Latest news with #mobileapps
TechCrunch
7 hours ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025
Demand for AI 'companion' applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Appfigures. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over $120 million by year-end, the firm's analysis indicates. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends, lovers, girlfriends or boyfriends, fantasy characters, and more. Appfigures defined the market segment in the same way, describing companion apps as those in which the user can interact with either premade or user-generated synthetic characters meant to embody an actual personality. Popular apps in this space include Replika, PolyBuzz, Chai, and others. As of July 2025, AI companion apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play have been downloaded 220 million times globally. During the first half of 2025, downloads were up 88% year-over-year, reaching 60 million. Appfigures crunched the numbers and found that, as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide. So far this year, these apps have generated 64% more revenue than during the same period in 2024. The top 10% of all AI companion apps generate 89% of the revenue in the category, the data shows. In addition, around 10% (or 33) of the apps have exceeded $1 million in lifetime consumer spending. Revenue per download is also up $0.66 from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 for the category so far in 2025. Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $600+ before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW While dedicated AI companion apps are fairly popular, bigger companies like xAI are also moving into the market. In July, xAI's Grok launched AI companions, including an anime girl and guy, as well as a snarky 3D fox. Meanwhile, ChatGPT's recent upgrade to GPT-5 brought to light the fact that many of its users felt a kinship with the older model, as they mourned the loss of their AI companion, whom they had come to depend upon. To address these and other concerns about GPT-5's performance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman brought back the 4o model for the time being. Google last year tapped into the market, too, when it hired away founder, Noam Shazeer. The app lives on and still has tens of millions of monthly active users. According to Appfigures' data, the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word 'girlfriend,' compared with 4% that say 'boyfriend' or 'fantasy.' Terms like anime, soulmate, and lover, among others, are less frequently mentioned. Appfigures Image Credits:Appfigures The firm notes there were likely a number of other AI companion apps that launched on the app stores since 2022, but were later removed after failing to gain traction in terms of revenue or downloads. Those weren't factored into its analysis, however.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pixalate's July 2025 United States Publisher Rankings for Websites, Mobile & CTV Apps: spotify.com, ‘Tubi', and ‘Fox News' Among Top-Ranked For Open Programmatic Ad Traffic Quality
According to Pixalate's July 2025 rankings, 'Fox News: US & World Headlines' (Apple App Store) and 'Race Master 3D - Car Racing' (Google Play Store) ranked No. 1 among mobile apps; 'Tubi - Free Movies and TV' (Roku), 'Lifetime' (Samsung Smart TV), 'Hulu for Fire TV' (Amazon Fire TV), 'Sling: Live TV, Sports & News' (Apple TV) were among the top-ranked CTV apps; was No. 1 for websites in the United States (U.S.) London, Aug. 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pixalate, the leading ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform, has released the July 2025 Publisher Trust Index (PTI) for the United States (U.S.). This index evaluates websites and apps across the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Connected TV (CTV) apps on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Samsung Smart TV. The Publisher Trust Index provides a comprehensive method for assessing quality and offers monthly rankings of the world's websites and apps, bringing unprecedented transparency to the open programmatic advertising ecosystem. In addition to the report for the U.S., Pixalate has also released Publisher Trust Indexes for the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan, and Brazil. U.S. Web PTI Rankings (July 2025) U.S. Mobile PTI Rankings (July 2025) Apple App Store Fox News: US & World Headlines Zen Word - Relax Puzzle Game Vita Solitaire for Seniors Google Play Store Race Master 3D - Car Racing Block Sudoku Woody Puzzle TextNow: Call + Text Unlimited U.S. Connected TV PTI Rankings (July 2025) Amazon Fire TV Hulu for Fire TV DirecTV NewsOn Apple TV Sling: Live TV, Sports & News DirecTV Pluto TV Samsung Smart TV Lifetime Cinehouse Cheddar Roku Tubi - Free Movies and TV Hulu MLB Download the full rankings here. Pixalate's data science team analyzed over 34 billion global open programmatic ad impressions across 15+ million Google Play Store and Apple App Store mobile apps, and Connected TV (CTV) apps across Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV app stores in July 2025 to compile the global Publisher Trust Indexes. Pixalate uses its proprietary algorithms to measure quality metrics, including invalid traffic (IVT or ad fraud), Made For Advertising (MFA) risk, brand safety, ad density, viewability, reach, and more. The Publisher Trust Index spans rankings for 235+ countries across all four global regions: North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, and provides breakdowns by 20+ different IAB taxonomy website categories. Pixalate's methodology can be found at Publisher Trust Index: Methodology. Download the Publisher Trust Index Reports Canada Brazil U.S. UK Germany Spain Netherlands Japan About Pixalate Pixalate is a global platform specializing in privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and digital ad supply chain data intelligence. Founded in 2012, Pixalate is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers, publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is accredited by the MRC for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT). July 2025 United States Publisher Trust Index (PTI) reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Our reports and indexes examine programmatic advertising activity on mobile apps, website domains and Connected TV (CTV) apps. Any insights shared are grounded in Pixalate's proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources in the Indexes and herein should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees. This report is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any person, entity or app but, instead, to report findings and trends pertaining to the time period studied. Per the MRC, ''Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Courts or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per the MRC, ''Invalid Traffic' is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic.' CONTACT: Nina Talcott ntalcott@
Associated Press
15 hours ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Moloco Research Uncovers Substantial Growth Opportunities for Mobile App Advertising Beyond Google and Meta
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 12, 2025-- Moloco, the AI performance advertising company, today released new research on the growing disparity between mobile app advertising spend and consumer attention. The new research study, Performance Through Independence: Unlocking Incremental App Growth Beyond Google and Meta, shows that even as mobile attention shifts to millions of mobile apps, mobile marketing spend remains highly concentrated with Google and Meta which today attract 88% of consumer mobile app advertising dollars. The report, developed in collaboration with Sensor Tower and Singular, shows that advertisers can increase financial returns by up to 214% by adjusting their advertising mix to reach users across the broad range of mobile apps where users now spend time. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: 'Too many advertisers are still over-indexing on Google and Meta. But the biggest returns we are seeing are happening outside big tech,' said Tom Shadbolt, Senior Insights Manager, Moloco. 'The independent app ecosystem is quickly becoming the new engine for predictable and long-term performance. This research is a wake-up call for mobile app marketers.' Consumer mobile apps, including all mobile app categories outside of gaming, such as entertainment, finance, delivery, and more, have experienced significant revenue growth in 2024, with in-app purchase (IAP) and subscription revenues rising 25% to reach $70.5 billion. The growth trajectory is accelerating, and for the first time, consumer mobile app revenue is projected to surpass gaming revenue within the next two years. Moloco's research study highlights key takeaways for consumer mobile app advertisers to take advantage of this incremental growth opportunity. The study revealed that: 'Since expanding our channels beyond social partners, we've seen an increase in platform bookings that we have been able to validate through incrementality modeling,' said Valerie Castro, Acquisition Marketing Director at Turo, a popular mobile app marketplace for car rentals. 'We're excited to push performance further by increasing our creative velocity.' Methodology This research is based on data from Moloco, Sensor Tower, and Singular, with all sources cited contextually throughout the full report and all data is anonymized and aggregated. Results by category and market meet robust thresholds: more than 30 apps and over $50,000 in ad spend or revenue. The report covers countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam within the timeframe of January-December 2024. The research data set included: *The independent app ecosystem refers to the millions of diverse mobile apps that are developed, published, and monetized by independent companies rather than by the major technology giants such as Google, Meta, and Apple. **Based on Moloco/YouGov survey in US, UK, India in June 2025 across a total of 3,000 mobile users tracking app usage and sentiment ***Based on Sensor Tower data To access the full research report and complete methodology, please visit: Performance Through Independence: Unlocking Incremental App Growth Beyond Google and Meta. About Moloco Moloco is the AI engine for growth helping businesses across the digital economy. Built with AI from day one, Moloco's planet-scale machine learning platform powers a suite of solutions for advertising growth and monetization. Moloco Ads is an AI-powered platform that delivers real business outcomes for mobile app marketers through performance-based user acquisition. Moloco Commerce Media and Streaming Monetization solutions enable retailers, marketplaces, and streaming platforms to build revenue-generating ad businesses that balance user experience and advertiser performance. Founded in 2013 by a team of machine learning engineers, Moloco has offices across the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Korea, China, India, Japan, and Singapore. Learn more at View source version on CONTACT: Media Contact Moloco Diana Adair, Senior Director, Communications and Public Relations [email protected] KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: APPS/APPLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY MOBILE/WIRELESS MARKETING ADVERTISING COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE DIGITAL MARKETING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SOURCE: Moloco Copyright Business Wire 2025. PUB: 08/12/2025 06:00 AM/DISC: 08/12/2025 06:00 AM
CNA
a day ago
- Business
- CNA
Some F&B firms in Singapore selling blind boxes of leftover food to reduce wastage
Food firms in Singapore are jumping on the mystery box trend, selling surprise bundles of unsold food at a discount to cut waste and earn some extra income. Mostly done via mobile apps, it's proving to be a hit so far, with one getting up to around 160,000 sign-ups since it launched last year. Eugene Chow reports.
The Sun
2 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Top-rated app loved by millions to shut down as Microsoft reveals it's about to vanish from stores and stop working
AN APP that has been used by millions is being ditched. It will be phased ou t in just a few weeks. 1 The Lens PDF scanner has long been popular as it can quickly turn documents and whiteboards into shareable files. That, however, has not been enough to save it from being dumped by Microsoft. It will be retired on Android and iOS later this year. It comes as two popular apps used by millions of mobile users also shut down earlier this month. The scrapping of Lens PDF scanner, one of Microsoft 's most popular mobile utilities, has caught many users by surprise. One wrote on Android Authority's messageboard: "Well that's a dumb idea, it's the only useful Microsoft app aside from outlook, and it's the only one that functions without issue (especially when considering outlook). Another posted on the same board: "Very sad. That was a great app." Timetable for dumping Microsoft has reportedly announced that the phase-out will start in mid-September 2025. At this point, the new installs from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store will be disabled. The app will disappear from both stores by mid-November. Users will then be unable to create new scans entirely after December 15, as first reported by Bleeping Computer. Existing scans will remain viewable in the MyScans folder after the cutoff date. There is a silver lining, though. Microsoft is nudging people toward its Microsoft 365 Copilot app instead. That app offers many of Lens's core features, though it reportedly lacks some popular extras. Lens's demise is part of a broader Microsoft effort to upgrade its apps. In recent months, the company has, among other initiatives, announced the end of Microsoft Publisher in 2026. I paid £20 for Tinder and can't stand little-known loophole desperate guys use It has also scrapped Paint 3D from the Microsoft Store. Subscriptions stopped Mobile apps Pocket and Glitch also closed this month. Pocket was removed from app stores in late May, when sales of subscriptions also stopped. But Pocket's Premium subscribers may be owed refunds for the remaining time left on their subscriptions. A subscription for the read-it-later app costs $4.99 per month or $44.99 (£32.99) per year. So if you paid for an annual membership that will not be fulfilled, you should expect some money to be deposited back onto the card you used for payments. Mozilla, which owns the app, said annual subscribers will receive their refunds after 8 July. No action is necessary - just wait for the money to land. It's worth noting that while the app shut down this month, users have until October 8 to download their saved data before all Pocket data is permanently deleted. The Glitch app, aimed at web developers, is also handing out refunds to its subscribers. Those who forked out $96 (£70) for an annual Glitch Pro subscription and have paid time left will receive a refund. Users have until the end of the year to download their projects before all the data is wiped for good. Good Signals It's the app everyone is talking about right now... Signal is an encrypted messaging app that you can download for free on your smartphone. It allows one to one or group messages that can include files, voice notes, videos, images, voice calls and video calls. The app was created by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC. The Signal Foundation was formed in 2018 by Moxie Marlinspike and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton. Their aim is "to support, accelerate, and broaden Signal's mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous", meaning it could be used by everyone everywhere.
