Ad Monetization Newsletter May '25: Max Vs LevelPlay. The Facts!

10 Things You Want to Know About Mediation Space in 2025

Context

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.

Methodology

To get a real understanding of how the ad monetization market is spread out across different mediations, we checked 368 games from 217 different publishers. This is exactly how many unique games there are across:

• The top 200 grossing games, which generated 3.5 billion USD in IAP revenue of the $4.8 billion that were generated by the top 1,000 grossing games (capturing almost three quarters of the market), and

• Top 200 downloaded games, which generated 1.1 billion downloads of the 2.3 billion downloads that were generated by the top 1,000 downloaded games (capturing a bit less than half of the market).

• Numbers are based on AppMagic data for March 2025. 

Here are a few things about the games in these lists:

• From the top 200 downloaded games, 28 do not contain ads. 1 game was not available for download in our region. This means we further analyzed 171 games.

• From the top 200 grossing games, a majority did not have ads. To be precise, 132 of them, while 8 were not available for download in our region. This left us with 60 games to analyze further. 

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, in the borderline cases that were suspicious.

Now, the crucial part of our methodology in figuring out which game is using which mediation. 

At first, we relied on Creative Debugger from MAX, which is a feature incorporated by default into MAX integration, unless explicitly disabled by the publisher. According to MAX documentation, a certain gesture will trigger the debugger which is a signal that, without a doubt, the publisher is using MAX mediation. This is the most accurate part of our methodology. 

For the remaining games, we relied on:

• Four independent, reliable, and knowledgeable industry sources. We do not have the permission to disclose their names, so they shall remain anonymous.

• To make sure this information was indeed credible, we went even a step further and verified the information ourselves. How? We downloaded the APKs that are available online and inspected for parts of the code that are referencing ad mediations and networks. In the end, we were able to confirm mediations for the vast majority of games that our industry sources covered. Only a handful (exactly a dozen, to be precise - including both lists) were not confirmed by us and rely exclusively on the mentioned industry sources. 

Combining these approaches, we were able to gather the most precise information on this subject that has ever been made available to the general public. No speculation, no hearsay, none of our personal preferences or feelings involved. 

Absolute dominance in the top downloaded space

From 175 games (200 minus 28 without ads minus 1 not available in our region, plus 4 games that we are counting twice because they use two mediations simultaneously), we determined that MAX is being used by 128 games. This represents a whopping 73.1% of all games we downloaded. 

MAX is mediating more top-grossing games than all other mediations combined

From 60 games we downloaded (200 minus 132 without ads minus 8 not available in our region), we managed to confirm MAX is used in 33 of them. This means that MAX is being used by more than half (55% to be precise) of the top 200 grossing games that are monetizing with ads.

What about other mediations?

Good question! Here is a complete overview for each mediation available in the market.

Mediation Market Share: Top Downloaded Games

1. MAX: 73.1%
2. AdMob: 11.4%
3. LevelPlay: 5.7%
4. Own: 4.6%
5. FairBid: 3.4%
6. Unknown: 1.7%

What’s surprising is how well AdMob is holding up, given how little industry is talking about them. In the top-downloaded list, they even have a two times higher market share than LevelPlay. In the top-grossing list, it’s the other way around. 

Mediation Market share: Top Grossing Games

1. MAX: 55.0%
2. LevelPlay: 25.0%
3. AdMob: 13.3%
4. Unknown: 6.7%

The shares above represent a minimum for each mediation listed, since we had a few games for which we weren’t able to determine which mediation they are using, and it could be that they are using one of the mediations mentioned in the tables. 

What do these numbers mean?

Let’s put some color on these numbers. MAX holds a leader position in both lists, but one cannot help but notice that they are not as strong in the top-grossing list as they are in the top downloaded list. There could be multiple potential reasons why - we will highlight some of them.

• The nature of the games in these two lists is completely different. Remember - there were only 32 games that were present in both lists, many of them without ads. The top downloaded list contains games that are much more casual, a number of them being hyper-casual or hybrid-casual, while a majority of the remaining games would be qualified as casual. Top-grossing games rely on IAPs much more, ads are not a priority.

• Before we move on, a quick fun fact. Out of 32 games that are present on both top downloaded and top-grossing lists, only 11 contain ads. Out of those 11, 5 are mediated on MAX, 3 on AdMob.

• After manually checking all of these games, we found that the average age of the games on the top downloads list is around 4.5 years, while the games from the top grossing chart have been around much longer - 6.4 years (all games) or 7.4 years (only those that qualify for the mediation check). Older, top-grossing games are more likely to get a bigger portion of their users from organic sources, and are more likely to rely on using Meta, maybe influencer marketing, while top downloaded games are more likely to rely on ad networks, especially Applovin, which has a clear advantage on the UA side. Here kicks in the infamous synergy between UA and ad monetization. Applovin has been insisting on these synergies so much that it systematically refuses to allow publishers to run ROAS campaigns if they are not using MAX mediation, making top downloaded games more likely to use MAX.

• Since top-grossing games don’t see ad monetization as their priority, it is possible that they had other mediation (AdMob, LevelPlay, FairBid) integrated a long time ago (3+ years), and they simply haven’t prioritized testing out MAX since. 

• Top-grossing games are more conservative when it comes to ad quality. Now, if you are not too familiar with the mediation space, you might ask what this has to do with ad quality. Isn’t ad quality determined by the choice of networks and not mediation? Well, yes and no. It’s true that different networks have different practices in terms of their ad creative templates, positions of buttons and other UI elements, creative behavior (minimum time to skipping the ad or until the reward can be claimed) and that impacts overall user experience with ads and ad quality, but your mediation is an important factor in distributing your impressions - one network can win x% of impressions in one mediation while winning double in another mediation (usually their own). Still not convinced? Here’s some data to show you what we mean. Numbers are based on GameBiz clients’ data for March 2025.

So both Applovin (including Applovin Bidding and Applovin Exchange) and Unity (including UnityAds, ironSource, and ironSource Exchange) generate 4x more on their own mediation (when they are the host) than on the other mediation (when they are just a guest). And to be clear, yes, the Exchanges are present only on the host mediation, but they are definitely not the reason for the differences. 

It’s also worth noting that, if you are using MAX mediation, you can expect that Applovin will be serving around half of your impressions, while with LevelPlay, the host networks will be generating a far lower share of all impressions.

Mediation is no longer an ad monetization decision?

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.

What is the reality of MAX mediation beyond their Applovin UA strength?

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.

• For a couple of years now, Applovin has not published any major features, any major upgrades to their MAX dashboard, not a single metric added for general availability. They did come up with multiple ad units and a 5-second refresh rate, but even with these features, there is a caveat. In the past few months, they’ve been advising publishers to stop using multiple ad units altogether. In their words, multiple ad units don’t result in the benefits they used to, and they have a negative impact on latency, which can damage the overall performance. When it comes to a 5-second refresh rate, it is unlocked only for select publishers. No general availability, no negotiations. Period. 

• Their ad quality product is light years behind LevelPlay’s. Fewer networks available, fewer metrics (no churn rate), difficult to use, etc.

• Even basic metrics, which have been requested by publishers for years, are nowhere to be seen - fill rate, eCPM buckets, latency.

• Not only are the new features nowhere on the horizon, but the existing features are being removed left and right, without taking publisher feedback into consideration. Direct deals feature, landscape creatives, support for COPPA, or under-18 traffic. Want to check some reports for a longer period of time? Forget about it - some data is removed after 4, some even after 2 weeks. On top of it, at one point, they removed the possibility to change the eCPM floor for Applovin instances (when used outside of MAX) or to even create two instances of the same price, even if they are used for different games. If you want to create an instance with a price higher than $100, good luck with that!

• Bidding only. Publishers are given deadlines for when a certain network will be available as bidding only. Even if they have multiple AB tests showing that, for that publisher, that specific network performs better via waterfall instances. In certain cases, those deadlines are soft but only on paper. For example, you can keep using DT Exchange instances after the deadline, but if you make ANY changes (not only on DT Exchange but any change whatsoever), you won’t be able to save those changes, so you are forced to move to bidding.

• While we were writing this article, Applovin took it a step further. Past 16th July, no instances will be available for use for any network that has an official SDK bidder available. That includes pretty much all relevant ad networks. The only notable instances that can be used after this deadline are those from HyprMX and GAM.

• Ironically, even though they have shifted all major networks to bidding only within MAX, there is not a single indication that the Applovin network will be available in LevelPlay via bidding. On AdMob mediation, Applovin bidder is available, but it rarely generates a meaningful share of the revenue, while Applovin contacts advise to use a hybrid setup (so both Applovin bidder and instances at the same time - the setup which is not allowed on MAX for years now).

• Fewer options than ever to control the ad quality (skippability, granting rewards). Those that are lucky enough to reach Applovin support will have to confirm that all other networks have the same or more conservative ad quality settings than those requested from Applovin. It is also not possible to block any ad via the dashboard. 

What is the reality of other notable mediations?

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.

On the other hand, AdMob mediation has traditionally been behind both LevelPlay and MAX - in terms of the featureset available, UI, metrics, updates, network availability, etc. However, lately, they’ve shown some signs of improvement (more networks and metrics available, better UI), and they are promising a bunch of updates in the coming months. 

What about the actual performance?

Mediation AB testing (or even just migration) is not something that happens often, so even with our extensive experience in the industry, the actual sample size is quite small, and it's impossible to give a definite answer.

With all that out of the way, even in terms of pure ad monetization performance, MAX has shown a slight edge over the competition, however, we would like to highlight that this is not a universal rule.

For your specific game, it's completely possible that the best performance is going to be delivered by LevelPlay or even some other mediation. Some of the clients that we work with have different games on different mediations, exactly for that reason. 

Is the mediation market in mobile games competitive? Do we have an oligopoly, duopoly, or even a monopoly?

You have seen the numbers. MAX controls more than half of the market, no matter how we look at it, while MAX, LevelPlay, and AdMob together control more than 90% of the market. That’s one, two, three companies - Applovin, Unity, and Google. 

There are other products in the market - FairBid by Digital Turbine, Appodeal (same company as Bidmachine), Loomit, and Chartboost (which is probably being dismantled after the recent purchase by LoopMe), but we can see that at best, their combined share of the market is less than 10%.

Beyond just the numbers and formal definitions of oligopoly, duopoly, or monopoly, try to answer a simple question. What choice do publishers ACTUALLY have? If they don’t want to use MAX, they’ve shut off a major source of user acquisition. UA is already hard as it is, even without cutting yourself off from such an enormous demand source (completely or their ROAS optimizer only).

Of course, there are games for which Applovin (or even performance marketing in general) is not an important demand source, and they might have more options on their plate.

Now go back to the question and judge for yourself.

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? 

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 a couple of weeks ago, 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? 

What's next?

If there’s something that we learned about mobile gaming, 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. 

• Loomit is coming with a new value proposition  - mediation of mediations. Using multiple mediations at once or switching seamlessly from one to another is an idea that sounds good on paper but is yet to get bigger traction in the market (or not). It looks like it won’t be long before others come up with an initiative like this.

• AdMob seems to finally be waking up. As mentioned, their product team promises numerous improvements to their mediation product (about time!), and if they deliver, they may not only be catching up with MAX and LevelPlay, but they may even be taking the lead when it comes to the feature offering. If they can create enough synergies with their own UA side of the business, they may be able to challenge Applovin.

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 this space in the upcoming period? Don’t be shy - share your thoughts with us!