Appfigures: Perplexity Million Dollar Competition to Drive 50% Growth in App Downloads by February 2025

Perplexity's Super Bowl marketing successfully drove downloads of its app. Unlike OpenAI and Google, the AI ​​search engine chose to forgo expensive Super Bowl ads and instead encouraged users to download its app and enter a contest to win a $1 million prize through an X post.

While Perplexity’s app didn’t rocket to the top of the U.S. App Store with this strategy, it did increase installs of its mobile app by about 50%, according to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas explained in an X post on Friday that users can enter the new round by downloading the Perplexity mobile app if they don’t already have it, then asking at least five questions on the app during the big contest. The company said it will select one winner with a $1 million prize.

The contest was a clever way to not only drive installs of the app, but also help familiarize users with how Perplexity’s AI-powered search works.

By asking users to ask five questions to enter the contest, Perplexity helped users overcome the initial learning curve of trying a new product. In addition, by requiring questions to be asked during the Super Bowl, the contest helped users come up with topics to talk about. After all, a major sporting event was on TV, and they were likely to pick up their phone at some point to look up data, facts, or news.

Appfigures said early estimates from the App Store showed Perplexity downloads rose to 45,000 on Sunday, up from an average of about 30,000 a day last week.

This also helped Perplexity's app climb up the US App Store charts. After X was released, it was ranked No. 6 on the productivity chart, but fell to No. 19 on Sunday morning, and then rose slightly to No. 16.

Perplexity's overall ranking of top apps also rose from 257th to 66th, while its previous high was 49th. According to rough estimates, if all goes well, by the end of Monday, the app's downloads could double compared to yesterday.

While Perplexity’s ad doesn’t have the opportunity to reach as large an audience as the Super Bowl ads that Google and Open AI created for Gemini and ChatGPT, respectively, it may do a better job of helping to showcase how its AI applications can be used.

In its ads, Google tried to paint a broad picture of how AI is integrated into consumers' lives, but the AI ​​use case it showcased — helping job seekers subtly mention their former job as a stay-at-home mom on their resumes — didn't necessarily resonate with a large number of consumers.

Meanwhile, OpenAI's ad has drawn mixed reactions, with some arguing that it fails to demonstrate the actual usefulness of the ChatGPT app, focusing instead on art and visuals rather than practicality.

Appfigures found no significant movement directly related to OpenAI and Google ads, but the firm noted that the apps received a large number of downloads regardless.

From Chinese Industry Information Station