Things were busy on the App Store this week! More apps claimed the #1 position this week than in most prior weeks, which is a pretty big achievement considering how glued Temu was to the top spot for so long.
Sitting in the top position right now is ShortTV, a streaming app from Hong Kong that offers short TV-like shows.
This isn't new. ReelShort, a very similar app, took command of the App Store back in November and has been ranking fairly high since. ShortTV is very similar.
Is this a new trend?
Since rolling out back in September, ShortTV was downloaded 8.2M times across the App Store and Google Play, according to our App Intelligence. But it's important to note that most of these downloads, roughly 84%, came from Google Play. This will become important very soon.
Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines are ShortTV's biggest markets so far. Indonesia and the Philippines are pretty big for rival ReelShort as well.
Even though ShortTV has been out for nearly 6 months, downloads didn't really start to pick up until this January, and likely heavily supported by paid ads. ShortTV is using Apple Search Ads spending on more than 600 keywords, according to our Search Ads insights. ReelShort's ASA campaign is a bit larger but not by much.
Downloads more than quadrupled in early January from an average of around 15K downloads per day to more than 70K, according to our estimates. In addition to this shift, ShortTV has also seen downloads spike well above 100K per day several times since the growth spurt started.
Is this spend worth it?
Yes, it is.
Since launching, ShortTV has earned $8.4M of net revenue -- what's left after Apple and Google take their fees -- according to our estimates.
Unlike traditional streamers, watching shows on ShortTV requires coins, which you can purchase through the app. The same monetization strategy employed by ReelShort.
Diving deeper into ShortTV's revenue, things start to get weird.
Our estimates show ShortTV's revenue spiked for a few days at the en dof December. This isn't weird considering people are home for the holidays. What is weird is that this spike happened before downloads started to rise. It also declined fairly quickly after and then revenue from Google Play start rising.
In fact, since early January, Google Play has earned ShortTV more revenue than the App Store -- between 2-3x -- that's pretty weird!
The App Store is back on top this week though, with both climbing fast.
On Wednesday, ShortTV saw $180K of net revenue, the most the app has ever seen in a single day, from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates. Revenue from both was nearly the same with the App Store beating Google Play by $10K.
And I'm not done with weird just yet!
Even though the US is a distant 4th in terms of downloads it is the top earner for ShortTV, and by a whole lot. The US has earned $4.3M of net revenue -- about half of its total. Indonesia was the second highest earner with around $800K.
And the last interesting insight - The difference in revenue per download between the App Store and Google Play is astonishing. According to our estimates, net RPD on the App Store is $2.62, while on Google Play it's just $0.72.
Charging a made-up currency gives ShortTV a lot of flexibility in how they incentivize engagement which they can later turn into revenue. One strategy could be to charge App Store users more quickly because they'll pay but keep Android users engaged for free longer to get them hooked.
I didn't "have short dramas taking over mobile" on my bingo card, but it just might.
All of this is still too small to be noticed by the bigger streams - Let's see if that changes.
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