How will app usage change once COVID-19-related restrictions are lifted?

That's the question mobile app marketers are asking themselves, and our new "Mobile Life After Lockdown" report has some insights. The pandemic turned the mobile app world on its head as stay-at-home orders drove upticks in some mobile categories while deflating others. As restrictions slowly start to lift around the world, programmatic advertising engagement data has formed a picture of what the future likely holds.

"Mobile Life After Lockdown” analyzes data from the open programmatic advertising ecosystem to predict the category-specific impact of lifted restrictions on mobile applications. The report’s analysis concluded that:

• Out-of-home dining apps can expect an increase in engagement of more than 450 percent as mobile users return to their favorite restaurants
• Dating apps will likely see a roughly 235 percent increase in engagement levels as app users seek to socialize after a long and sometimes lonely quarantine
• Gaming apps, which saw 200-400 percent increases in engagement during lockdown, will retain the players they acquired even as restrictions are lifted
• Travel apps will be the slowest to bounce back even as local restrictions end.

To understand how the events of 2020 continue to shape the mobile landscape and what they can teach marketers about the months ahead, Moloco analyzed 100+ million bid requests across multiple countries and app categories between January 1, 2020 and January 31, 2021. The report focuses primarily on data from Australia thanks to its well-defined COVID timeline and similarity to major markets like the US and Canada in terms of market behavior.

All data in the “Mobile Life After Lockdown” report was gathered from the open programmatic advertising ecosystem via the Moloco Cloud automated mobile ad buying platform. By connecting mobile marketers to the world of programmatic supply through the industry’s leading exchanges, Moloco Cloud provides complete control over programmatic advertising operations while leveraging proprietary machine learning algorithms to maximize campaign performance.

Click here to download the full report.