About half of internet users ages 10 to 41 spend money on video games worldwide, and younger users are more likely to cough up.

Since seeing a major boost at the start of the pandemic, mobile gaming app downloads have moderated but held steady. In Q1 2022, there were 14.3 billion downloads of mobile games worldwide, 1.4% more than the same quarter in 2021.

Amid TikTok’s meteoric rise, many marketers may be wondering whether YouTube is still relevant. The short answer is yes. But YouTube will need to carve its own niche in creators, commerce, and short video to stay relevant in 2022 and beyond.

Marketers across five leading verticals all allocated more than 50% of video impression share to connected TV (CTV), according to a 2021 Innovid report, illustrating CTV’s position as a mainstream way of consuming content.

Though video gaming has been around for decades, it was the entertainment of choice for many during the pandemic.

Capital One was the most downloaded US banking app between January and April 2022, with 5.0 million net new installations. Digital-only contender Chime took the No. 2 spot, with 4.7 million, while Chase came in third, with 4.1 million net new installs.

US consumers will form new patterns of device use as pandemic norms become habits that are here to stay. This includes usage of mobile and other devices returning to pre-pandemic growth levels. Our forecast for time spent with mobile, connected TV, and other devices show businesses where they should invest.

US adults are spending more time watching YouTube on connected TVs and less time watching it on mobile devices. This year, for the first time since we began our forecast, less than half of time spent with YouTube will be on mobile, as viewers pivot to watching these videos on the same screen as their TV programming, separate from their TikToks and Instagram Reels.

Research shows that consumers engage with 95% of SMS marketing messages within three minutes of receipt, illustrating the potential of this fast-growing and effective marketing channel.

The average number of smartphone apps used in the US will decrease over the next few years, following a pandemic-driven bump in 2020 that did not change the overall trend. This year, users will access an average of 20.4 apps each month, a figure that will drop to 19.7 in 2026.

The internet will have 4.55 billion users worldwide this year, up 2.6% over 2021. This amounts to 57.4% of the general population.

US mobile gaming ad revenues will reach $6.26 billion in 2022, up 14.0% from $5.49 billion in 2021. Healthy double-digit growth will continue through 2024.

Since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, mobile apps have been scrambling to stake a claim in the metaverse—on paper at least. In November, the month after the rebrand, 29 apps worldwide added “metaverse” to their name or description, more than double the number in October. This trend hasn’t wavered: In the three months since Meta emerged, 86 more apps have featured the buzzword in their name or description.

It should come as little surprise that Amazon was the top US shopping app in 2021, downloaded 40.0 million times that year. More remarkable is Shein’s leap to the No. 2 spot, up from seventh place in 2020. The Chinese fashion giant had 32.0 million US downloads under its belt in 2021, 68% more than the year prior.

Chime was the most downloaded US mobile banking app in 2021, with 12.8 million downloads, up 16% from 2020. Other neobanks had a huge year as well: Current posted 67% growth in downloads, and Varo skyrocketed to 10th place with a 529% increase. That said, traditional banks took the rest of the top five positions.

In 2021, 233 mobile apps crossed the $100 million mark in consumer spending worldwide, and just under 75% of them were games. That’s down from about 82% in 2020, as more nongaming apps passed that milestone than their gaming counterparts. Still, games continue to drive much of the consumer spending in the multibillion-dollar mobile ecosystem.

TikTok was the No. 1 mobile app in the US last year, with 94.0 million downloads, a 6% increase over 2020. Runners-up Instagram and Snapchat reached 64.0 million downloads and 56.0 million downloads, respectively, meaning the three most downloaded apps in the US were all photo- and video-sharing platforms.

In 2021, mobile finance apps reached 573.1 million downloads in the US, up nearly 19% from 481.9 million in 2020.

Mobile app gaming has managed to hold on to its pandemic-driven success and then some, reversing our previous predictions that time spent gaming with mobile apps would decline in the US after 2020.