In March 2022, I wrote an article about the mediation space, RIP MoPub - MAX vs. ironSource is on. 10 questions publishers need to answer before choosing their mediation. MAX and LevelPlay (ironSource at the time) seemed like equally viable options, each one coming with its own set of pros and cons.
Fast forward to May 2025. and things have dramatically changed in these three years. The subjective feeling is that MAX is dominating the market while LevelPlay, once an equal competitor, is lagging behind dramatically when it comes to market share. Talking with industry colleagues, reading and hearing various voices online only emphasized this feeling.
But what are THE FACTS? Who holds the mediation market? How do mediation products compare? Will the situation change? Read on to find out all this and more.
To get a real understanding of how the ad monetization market is spread out across different mediations, we checked 341 games from 217 different publishers. This is exactly how many unique games are in the top 200 grossing and top 200 downloaded games, based on AppMagic data for March 2025. Here are a few things about the games in these lists:
To determine whether or not the game is using ads, we relied on the tag shown on each game’s Google Play Store page (“Contains ads”). Since this is not 100% accurate (some games without the tag contain ads and vice versa), we double-checked by downloading the game, the borderline cases that were suspicious.
Now, the crucial part of our methodology in figuring out which game is using which mediation. We relied on Creative Debugger from MAX, which is a feature incorporated by default into MAX integration, unless explicitly disabled by the publisher. So again, not 100% accurate, but more than good enough. According to MAX documentation, a certain gesture will trigger the debugger, which, for us, was a signal that the publisher is using MAX mediation. If the debugger doesn’t start, it means that they are most probably not using MAX unless the publisher has disabled it on purpose. This means that the numbers in the next section represent the worst-case scenario for MAX - the lowest possible share of the market.
From 173 games we downloaded (200 minus 26 without ads minus 1 not available in our region), we determined that MAX is being used by 108 games. This represents a whopping 62.4% of all games we downloaded.
From 62 games we downloaded (200 minus 130 without ads minus 8 not available in our region), we managed to start MAX Creative Debugger 22 times. This means we were able to confirm that MAX is taking a bit more than one-third of the market, or 36.1% to be precise.
Let’s put some color on these numbers. Why is MAX market dominance so obviously strong in the top downloaded list but not in the top-grossing list? There could be multiple potential reasons why - we will highlight some of them.
That is true. Ironically, the most important tool for optimizing your earnings per ad is not chosen by the Ad Monetization Managers anymore, but by the User Acquisition Managers or senior management. Applovin just has too much leverage on the UA side; they have access to so much supply, and they limit their ROAS campaigns to MAX publishers only. Another factor to be taken into consideration is where your competitors are, since they are going to drive those higher eCPMs. If you are a hyper-casual or a hybrid-casual game, the answer is probably - they are running their ad monetization on MAX, and they are running their UA on Applovin.
It seems that everything we pointed out previously about Applovin's strength on the UA side is resulting in them putting next to zero effort into their mediation product. Applovin’s focus, the very thing the company prides itself on, also means they are making zero compromises with the publishers, and that their feedback remains bluntly ignored. Examples are countless, but we will highlight only a few, just to make a point.
Despite putting way more effort into improving their mediation product, making it more flexible and much easier to use, Unity is losing the market share battle with Applovin on the grounds of their UA (in)capability. If you are an Ad Monetization Manager who is familiar with both mediations, it’s hard to watch.
At best, yes. Looking at the numbers, it might not be too far from the truth to say that we have a textbook example of a monopoly. That’s the current reality. At least amongst the top downloaded games.
There are other products in the market - AdMob by Google, FairBid by Digital Turbine, Appodeal (same company as Bidmachine), Loomit (previously X3M), and Chartboost (which is probably being dismantled after the recent purchase by LoopMe).
To be fair to Applovin, they won their share of the market with an amazing product. To be fair to publishers, this product is not mediation but UA, but it’s all the same nowadays, isn’t it?
On the top-grossing side, things are far less clear. As we said, MAX is mediating a significant portion of games there too (36.1%), but who’s mediating the rest? Based on the state of the products, it’s likely that LevelPlay is actually winning this one, taking probably more than MAX, while the majority of the remaining few games are probably mediated by AdMob.
Thanks to its UA product, Applovin has gained undisputed dominance in the top downloaded games. Yet, Applovin’s appetite is nowhere near satisfied. After buying MAX, SafeDK (anyone remember that?), Adjust, MoPub, and a failed merger proposal with Unity, they now have an eye out for TikTok.
On the other side, on a quarterly call last week, Matthew Bromberg, the CEO of Unity, shared that they are three months ahead of their original schedule to move the UnityAds network to a new, AI-driven platform - Unity Vector. So far, Unity Vector has achieved 15% - 20% lift in the number of installs and IAP purchases, compared to the previous model (Voodoo being among publishers who had an early opportunity to test Vector). Can Vector help Unity fight back and reclaim some of the trust from the hybrid-casual crowd?
If there’s something that we learned about mobile gaming in the past couple of decades, it’s that things are changing - sooner or later. From premium games to microtransactions, from Facebook’s golden area to not-so-good days, worsening ad quality, ATT, CMP, DMA, AI - things are evolving, and it’s just a matter of time before the next industry shift will challenge the current status quo. Even beyond the seismic industry-wide changes, a new challenger in the mediation space may arise.
What are your thoughts on the mediation market? Are the results of our research surprising? Which mediation are you using, why, and are you happy with it? What do you expect to happen in the space in the upcoming period? Don’t be shy - share your thoughts with us!
Effective July 16 this year, MAX will no longer support traditional (non-bidding) network instances in the waterfalls. Any network-certified SDK bidder (meaning they have an official MAX adapter supporting bidding built) is expected to transition to bidding-only by this date.
The only exceptions are Google Ad Manager (GAM) and networks without a certified SDK bidder, such as HyprMX. GAM will continue to function as usual, while networks that don't have a certified SDK bidder will need to be integrated via a custom adapter. You can find the documentation for HyprMX integration via custom adapter in the following links (Unity, iOS, Android).
To support bidding, your adapters must be:
However, since these minimum required versions were released long ago, we suggest updating them to the newest ones.
If you had good results with InMobi banners and DT Exchange as non-bidders, the best thing you can do is measure the negative impact, as the upcoming change is non-negotiable.
P.S. If you were wondering if it would be possible to continue using non-bidding instances for the networks that have a certified SDK bidder through a custom adapter that some networks have, the answer is NO.
As part of the Unity and ironSource unification, IS.com is going to be sunset. Moving forward, SDKs, adapters, and dependencies will need to be hosted on Maven Central. Make sure to migrate your dependencies to Maven Central by June 30, 2025. After that, SDKs won’t be accessible on IS.com anymore, so this migration is essential to maintain uninterrupted access to the necessary tools. In case you’re using
For your reference, here are the migration guides:
Unity announced last month that the Ad Quality tool is available and free of charge to everyone, even those not using LevelPlay mediation. To use it, you will have to integrate the SDK and create a Unity account (if you don’t already have one).
To improve authorization and transparency for publishers and advertisers, the IAB now requires you to include OwnerDomain in your app-ads.txt file. To do so, add the following line at the top of your app-ads.txt file (before all the networks):
ownerdomain=publisherexample.com (Please replace publisherexample.com with your own domain.)
Your OwnerDomain should match the seller’s domain in sellers.json and be accessible in a browser without redirects. If you don’t have a business domain, no worries—just use your site’s domain instead.
