Localytics revealed 40 million rich notifications – push notifications including images, GIFs, and videos – were sent to users in March 2017, up from 5 million in December 2016.

The feature was launched by Apple for the iOS 10 six months ago and Localytics said its customers using the service saw an average 30 per cent increase in engagement.

“While adoption started out slowly, it’s seen some hockey puck growth over the past few months,” the company noted in a report, adding: “that number is only expected to grow once brands realise the substantial increase in engagement that rich push notifications are generating.”

Justina Perro, senior content marketing manager at the mobile engagement platform provider, said the offering is important because although “push notifications have been the darling of mobile marketing since their birth in 2009” nothing new was added to the tech “apart from the onset of emojis”.

“User segmentation and personalisation have come a long way since the birth of push notifications and is now the centre of any world-class mobile app marketing strategy. But as far as the notification itself, it’s been well overdue for a facelift,” she explained.

Perro believes rich push notifications enables app marketers to connect with their audiences in a meaningul way, improving users’ experience and engagement.

Localytics also predicts rich push noticiations “will be the gold standard of mobile notifications, and we’ll forget all about plain text,” in the coming years.

The report said house hunting app Redfin was making good use of the feature, with its push notification alerts for new houses including pictures of houses and detailed listing information.

It also cited news app Mic as an example: its rich notifications can be expanded to get a full synopsis of a news story, straight from the homescreen.

Perro said more apps need to make use of rich notifications instead of playing it safe and sticking to what they know, a strategy which “doesn’t bode well in the mobile app world.”