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Here at GameBiz, we help studios around the globe to maximize the value ads bring to their business. Over the years, we have worked with over 70 studios on more than a couple of hundred games and apps.
A year or so ago, we set out on this journey of sharing insights, benchmarks, and the learnings we have in our line of work. The real stuff. No guessing, no gossip, no hacks that don’t really work or can eventually get you into trouble.
Data, experiments, facts.
In our very first newsletter, we shared our biggest research, revealing the actual share of the market across mediation products. In today's twelfth edition, we are bringing you insights on the networks’ market share based on the data we have.
About the inventory
We hand-picked 15 different apps from our portfolio that had significant enough volumes and didn’t have any special circumstances, so we considered them relevant for this research. All of the data in this article is based on these 15 mobile apps (mostly free-to-play games but some non-gaming apps as well) that we are managing. All of them are mediated on Applovin MAX mediation. They vary in nature (from non-gaming, across hyper-casual, casual, and more strategy titles). The vast majority of the inventory is video (rewarded and interstitial), tier1 countries, with revenue pretty evenly distributed across iOS and Android. More details below.
Now that you’ve gotten to know our inventory, let’s take a look at some of the insights.
1. Only 4 ad networks have universal demand
There were 4 ad networks that were present in all 15 games we examined. You won’t be surprised by the list:
- Applovin. Includes both Applovin direct and exchange traffic. The vast majority of the traffic is generated by direct traffic (97.3% of revenue, to be exact). Publishers don’t really have an option to use MAX mediation without the Applovin network turned on.
- UnityAds - Similar demand as Applovin, relying primarily on gaming, performance campaigns, but the demand is not as vast.
- Meta Audience Network - The most user-friendly ads in the market, BY FAR. Rewarded video ads up to 30 seconds, interstitials are skippable after 5 seconds. Clear user interface, x buttons, no automatic clicks, no dirty tricks.
- Google AdMob - Probably the biggest ad demand source on the planet. A mix of games, various non-gaming apps, including utility, fitness, shopping, and various others. Brand demand. Same ad quality notes as Meta, but they partly gave in to the pressure Applovin put on the industry. More than a year and a half ago, they introduced “high-engagement ads” - up to 60 seconds in length for rewarded video and 15 seconds to skip on interstitials.
With all of this in mind, this is the mix of ad networks that absolutely every app publisher should start with when introducing ads into their app, even if they have a very limited scale. This mix will ensure no issues with fill rate and will give enough competition in the bidding stack, up until certain volumes, of course.
2. Well-known networks, non-existent market share
- Chartboost (LoopMe)
- HyprMX
- Ogury
- Pubmatic
- Smaato
- Verve Group
Ok, with 15 apps as a sample, obviously, the data on the smaller ad networks won’t be as precise. But we have a good mix of genres, as well as big and small apps when it comes to the inventory, so it is some reflection on the market conditions. These networks have no or very small presence in the apps we analyzed. A few things worth noting:
- Chartboost has never been a very strong network for us. We expected their potency to be bigger after LoopMe acquired them a year and a half ago, but apparently not. We tested them in Q1 2026, and their performance didn’t deliver.
- HyprMX and Ogury - Brand-only demand. This dataset might be somewhat unfair to these two ad networks, as their performance is strongest in Q4 and weakest in Q1, due to how brands and agencies allocate their budgets. It’s not uncommon for big publishers to integrate them for Q4 and remove them until next year, as they want to capture those brand dollars. But it is what it is. The fact is - even if we took Q4 data, their performance wouldn’t be a game-changer for your app. The volumes are simply not there, and HyprMX didn’t even manage to build a bidder yet, so they have to be integrated via a custom SDK adapter. Ogury does make its inventory available via a bidder.
- Pubmatic, Smaato, and Verve belong to the group of networks that are usually viewed as networks that are good for banner traffic. Even though Verve acquired Smaato five years ago, they are still operating as two separate networks in MAX, and the synergies between them have apparently not been enough to transform them into a significant enough player in the mobile market.
Here we have a completely opposite situation compared to the set of networks from the first point. These six ad networks wouldn’t be our first choice when considering new ad networks to test. They have limited volumes, are seasonal, or perform well on very specific inventories. This is the set of networks that’s “ok” to test if you’ve already using or you already tested all other networks that are more likely to perform.
3. Has UnityAds performance improved?
Unity has been under a lot of pressure ever since its merger with ironSource three and a half years ago. Exactly a year ago, they officially launched their AI-powered ad platform, Vector, and have since doubled down on their efforts to improve its performance. They have some notable names from the gaming space in their case study library, including Voodoo, Playrix, Homa, ZephyrMobile, Mattel163, and Unico Studio. They’ve also been releasing new SDK versions promising performance gains on both UA and ad monetization (most lately, version 4.18).
Looking at January to May 2026 data only doesn’t show any improvement, but expanding the window to 2025 makes it obvious that they’ve made some progress. Here, we took the data from our largest client for practical reasons. Specifically, in the first five months of 2025, the average value of their market share was 6.04%, while the average in 2026. was 9.72%. More than 50% growth in share, but also still very modest compared to Applovin’s share.
At the same time, their share of impressions has gone up from 2.57% to 4.91%, comparing the same periods.
4. ironSource direct is gone, exchange is still alive. What do the numbers say?
While Unity has been putting all of its energy into UnityAds and Vector, not much has been left for ironSource. As of 1st May 2026, they have officially stopped serving any direct traffic, BUT ironSource exchange remains. Depending on your specific app, ironSource exchange could have been generating even the majority of your ironSource revenue. Specifically among our clients, ironSource exchange was generating from 0% to 75% of all ironSource revenue. Let’s take a look at the trend of the share of revenue in the past five months.
ironSource’s share of the market was very modest to begin with (averaging 1.15% January - April this year) and was cut in half in May by the direct demand depreciation (0.55%).
If you want to minimize the number of SDK adapters you are using, you should by all means, do a proper AB test, removing ironSource to see what the impact on your bidding stack will be, but don’t simply remove their app-ads.txt lines until you’ve done your tests.
5. Meta Audience Network explodes at the end of January on iOS. What happened since?
We already covered in our newsletter #8 that Meta Audience Network had a big performance jump on iOS at the end of January 2026. The growth was in significant part driven by the change in their ad templates. You can read more about this in the original piece, where we covered all the details. The question is - what has their performance been like since?
As we can see, their overall share did grow (from 8.5% to 10.5%) and didn’t grow since (but has remained stable at this higher level).
Zooming into iOS only, where the changes have taken place, shows the same story. Meta’s share before the changes was 1.4%, while after the change has remained stable at around 2.7%. It remains to be seen what other experiments Meta will run in the coming period and how that impacts its performance.
6. Pangle launched in the US. What are the numbers telling us?
As it could be expected, “work in progress” is probably the most appropriate way to describe Pangle’s performance in the US. We can’t speak of any market trend because we don’t have enough data, but looking at its performance on one of the apps we are managing, its performance has been better than expected (still very, very modest, of course).
For example, based on this one app, February - May data:
- Pangle generated 0.95% of revenue in the US
- At the same time, they generated 1.3% of impressions in the US
- Their performance (share of revenue) was on par with ironSource in this period, and they outperformed DT Exchange and Liftoff Monetize (if I were DT or Liftoff, I’d probably ask a few questions).
- Pangle’s eCPM is among the lower ones in the stack (see the table below).
Experienced Ad Monetization Managers won’t be surprised, but less experienced teams should pay attention. There isn’t one silver bullet when it comes to ad network selection. The best mix of networks will depend on the ad formats you are using, the regional distribution of your users, mediation, scale, and much more. That’s why in the points below we bring more specific data.
7. Top performers are not the same on video and banner
On video (rewarded and interstitial), Applovin has a clear dominance, with more than half of the revenue generated by them. The table below shows the share of revenue per network on video.
However, banners are a different story. Revenue is much less concentrated than on video. Google takes a quarter of the revenue, and the rest is distributed across InMobi, UnityAds, DT Exchange, and others. Applovin takes the 6th position here.
8. IDFA makes a difference
Thanks to the limitations the lack of IDFA imposes on Meta Audience Network and Google, Applovin is beyond dominant on iOS. They have a 61.4% share of revenue. Google is far behind, with even Moloco and Mintegral above it. On Android, the situation is completely different. Applovin takes 39.5% of revenue, followed by Google, Meta, and UnityAds. See all data in tables below.
9. Specific regions may require specific networks
Depending on your app’s genre, organics, UA sources, etc., you may have a situation where a significant portion of your users is coming from the non-tier1 regions. In that scenario, you may want to consider networks that have strong demand in specific regions.
- Russia: AdMob and Meta Audience Network are not showing any ads in this region, which opens up room for other ad networks. According to our data, the strongest networks are: Applovin, UnityAds, DT Exchange, Mintegral, and InMobi. In cases where eCPMs are not very high, we’ve seen a nice increase from adding Yandex, lately also known as YangoAds (but in cases where eCPMs are high, they are not able to compete). We’ve also seen setups where BigoAds performs well in Russia, but again, not universally.
- LATAM, APAC. Pangle is the usual suspect as a network that might perform well in these regions, and that is worth testing.
- EEA, the UK, and CH. According to the data we have, this region is not much different than the United States or, in general, English-speaking countries. What is different is the fact that you absolutely should have a CMP (Consent Management Platform) set up if you have a significant number of users coming from Europe. Especially for the benefit of showing personalized ads from AdMob, but in general, more networks are coming under the umbrella of the IAB’s TCF framework (UnityAds joined in April this year). eCPM will be dramatically different (more specifically, lower) if you don’t have a CMP set up. If you are still not too familiar with the CMP, you can read here how the top 100 grossing games have responded to the CMP requirements.
10. Beyond market shares and eCPMs
Whether you are just starting out or you have a stable inventory but are looking to optimize your bidding stack, it is essential to look at the value the ad network can bring. What’s their market share? Do they have any particular strengths? What are their eCPMs in your strongest geos from apps similar to yours? But beyond these more obvious factors, you should also take into consideration:
- Ad quality. According to a study done by AdMob and Deloitte, 1 in 5 players will quit the game after a negative, ad-related experience.
- Account management and support. Networks now mostly serve ads via bidding, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t need to communicate with ad networks. When an issue arises (and sooner or later, there will be an issue to address), it’s great when you can reach an actual, human representative, and that person has reasonable response times and is actually able to help you.
Have you been surprised by any of the data we shared? We’d love to hear from you if your data matches ours or if you have a different experience from the one we shared here.
