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Ever since IDFA depreciation back in spring 2021, Meta Audience Network’s performance on iOS has been negligible. Their share of overall ad revenue would often be below 1% and in "exceptional" cases it would reach 3% - 5%.
Last week, we were the first ones to share that Meta Audience Network’s revenue is on a dramatic incline. In today’s newsletter, we reveal all the details. Bear in mind that it is still SUPER early, so we will have to wait for several weeks to see if the numbers we see now are here to stay or on which levels they stabilize.
1. What happened?
On the 27th January 2026, Meta Audience Network’s revenue started raising. On the 28th and 29th January, their revenue was up several times over.
The growth happened on iOS only and rewarded video and interstitial ads only. Banner's performance was unaffected. This is exactly the data we analyzed below.
2. How did Meta’s performance change?
We collected data across 10 most representative apps in our portfolio (9 games from various genres and 1 non-gaming app). In the table below you can see comparison before (1st - 26th January 2026) and in the first couple of days after the change for Meta Audience Network (28th - 29th January 2026).
- Share of total ad revenue (went up between 3.5x and 15x, on average 7.8x)
- Revenue rank (went up the list by 3 to 9 positions, on average 6.5 positions, and reaching as high as #2)
- eCPM (increase from +36.3% to +295.1%, on average +125%)
3. Did the overall performance change?
Sadly, not for now. Out of the 10 apps we saw in the previous point, only one saw an increase in overall eCPM. That’s App 5, which also saw the highest increase in eCPM (+295%) so it makes sense that this increase spills over onto the overall performance. You can see below how overall eCPM (so all networks combined) looks for this app.
4. How were other networks affected by Meta’s growth?
Beside obvious shifts in ranking, there has also been a redistribution of revenue among ad networks. Both Applovin and UnityAds have generated lower % of overall revenue in the days of Meta’s increase.
5. Did Meta’s growth come from non-IDFA users?
Absolutely not. Despite inaccurate and factually untrue information that one could come across online these days, the fact is that non-IDFA users and impression opportunities have nothing to do with the growth we’ve seen. To demonstrate this, let’s take a look at one example (though we’ve verified this across dozens of games).
- Share of total Meta iOS revenue before the growth that came from non-IDFA traffic was 4.51%. In the growth period, that number is almost identical (4.45%).
- Revenue from IDFA-traffic in the case of this particular game was 16.8x (growth period vs baseline). We see almost exactly the same growth on non-IDFA traffic: 16.6x
- 95.6% of additional revenue came from IDFA traffic
- Just look at the graph below - almost all revenue is generated by IDFA-traffic
Although Meta might be working on building its non-IDFA revenue we can positively say that what we are witnessing now is not that.
6. So where did the growth actually come from?
At first, it wasn’t really clear where the growth was coming from. In July 2025. Meta announced they are bringing back the Advanced Mobile Measurement program (Eric Seufert estimates the impact of this in his article) and as reported by adexchanger, they also updated Andromeda in December 2025.
And though these changes may have their role in Meta’s success on iOS, they are not what’s driven the growth in this particular case. Instead, it seems that Meta has launched new designs for rewarded video and interstitial ads on iOS. Apparently, these designs were already launched on Android in 2025. At the time of writing, no details about what these changes exactly are are available.
At the time of writing, no details about what these changes exactly are are officially available. We wrap up this section by sharing here and here how a couple of Meta ads we got look like right now. One of them shows one ad from one advertiser, while the other has two advertisers showing two creatives one after another, within one ad.
7. What is Meta saying?
Nothing. 🤐 Meta refuses to make any comments for the time being.
8. How does the data look after this initial explosion?
After the initial growth, which was massive, Meta’s performance started going down. However, what we can see (for now) is that their performance didn’t go back to the previous level. Not even closely.
Below, you can see the revenue coming from Meta, on iOS, rewarded video and interstitial ads for the same 10 apps that we analyzed above.
If we (again) compare the period before (1st - 26th January 2026) with the period after (excluding the first couple of days - so 30th January - 02nd February 2026 is the “new” after period), we see that the growth is still there, it’s just not as big as it initially was. To be more precise, the growth is between +38% and +460%, an +183% on average. See more details per app below.
- App 1: 198.01%
- App 2: 91.01%
- App 3: 202.83%
- App 4: 217.99%
- App 5: 459.78%
- App 6: 172.32%
- App 7: 187.41%
- App 8: 88.23%
- App 9: 37.44%
- App 10: 163.19%
9. What should you do if you are not using Meta Audience Network on iOS?
Our advice is to integrate their SDK adapter and conduct an AB test, measuring the ad ARPDAU uplift you can get by adding them. Additional metrics to pay attention to include eCPM, share of revenue and share of impressions coming from Meta, but also how they influence other ad networks. Bear in mind that Meta still has one of the friendliest ad templates in the market so even if you’re not making a great deal of additional revenue by adding them, the benefit of having more ads that are user friendly should have some weight in your decision.
10. In summary…
- Meta significantly improved its performance on iOS, rewarded video and interstitial ads. Banner performance hasn’t changed.
- In the initial couple of days, the growth in share of revenue was x3.5 and x15 with eCPM growing on average by +125%
- After the initial boom, the performance went down, but not to the previous levels. Meta’s share of revenue is currently +38% to +460% higher across the portfolio of GameBiz clients.
- If you are not using Meta at the moment, you should definitely test it.
