Sensor Tower recently shared data that placed ByteDance Ltd’s Tik-Tok and its Chinese twin app Douyin on the top spot as the mobile apps with the most earnings in the month of April. This data excludes excludes games and advertising.
Having narrowly focused on in-app purchases, TikTok and Douyin’s numbers for the month revealed a tenfold surge to $78 million. This has placed the mobile apps ahead of popular and more established brands such as YouTube and Netflix—marking a shift in how digital audiences are spending, not just watching. That shift is reflected well beyond social video; even in the gambling sector, generally recession proof and generally even thriving during times of hardship for people, the best betting sites have begun tweaking their interfaces to prioritize creator-style engagement and micro-spending behavior.
Douyin, which serves the Chinese market, contributed the major part of the in-app income at 86.6%, followed by the U.S. with 8.2%. The social media app where users, mostly teens and young adults, post videos of up to 15 seconds long, often synced with music, also allows users to spend on supporting their favorite creators.
TikTok is currently the most valuable startup in the world and generated about 315 million downloads globally in the first quarter of 2020.
