Google says its app ad business is booming, with a billion installs in the last four months

Facebook has made a lot of money selling app install ads in the last few years. Now Google is, too.

Google says developers have generated three billion installs for their apps using Google’s ads, up from two billion in May. That is: Google’s ads have generated one billion installs in four months.

That’s a significant increase in a short period, which is what Google wants us to say when it releases a momentum stat like this. But it’s true!

It’s also true that in May, Google increased the size of its potential market significantly: It started letting advertisers use its “universal app campaign,” which places app install ads on Apple’s iOS devices.

So we may not see the same kind of spike in another four months.

In April, Facebook announced that it had reached the two billion app install mark.

The nice thing for both Facebook and Google is that even if the app boom is over and people are less interested in downloading apps, that doesn’t slow down the market for app ads.

In fact, you could argue that the glut of apps + app fatigue is good for their business, since developers need to work even harder to show off their apps and convince people to use them.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via