Over a billion people play mobile games every day. The majority of mobile gamers play for over an hour each day.
A Kantar survey of 2,500 US mobile gamers confirmed they mirror the US adult population demographically and have disproportionately large spending power — mobile gamers tend to be financially secure consumers who regularly shop online for themselves and their families.
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70% make most of the purchase decisions for their household.
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71% shop online at least weekly; 77% spend $100+ per month online.
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71% view ads positively while playing.
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38% bought a product within three months of seeing a mobile-game ad, and 71% of them the same day.
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37% bought something they'd never considered.
How does targeting work?
AppLovin's AI engine predicts who's most likely to engage, convert, and drive value for your business, then puts your budget toward those users in real time. Set your goal and budget, and the model allocates spend toward users most likely to engage, convert, and become high-value customers. You can specify an audience strategy to target a specific type of customer:
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Universal campaigns optimize for purchases from both new and returning customers.
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Prospecting campaigns focus on purchases from new customers.
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Discovery campaigns target users who have never visited your site.
Where will my ads appear?
Ads are shown in a variety of popular mobile games such as Candy Crush, Solitaire, Sudoku, and Words With Friends. Ad placement is handled automatically. Across our network of apps, AppLovin's AI engine finds the users most likely to be interested in your product and make a purchase, and shows your ads to those users.
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Part 2
Creative
Do I need videos, images, or both?
Watch the video below to learn about the AppLovin ad format.
AppLovin can generate creatives for you for free
Creative volume is key to success on AppLovin Ads. We recommend adding videos and Interactives to your campaigns on a weekly basis.
AppLovin makes it easy to produce and test new ads. Once you install the AppLovin pixel, generative AI creative tools become available in your account. These tools turn content from your site and your product feed into new videos and Interactives, so you can regularly refresh your creatives without a production team.
What makes a top-performing creative on AppLovin?
Top-performing creatives follow the below best practices.
Because interstitial placements offer 5+ seconds of guaranteed attention and rewarded placements are unskippable for up to 60 seconds, short ads underutilize available attention. The majority of top-performing videos on AppLovin are longer than 30 seconds.
Most mobile gamers play with sound off, so captions improve accessibility and significantly boost conversion. Use bold, legible font and highlight benefit keywords with color or stickers. Videos with captions consistently outperform videos without captions. For example, videos with captions drove 64% higher Day 0 ROAS than (otherwise identical) videos without captions for Mellow Sleep in an October 2025 experiment.
Successful advertisers on AppLovin invest in longer-form storytelling that clearly communicates brand, product, and value. 85% of top-spending videos use voiceover; 84% of those videos use first-person narration.
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Angelino's Coffee
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Dose
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Ariat
Nearly half of top videos feature some kind of promotion such as a percentage or dollar discount, a BOGO-style offer, or a free item or service included with purchase.
Urgency messaging can also be highly effective, with phrases like “Sale ending soon,” and “Get yours before they sell out” helping to drive faster decisions.
Many top ads explicitly define a group for whom the product might be relevant, with examples like:
•“As empty nesters…”
•“As a new college grad with a budget…”
•“My husband is in his 30s and couldn’t find the right…”
•“Is it possible to get a flat stomach after 50?”
Many advertisers with greater spend have a portfolio of ads that appeal to multiple specific demographic audiences.
Incorporate social proof into your videos to give viewers confidence to make a purchase. Techniques include:
•Referencing the number of positive reviews (“That’s why over 100,000 women…”)
•Mentioning that the product went viral (“I finally got my hands on the viral…”)
•Suggesting that the product may sell out (“This frame is selling out like crazy…”)
Spend on AppLovin is split nearly evenly between Interstitial and Rewarded placements. AppLovin’s AI engine determines placement automatically.
Attention-grabbing hooks in the first few seconds are important for retaining engagement after the skip button appears in interstitial placements.
Slower builds, layered storytelling, and educating on product features often performs particularly well in rewarded placements.
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Spoonful of Comfort
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Ariat
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HexClad
Think of Interactives as a landing page inside the ad itself. The job of the Interactive is to drive action. Use Interactives to educate on your product features, share customer testimonials, product variants, or highlight limited time promotions.
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ButcherBox
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Crocs
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Foldie
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Gymshark
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The Farmer's Dog
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Wild Alaskan Company
checklist
Part 3
Campaign setup
How do I choose between Universal, Prospecting, and Discovery campaigns?
Choose an audience strategy based on your customer acquisition goals.
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Universal campaigns optimize for purchases from both new and returning customers.
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Prospecting campaigns focus on purchases from new customers.
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Discovery campaigns target users who have never visited your site.
Most brands start with Universal, then layer in Prospecting or Discovery as they scale.
How should I configure my campaign?
1. Goal type
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ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Best for multi-SKU brands, it maximizes revenue relative to ad spend.
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Cost Per Purchase (CPP): Minimize cost per transaction. Works well for single SKUs, subscriptions, or brands focused on CAC.
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Cost Per Lead (CPL): Minimize cost per lead. Available for lead gen and digital services businesses.
2. Audience strategy
See “How do I choose between Universal, Prospecting, and Discovery campaigns?” above for how to choose.
3. Day target
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Day 0 optimizes for same-day conversions. The right choice for most brands, as the majority of AppLovin-driven purchases happen the same day a user clicks.
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Day 7 optimizes for purchases within a 7-day window. Better suited for higher-AOV products or longer consideration cycles like furniture, mattresses, or high-ticket health products.
4. Geographic targeting
Select all countries you are able to service, grouping them into a single campaign. For optimal learning and performance, target all available regions you are able to service or ship to outside of Western Europe (not supported at this time).
5. Budget
Start with a daily budget that allows you to generate a healthy amount of purchases per day given your typical CPA. A budget that drives 10 purchases a day on your existing social channels is a good starting point to give AppLovin's AI engine plenty of signal to optimize quickly.
6. Creative
Launch with plenty of strong ads and add more as you scale. Focus on videos longer than 30 seconds and add captions on all videos. Use AppLovin's built-in creative tools to generate Interactives and upload your existing portrait image ads.
Ensure dynamic catalogs is enabled. Dynamic Catalog displays products or offerings personalized to each user. Advertisers that use it typically see higher conversion metrics than those that don't.
Ready for the quiz?
Complete the quiz to unlock $3,000 in matched ad credit. You’ll then have the opportunity to earn up to an additional $2,000 by watching customer videos.
