Survey: US consumers spend an average $20.78/month on app subscriptions, with those subscribing to streaming and on-demand services spending $33.58/month
Mobile measurement firm Adjust has launched a subscription-tracking service and found that people in the U.S. spend an average $20.78 a month on app subscriptions.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adjust is entering subscription analytics just as the category it measures matures: US mobile app subscription revenue across the top 100 apps already jumped 21% in 2019 to $4.6B, and Sensor Tower built its franchise on exactly this kind of spending telemetry, from in-app purchase tracking on iPhones to streaming app revenue estimates.
The survey's segmentation matters more than the headline number: streaming and on-demand subscribers spend $33.58/month versus $20.78 overall, consistent with The Desk's later finding that household streaming spend climbed from $34 to $47/month through 2020 — the heavy-subscriber segment is where the money concentrates.
First-order effects
- App publishers gain a third-party benchmark for subscriber spending, putting Adjust in direct competition with Sensor Tower's established measurement business for the same analytics customers.
- For developers, the numbers sharpen an economics problem already visible in the corpus: with customer acquisition costs averaging $86.99 per subscription app user, a subscriber spending $20.78/month needs roughly four months just to cover acquisition.
Second-order effects
- Streaming services competing for the $33.58/month heavy subscriber face pressure toward bundles and annual plans to lock in share of a wallet whose growth is measured in single-digit dollars per month per person.
- Measurement rivals like Sensor Tower must respond with their own subscription-tracking products or risk losing publisher accounts to Adjust's dedicated offering.
Third-order effects
- If subscriber wallets plateau while acquisition costs stay elevated, the industry drifts toward consolidation — fewer, larger subscription bundles capturing the fixed ~$20-30/month consumers will spend, with analytics firms arbitrating who gets the shelf space.
The trend: Consumer app spending is completing its shift from one-time purchases to recurring subscriptions, and the measurement firms that quantify that recurring revenue are becoming the category's referees.