The app advertising market is set to increase by a staggering 136 per cent between 2017 to 2020, growing from the $27.1bn recorded last year to $64.1bn in two years’ time.

According to AppsFlyer’s global app market forecasts, marketing spend will grow at an average of 34 per cent year-on-year (YoY). Despite this, growth is projected to gradually decrease through to 2020, while increases in media costs, mobile usage, the number of paid campaigns, apps available, and mobile users overall will keep spend trending upward.

The report takes a more detailed look at North America, one of the world’s most predominant app markets. Here, app install ad spend growth is expected to double to $12.9bn by 2020, with the average YoY change at around 21 per cent.

Though AppsFlyer expects the growth in app installs to be significantly driven by marketing activities, the growth rate will not match the forecasted rise in media costs. According to the mobile app tracking and attribution analytics platform non-organic app installs will grow by 110 per cent through to 2020, while North American non-organic installs will increase by 73 per cent.

With both ad spend and growth rates of non-organic installs set to maintain the same ratio into 2020, AppsFlyer says that marketers will have be more efficient in their marketing efforts and media costs.

“To seize the competitive edge, marketers will need to become more data-savvy, but it’s no less essential to be threat-savvy,” said Shani Rosenfelder, head of content & mobile insights at AppsFlyer. “Fraudsters are vying for billions of dollars in revenue and securing the app economy will demand ongoing monitoring and protection.”