data.ai: Application performance surpasses games in 2023, with user spending reaching $64 billion, an 11% year-on-year increase.

On March 7th, data released by data.ai showed that in 2023, app performance surpassed games, with user spending increasing by 11% to $64 billion, driving a rebound in the entire industry. In fact, among the top 50 publishers, the number of publishers focusing on non-gaming content has increased from 11 in 2022 to 13. User spending on social and entertainment apps saw double-digit growth, increasing by 10% year-on-year to reach $29 billion. In 2023, driven by popular social and entertainment apps TikTok and YouTube, ByteDance (#2) and Google (#3) saw a surge in in-app purchase revenue, with a combined annual user spending reaching nearly $10 billion. In 2023, Disney climbed to 6th place with $2.7 billion in non-gaming revenue, Warner Bros. Discovery rose to 19th place with $1.4 billion, and Amazon jumped 5 places to 23rd with $1.2 billion. Tencent maintained its top spot on the rankings for the seventh consecutive year with revenue of $8.7 billion. Dream Games saw the most significant revenue growth. Game spending in 2023 dropped to $107 billion (a 2% decrease), while downloads remained relatively stable at 880 billion thanks to hyper-casual, simulation, and action categories. Led by flagship game Honor of Kings, Tencent remained the top-grossing game publisher for the seventh consecutive year despite a slight decline in total revenue. Activision Blizzard remained in 4th place with a modest 2% growth. Scopely (#14) and Dream Games (#16) were two successful game publishers who made a comeback. Scopely's user spending soared and moved up 19 places after the successful release of Monopoly GO: Family Board Game. Dream Games stood out on the list with their star product Royal Match, with a 133% year-on-year increase in user spending, climbing 26 places and having the largest increase. 27 out of the top 50 companies are from the Asia-Pacific region. Companies headquartered in the Asia-Pacific region dominated the list, with 27 out of the top 50 companies coming from that region and contributing 52% of user spending. The US had the most number of popular publishers, totaling 18 (36% of total share), followed by China with 12 (31% of total share) including Tencent, ByteDance, miHoYo, NetEase, 37 Entertainment, Lilith, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, Alibaba Group, IM30, Ultrapower, Baidu, and Yostar, in that order according to annual user spending rankings. See below for the 2024 Publisher Awards list: