Record numbers of British consumers turned to their mobile apps for Black Friday shopping, with eCommerce advertisers in its network seeing almost double (97%) the in-app revenue this year than in 2019.
New data from mobile attribution and marketing analytics company, AppsFlyer, reveals that this has shattered records of consumer spending in eCommerce apps – in-app-purchase (IAP) revenue on Black Friday was 50% higher than the average of the previous 30 days. This is particularly significant given that November is already a popular shopping period, and many Black Friday sales events started days or weeks in advance this year.
Consumers are also installing apps to make purchases; there were 35% more organic installs of eCommerce apps than the average of the previous 30 days on Black Friday. In addition, revenue per app install nearly doubled on Black Friday, showing the huge opportunity to drive increased sales through apps on this peak shopping day.
Key UK findings
- 2020 has already been a booming year for eCommerce; Q2 outperformed the 2019 holiday season and Black Friday has driven revenue even higher than those levels of June and July 2020.
- Despite record breaking in-app-purchase revenues on Black Friday this year, revenue per install only increased by 12% compared to 2019. This suggests that the overall revenue increase was generated by the amount of new users shopping with their eCommerce apps. This is where the UK lockdown might have had significant effect, as shoppers had no option but to move online.
- App marketers upped their budgets to try and capitalise, with a 23% increase in non-organic installs and 21% increase in remarketing conversions.
Paul Wright, Managing Director UK, FR, ME & Turkey at AppsFlyer, comments: “Our data suggests that Black Friday 2020 has shattered records for app engagement. At a time when the advertising industry faces challenges due to COVID-19, our data shows that shoppers have actually embraced eCommerce more than ever before, due to the necessity of shopping online brought on by lockdown 2.0 and social distancing. Given the UK was in a lockdown during Black Friday and the weeks leading up to it, with all non-essential stores closed, we can track the effect on the British public’s willingness to shop using their mobiles.
“Retailers now have a ‘golden’ opportunity to drive long-term engagement and loyalty. The holiday period is already a highly competitive space for marketers, and the increased media cost means that marketers have a greater-than-ever need to leverage data to ensure high-quality returns through smart targeting. By using data to inform and improve the in-app shopping experience in real time, we have been able to see installs and revenue taking significant leaps during Black Friday 2020, a critical time for retailers to bank up their revenues in the run up to Christmas”.