Most app teams study the app ranked right above them. That is why every category starts to look the same.
But the best new formats usually appear somewhere else first.
Street pranks, AI-generated lamp videos, music lessons, cooking close-ups.
These creators know how to win attention without thinking about app installs. That is exactly why their formats are worth studying.
Here are all four side by side, each working a different niche, and each showing a format an app could easily replicate.
Uncomfortable Prank Shows
@bxuxpa0pk6 runs his TikTok like a street prank series. The structure repeats every time. He walks up to a stranger, takes their photo, changes it with AI, then shows them the fake evidence as if it were real.
The hook is the reaction. The viewer knows something is off while the stranger does not, and the video keeps going with drama, shock and tension.
For AI apps, this beats another before-and-after demo. The product stays visible, but the real format is the confrontation.
Rejection as a Sales Engine
@velvetsarts1 sells handmade lamps through a repeatable drama loop. Each video starts at a market, where people ignore the lamp, mock it, or walk past it. Then it cuts to the production process behind the piece, the workshop and the hours of work that went into it.
That contrast is the format. The rejection gives the viewer someone to root for, and the workshop footage gives the product value. The catch is that all of it is AI, including the finished lamp, and most viewers never notice, which makes the result feel more valuable than a normal product demo would.
Any app with a real creation process, founder story, or user transformation could run the same structure. Open on rejection, then show the work that makes the product worth caring about.
The Teacher on the Student's Side
Study apps spent the last year on AI-faked teachers shouting at students in classrooms. It worked, and it made the whole category feel identical.
@author.teacher.nicholas moves the other way. He is a real teacher who plays alongside his students rather than performing authority over them, and the appeal is warmth.
He feels like he understands the student and shares their interests.
That could be the next turn for study apps, with less pressure and more guidance, a teacher who feels like help rather than another person yelling before an exam.
The Crunch Before the Recipe
In food, nutrition, and cooking, nobody needs to show their face, and most creators in the space already know it. The pull is sensory. @hanankitchen22 is not far off from any other cooking account except for one move: every video opens with a close-up squeeze, press, or crunch of the food right against the lens.
It is a small thing that resets the whole video. The sound and the texture land in the first half-second, before the viewer decides to scroll. Her best clips reach 10M+ views on the strength of that one cue, and the gap between a 10K video and a 1M one can come down to exactly that.
The Next Format Starts Elsewhere
None of these creators started with an app growth playbook, and that is what makes them worth studying.
Each one found a repeatable way to hold attention in a different niche, and each format maps cleanly onto a product category.
The app teams that move fastest will be the ones watching this layer, not just the app ranked above them. The format already exists and the audience already reacted, so the only question left is which app brings it into their category first.