Between 15% to 30% of in-app purchase costs typically go to the mobile platforms: Google and Apple.WASHINGTON (AP) - Senators put executives from YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat on the defensive Tuesday, questioning them about what they’re doing to ensure young users’ safety on their platforms. It’s a revenue opportunity that doesn’t require selling ads or taking users’ data, and it’s also a revenue opportunity that - if consummated on the web and not in an app - the platforms can keep more of. However, the example that TikTok is setting shows Facebook and the other social networks that in-app payments and purchases are a very real and very significant revenue opportunity, if they can make them work on their platforms. Essentially, the small sums that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snap are bringing in via in-app purchase are rounding errors for those companies’ overall revenues.

It’s important to note that in-app revenue is really only material for TikTok. “Its IAPs are similar to Facebook's in that users pay for coins which can be used to tip and pay for things from their favorite creators.” “TikTok has had IAPs since its very beginning and its app revenue last year was a whopping $1.5 billion,” Blacker says. Both numbers pale before its full-year revenue from last year. In 2020, the same quarter hit just $150 million. In Q4 of 2022, TikTok generated over $350 million in in-app revenue.

Daily revenue from Snapchat is hitting about $125,000/day, and growing steadily in 2023. Snap has been on this journey longer, and is making much more.

Small potatoes, perhaps, but also likely the beginning of something bigger. Twitter pulled in almost $900,000 in February. Instagram is hitting monthly in-app revenue of near $1 million in February.

Snapchat tik toks