Following the Bango Strategy Day presentations and having grown revenue faster than market expectations in 2021, several investors have asked Bango for a view on what will be key to growth in the digital services market over the next few years.
Bango is clear that it is content and services that drive growth in the digital economy.
Users pay for the content and services that appeal to them, and with almost everybody now connected to the internet, future growth comes from enabling more content and more services to be offered to consumers.
The biggest app developers that drive most revenues also spend the most on marketing to continue growing, and to retain their best customers. Alongside them, a whole range of new creators will produce new growth in the market, with a few of these becoming the leaders of the future. As an open platform, Bango is available to all content creators, increasing the probability that Bango will be powering the as yet unknown successes of the future.
Over the last decade, app stores provided the key distribution route for apps – 110B Google Play and 98B Apple Apps were downloaded in 2021. Both Google and Apple maintained a tight grip on distribution, and also on how consumers pay app creators for their content and services. Over the last few years, many service providers have opened up new direct routes to market outside of the app stores, as they seek to win new customers, use new payment methods and benefit from commercial models that are not supported by the app stores.
The general trend with the major streaming content services is moving towards bundling deals, for example with Telcos. Bundling has become a big trend for content creators that monetize by offering subscriptions to their services. For example, while Disney+ is available through Google Play, it is also available as a bundled offering through a growing number of telcos and other distribution partners. The Bango bundling delivery platform is used by these merchants to monetize distribution partnerships at scale. Increasingly, the partners themselves (in the telco, retail, energy and other sectors) standardize on our bundling distribution platform to optimize their performance as distributors of leading third-party content.
In short, the app ecosystem is opening up due to pressure from content creators to have more control over distribution and monetization, alongside new regulations that are unlocking the controls app stores have asserted in the past.
Over the next 5 years Bango expects to see:
- More direct monetization of content and services by digital merchants and app developers
- More bundling deals to boost user acquisition and reach
- New distribution channels emerging through alternative content stores (e.g. OneStore), specialized stores such as games platforms (e.g. Steam platform) and new forms of distribution (e.g. Digital Turbine on-device distribution)
- Continued growth in downloads and revenue through the app stores
The Bango strategy is to focus where the content providers go. Over the next 5 years, the major app stores will continue to play a vital role, but rapid new growth from content monetization will be fuelled by an open market including bundling of products, direct payment and new channels to market.
