Surprise, In-App Purchase Behavior Peaks Before The Workday Even Starts [Study]

New study shows mobile ecommerce behavior doesn't mirror online purchasing habits.

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mobile-smartphones-apps-ss-1920Turns out users aren’t using their lunch breaks to make in-app purchases. Whether it be in games, retail, travel or other commerce apps, users are much more likely to make purchases before and after work, according to a study from AppLovin and TUNE.

AppLovin, a marketing automation and analytics platform, and attribution firm TUNE studied millions of transactions and billions of data points on US mobile users from the first quarter of 2015 to understand how in-app purchase behavior differs from online ecommerce patterns.

The study shows that most weekday mobile revenues and usage occur at 7:00 AM and PM. In fact, pre-workday morning revenues topped evening revenue patterns.

in-app purchase time of day trends

In-app revenue per hour peaks at 7 AM and 7 PM, normalized to Pacific Time.

Interestingly, usage rates are relatively low in the hours before the workday starts, and climb throughout the day, peaking at 8:00 PM.

While online ecommerce is typically expected to perform well on Mondays, in-app purchase revenues were highest on Sundays and Fridays. Wednesdays brought in by far the lowest spending activity. Wednesday also had the lowest usage rate, and Sunday saw the highest rates of usage for the week. However, the usage-to-spend correlation does not occur on Friday, which has the second-slowest usage day but the second-highest spend rates of the week.

The study concludes that, because mobile commerce and online spending and usage patterns are different, in-app advertisers should look to increase win rates during peak hours and weekends and consider time-based offers or discounts during the times of day and days of week where most spending occurs. Take a close look at your own app performance and don’t assume all platforms perform the same.


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About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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