Social Networking Has Shortest, Most Frequent App Sessions

Time with apps is increasing. That’s according to a new analysis from Localytics, which finds that overall time spent with apps has grown by 21 percent year-over-year. Previously comScore reported that app usage now represents more than 50 percent of total time spent with digital media. In its blog post this morning Localytics said that […]

Chat with MarTechBot

mobile-apps-collage-ss-1920

Time with apps is increasing. That’s according to a new analysis from Localytics, which finds that overall time spent with apps has grown by 21 percent year-over-year.

Previously comScore reported that app usage now represents more than 50 percent of total time spent with digital media.

In its blog post this morning Localytics said that app session length has remained fairly constant (5 – 7 minutes) since last year. What has changed is session frequency. Users are now opening apps more often: 11.5 times per month vs. 9.4 times in 2013.

Localytics_Time In App

The chart above reflects those app categories that saw the greatest increase in time spent since 2013. The graphic below shows average session length (orange) compared with number of app sessions per month (blue).

Social networking apps, for example, have shorter but more frequent sessions that other app categories: 25 per month. The music category, which also saw the most growth in time spent over the past year, has the longest session length of any of those examined. That’s followed by entertainment, games and sports.

Localytics_Time in App Engagement

ComScore and other third party data reflect that the market is dominated by a handful of high profile apps. However there are highly engaging and frequently-used apps not in the comScore “top 15” (e.g., Snapchat, Amazon, eBay).

Localytics collected these data between August 2013 to August 2014. The company says its data are based on an analysis of “50 billion data points monthly.”


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

Get the must-read newsletter for marketers.