Shopping is Becoming Political - PublicSq. Takes Over the App Store

Ariel Ariel
5/26/23

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Streaming Shakeup. Check out the full article for more insights.


Before I dive into the next one I have to put a disclaimer that this isn't about the politics behind this app and is only about the numbers. I'm sure some of you will still write to complain about my position, from both sides, but again, this is just about the numbers.

With that out of the way, let's talk about PublicSq. Don't know the name? I didn't either until I saw it rising to the top of the App Store!

To get you up to speed, PublicSq is a shopping directory that only includes businesses that follow Pro-Life, Pro-Family, and Pro-Freedom values.

In the last 30 days, downloads of the fairly new app have been on the rise. They were getting 1K downloads in late April, double by early May, and triple about a week later.

According to our App intelligence, this week saw the biggest growth to date as downloads ballooned to more than 43K on Wednesday, the highest they've ever been!

The app has since risen in rank and is now the 4th most downloaded app in the US App Store, which means that number will more than double.

Since launch, the app was downloaded 735K times across the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates, and given this new popularity will cross a million downloads in a week or so.

Driving this seemingly instant growth is a battle between conservatives and progressives over marketing campaigns from Bud Light that aimed to target both sides but caused a boycott and backlash from both sides.

We time and time again see the impact politics has on apps. A good reminder for how fundamental the App Store and Google Play are for daily lives that they can be politicized.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.


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