Global In-App Purchases Hit $39.4B in Q4 2024, Fastest Growth in Three Years

According to Sensor Tower’s latest Digital Market Index report, developments across digital advertising, app performance, and retail media didn't slow down in Q4 2024. The global in-app purchase (IAP) revenue on Google Play and iOS reached $39.4 billion, a 13.5% YoY increase and the fastest growth seen in the last three years. The digital ad market in the USA reached $34 billion in Q4 2024 with 3.8 trillion in expressions.

$39 billion in revenue for IAP on Google Play and iOS came from Q4 2024, while it was $150 billion overall. There was a 12.5% increase from 2023 in global IAP revenue in 2024. Most of the IAP revenue was from non-gaming apps with 28.2% YoY which reached $19.2 billion. There was only a $1 billion difference between IAP revenue from gaming and non-gaming apps. On the other hand, gaming apps had $5 billion more IAP revenue than non-gaming apps in Q4 2023. Mobile app revenue reached $20.2 billion in 2024 on Google Play and iOS. It saw some decline in past years but has stabilized with 2% to 4% YoY.

The app that reached $6 billion in IAP revenue in 2024 was TikTok, while it reached $4.4 billion in 2023. TikTok got $1.9 billion in IAP revenue in Q4 2024. YouTube and Google One were trailing behind while ChatGPT raised some spots in Q4 2024 and made it to the top 10. Instagram was the top downloaded app globally, followed by TikTok and WhatsApp. ChatGPT also quickly became the sixth most downloaded app globally in Q4 2024. The global IAP revenue increased 46% YoY while global downloads increased by 17% YoY.

The digital ad spend in the USA across desktop, mobile, and OTT reached $34 billion in Q4 2024, with a 9% increase YoY. Ad spending in the digital advertising market peaked in Q4 because demand for shopping increased during the holiday season. Digital ad spend in France and Canada also saw a 10% YoY growth, while it saw a 7% YoY growth in the UK. Japan and South Korea also emerged as the newest markets in the global digital ad market.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

AI vs. Human Content: Study Finds Minimal Ranking Differences on Google

Semrush analyzed 20,000 articles and surveyed more than 700 marketers to know if AI generated content ranks on Google or not. The results of the analysis showed that AI generated can get ranked on Google and generally performs a little better than human created content. The analysis showed that out of top ten ranked articles on Google, 57% of them were AI generated while 58% of them were human created. Human content did 2.1% better than AI content when it came to rankings in the top positions. In the top 3 positions, human content did 6.2% better and 4.6% better in the top five positions. In the top ten rankings, there was only a difference of 1% between human created and AI generated content.

Users were also surveyed so they can share their experiences when it comes to their page rankings on Google search. 31% said that their rankings are the same for human and AI generated content, while 27% were not sure about it. 23% said that their AI generated content performs better than human written content while 10% said it performs much better on search engine rankings. Only 9% of the respondents said that their AI content performs worse than human written content. 30% said that they found no noticeable change in their organic traffic after publishing AI content, while 39% saw an increase in their organic traffic. Only 4.8% said that they experienced a traffic decrease after publishing AI content.

68% said that AI helps them create content faster which helps them boost SEO and content ROI and 57% said it helps them save time so they can use it somewhere else. AI content also helps them save money on writing and editing (48%) as well as helps generate more engagements with the content (34%). This all means that AI can be used for content generation as long as it is high-quality and that's what makes it rank among human written content. 39% of the respondents said that they combine human written and AI generated content for their website while 34% write the content themselves and only use AI for assistance. 5% only use AI generated content while 18% still don't use AI at all.

When respondents were asked how they incorporate AI into content creation, 62% said they use it for their topic research and idea generation, 51% each use it for editing and rewriting, optimizing content for SEO and generating content outlines. Long form articles and blog posts (70%), meta descriptions (55%) and product descriptions (42%). Marketers are using AI to make their content more engaging, interesting and readable to users by using human editors to refine AI generated content (69%), humanising the AI generated content (60%) and only using AI to create the initial draft and then adding more content (48%).

Upon asking marketers how they make their content more original and expertise driven, they answered by conducting original research (55%), adding useful statistics to content (53%) and sharing personal experiences in the content (49%).

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Apple Makes Major Splash With $500B Investment in US to Support American Innovation

Tech giant Apple is making waves with a new announcement involving a $500B investment in America.

The company says its goal right now is to support innovation in the country including state-of-the-art manufacturing and producing more jobs involving high tech. This will take place over the next four years, it shared. The gesture appears to be a thoughtful one but experts are still questioning the move.

There are no doubts about Apple taking part in this maneuver, after all, their yearly revenues hit the $400B mark in the past couple of years. However, it hopes to be spending more funds domestically now to help its nation. But the real thought of the matter has to do with how trade politics plays a role here. Remember, they’ve made similar commitments on a huge scale in the past so this shouldn’t be too surprising, right?

Now the question is what the mega $500B actually includes. As per the iPhone maker, it’s aligned with other similar alerts linked to worldly infrastructure spending that other arch rivals are making. Amazon said it would be spending $100B in 2025 while Microsoft has set out a $80B budget. Alphabet stands at $75B while Meta wants to spend $60 to $65B in 2025.

The total $500B budget from Apple is in line with the amount pledged by other leading companies including Oracle, OpenAI, Stargate, and SoftBank. Will we see that level of investment take place? Well, only time can tell as the figures are huge and it’s not easy to verify.

Now so many questions remain in terms of the math behind Apple’s major commitments. It’s not because there’s not going to be a single line item in this filing or any shareholders' yearly report that can be highlighted if we want to see it follow the pledge after that. This has to do with the mere fact that Apple wishes to break up AI investments across both CapEx and OpEx through materials from its big cloud service providers. Today’s announcement is also linked to what it hopes to attain through partners and suppliers.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

New Study Shows People are Still Reluctant to Use AI in High-Stakes Decision-Making

AI has become an important part of our lives now and people are using it for making a lot of decisions but what do people feel about AI making serious decisions for them? According to a new study by the University of South Australia, most people trust AI while making decisions that aren't too deep but are hesitant when it comes to using AI for making high-stakes decisions like in healthcare or hiring new employees for the company. But people who aren't too statistically literate or have specific knowledge of AI tend to trust AI in low-stakes as well as high-stakes decisions.

The study analyzed responses from 2000 participants from 20 different countries and found that people trust AI based on their knowledge of its systems like how AI algorithms work. They know that AI gives its responses through pattern based predictions so there are a lot of biases and errors too so they try not to use it for making critical decisions. The study also found that people from highly industrialized countries like the US, Japan and UK were less likely to trust AI in making critical decisions, as did men and older people.

The study also showed that 72% of the organizations are now using AI so it is important to understand when people trust AI and why its adoption is increasing so much. The lead author of the study, Dr. Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, said that even though AI technologies are being incorporated into society, we still do not know how to effectively make them function as they can have a lot of impact on us. If we are going to use AI for making decisions, we have to trust their reliability and that's why we also have to understand how they are influencing people’s trust in decision-making.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Office Workers Struggle With Communication Overload, AI Users Report Increased Efficiency

A study conducted by Harris Poll and commissioned by Grammarly found that most of the professionals at work spend 28 hours on communications which has increased 13.2% from last year. Most office workers are always buried underneath heaps of emails and work messages which are one of the reasons for their stress. When 1,286 professionals were surveyed during the study, 60% of them said that they cannot stay focused on their work because they always have to be connected with their coworkers and managers through different messaging apps. Among these messaging apps, Microsoft Teams, Slacks, and some work management software like Asana and Jira were the main culprits.

However, this made the researchers think about the rest of the 40% who didn’t report any problems in their focus during work. How are they managing communications in their professional lives so that they can also stay focused on their work? The study categorized the respondents into two groups, Knowledge workers who were general employees (1302) and business leaders who were bosses of general employees (254). Then these people were classified as AI-avoidant and AI-fluent according to their AI usage habits at work.

It was found that workers who were classified as AI-fluent seemed satisfied and happier (96%) than workers who were AI-avoidant (81%). AI-fluent professionals are saving 25.2 hours per week on average by using AI tools. These professionals are using AI for different types of tasks like editing, ideation, and drafting communication. They are using tools like CoPilot, Google Gemini and ChatGPT to write and edit their messages and save a good portion of their time.

The second most common thing that many professionals are using AI for is research which is reducing their burden immensely. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 has an AI assistant that can help search for information on Gemini and then text a friend or write it in the Notes app. 77% of the professionals said that they use AI as a collaborative tool but 88% said that they would let AI handle tasks on its own if it becomes capable of doing so. OpenAI, Nvidia, and Microsoft are working on these autonomous AI agents which would be able to perform tasks on their own. Business leaders (33%) felt change due to AI use more than employees (7%). Even though AI is being used for a lot of tasks in professional settings, there are also complaints about it hallucinating or giving undesirable results.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

$69 Billion Spent on Non-Gaming Apps in 2024, Entertainment Apps See $4.4 Billion Surge

Generative AI tools have become a part of our lives now, and they have also incorporated themselves into the mobile advertising industry. The advertising industry is seeing a noticeable growth in social media and video streaming, but the gaming industry is still dominant. The 2025 App Marketer Survey Report by Liftoff found some key stats that tell us that industry performance is going to improve in 2025. Non-gaming apps saw a 12% increase year-over-year in their downloads, while overall app categories saw a 7% increase. 4.2 trillion hours were spent by users globally on different apps in 2024, which is about 500 hours per person.

As app time increases, developers are also seeing an increase in revenue. The consumer spend on non-gaming apps was $3.5 billion in 2014, which increased to $69 billion in 2024, and saw a $13.7 billion YoY increase from 2023 to 2024. Entertainment apps saw a $4.4 billion increase in spending from 2023 to 2024 in categories like photo and video, social networking, and productivity apps. There was a 44% YoY growth in the food and drink category, while shopping, finance, and travel apps saw a 20% increase in 2024. The report also mentioned that AI has become an important part of advertising strategies, content recommendations, and app discovery, and marketers are focusing on AI-driven personalization.

The mobile game market is very competitive, and after seeing some dips in growth in 2020 and 2021, mobile game developers have adjusted their strategies. There was less than a 5% decline in downloads in tier-one markets of mobile gaming like Japan, the US, South Korea, and Germany. Pakistan saw a 12% increase in downloads of mobile games between 2023 and 2024, while countries like Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines saw a 5% growth. Overall, there was a 1% decline in IAP (in-app purchase) revenue for mobile games, but casino games saw a 4% growth in IAP revenue, and mid-core games saw a 5% decline.

The report also surveyed consumers from different countries to compare the stats between 2023 and 2024. It was found that more than 50% of the respondents agreed that the industry is in good shape compared to 2023, while 80% said that it's the same or better in 2024. 85% of respondents from LATAM and North America agreed that the industry is better or the same right now. 86% of non-gaming marketers said that the industry is in better shape compared to 44% of gaming marketers who think that it is better in 2024 compared to 2023. 90% said that they have met or approached their KPIs, while more than 50% said that they are experiencing more aggressive KPIs year over year. 80% said that they have higher expectations for 2025, and 60% report expecting higher budgets in the new year.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Gmail Users Could See Changes in Authentication as Google Explores Alternatives to SMS Codes

Gmail is, reportedly, preparing to discontinue SMS-based authentication codes, shifting toward a QR code system for verifying user identity. One insider, as per Forbes, has claimed that plans are underway to replace text message verification with an alternative option aimed at enhancing security while reducing risks associated with phishing and fraud. The move aligns with broader efforts in the tech industry to move away from passwords and traditional two-factor authentication methods in favor of more secure approaches. While SMS authentication has been widely used, vulnerabilities have long raised concerns, with growing instances of cybercriminals exploiting text-based security codes to gain unauthorized access.

Google currently uses SMS-based authentication for both security verification and abuse prevention. The system helps confirm returning users and prevents large-scale fraudulent activity, including mass account creation for spam and malware distribution. However, SMS verification remains susceptible to phishing, and its effectiveness depends on the security protocols of mobile carriers. If attackers manipulate a carrier into transferring control of a phone number, SMS-based security loses its reliability. Company representatives cite this as a major reason for shifting away from text-based authentication, stating that fraudsters have increasingly leveraged weaknesses in the system to bypass security measures.

• Also read: The World’s Most (and Least) Cyber-Secure Countries: Where Does Yours Stand?

One emerging scam involves a method known as traffic pumping, where cybercriminals exploit SMS verification by triggering mass authentication messages to numbers under their control. Each delivered message generates revenue for the attackers, leading to financial losses for service providers. This type of abuse has become a growing concern, accelerating efforts to implement stronger authentication methods.

In the coming months, Gmail users will no longer receive six-digit SMS verification codes. Instead, a QR code will appear on the screen during authentication, requiring users to scan it with their phone’s camera to complete the process. The shift aims to eliminate phishing risks associated with text-based codes and reduce dependency on mobile carriers for account security. Google has not provided a specific timeline for the rollout but indicates that additional details will be shared soon.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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