmart kicked off November with a big spike, getting ahead of Amazon for the first time in a long time. The trend sloped down right after for a bit, but peaked again a few days later and stayed above since.
In more absolute terms, Amazon added 2.5 million new users in the US between the App Store and Google Play while Walmart added 2.6 million. A small enough difference that's clearly the result of paid UA (aka User Acquisition, aka ads). Considering how much shopping will go through apps this holiday season, this is a good strategy.
For Amazon, these numbers are fairly standard. For Walmart, however, these numbers are much higher than the average. Roughly three times the average.
I expect to see Walmart's downloads continue to grow as it takes on new entrant Temu, which is currently in the lead.
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