Advertising Technology Blog

Kantar's Media Reactions report ranks TikTok #1 for innovation, ad spend growth in 2026, and consumer attention. It reflects rising trust, creator content demand, and social commerce trends.

The 2025 AppDev Awards highlight five mobile games that excelled in areas like collaboration events, social features, minigames, new releases, and long-term evolution. Key insights for ad ops include leveraging strong IP crossovers (e.g., Diablo Immortal x WoW), faction-based social events (Wild Rift x Arcane), high-revenue minigames (Merge Mansion), and sustainable monetization (Pokémon TCG Pocket). Brawl Stars' revival through collaborations, system updates, and live events offers a masterclass in user engagement. These strategies can inform ad targeting, monetization, and retention tactics.

AppsFlyer's Creative Optimization tool centralizes creative performance data, detects fatigue early, and enables cross-geo/network comparisons. AI-powered tagging dissects ads by elements like tone, content, and timing, revealing why ads succeed. This eliminates guesswork, improves budget allocation, and accelerates ad iteration for UA teams.

YouTube's Demand Gen boosts conversions per dollar by 26% with AI improvements. New features include conversion lift, platform comparable columns, omni-channel bidding, local offers, and promotion assets.

Rewarded video ads generate 47x higher eCPMs than banners in non-gaming apps, according to Mintegral and Insightrackr H1 2025 data. iOS outperforms Android, with Entertainment and Business & Finance apps leading at 7.1x and 3.7x baseline eCPM. Regionally, North America's Lifestyle apps exceed APAC by 12x, while APAC leads e-commerce at 5x Europe. LATM e-commerce rewarded video eCPM reaches $8.20. Developers should prioritize rewarded and interstitial video ads, leveraging in-app bidding and creative tools to maximize revenue.

Adjust and Google Ads launch a web-to-app handbook. Users view 4.2x more products in apps, with 3x higher conversion rates. The guide covers campaign setup, attribution, deep linking, and optimization strategies for mobile advertisers.

Non-gaming apps surged in H1 2025, with global entertainment downloads exceeding 2.1 billion (36% YoY). Utility apps grew 72%, short drama 679%. Indian apps like JioHotstar (768% surge) and Kuku TV gained traction. Revenue models vary: entertainment/utility use IAA, while lifestyle/finance rely on IAP/subscriptions. Mintegral helps developers optimize ad monetization with in-app bidding and premium formats.

Meta announced at its Brand Building Summit major ad product updates. Reels Trending Ads expand to all advertisers with a sales rep, boosting unaided awareness by 20%. Threads, now with 400M monthly active users, introduces carousel ads and simplified campaign setup. Value Rules now apply to awareness and engagement objectives, delivering 2x more high-value conversions. Landing page view optimization reduces cost per view by 31%. These updates leverage AI to help brands tap into cultural moments and drive measurable results, with campaigns on Meta being 66% more cost-effective at brand building than average channels.

MyTheresa uses App Store Events and premium in-app messaging to drive luxury app engagement, but its hidden referral feature and lack of attribution limit growth. AppsFlyer data shows referral traffic converts at 6.2% to install and 9.1% to purchase. To unlock viral potential, brands should surface referrals with exclusive rewards and use deep linking. Measurement is key to connect installs, personalization, and referrals to LTV.

Asset Studio, powered by Google AI, streamlines creative workflows by generating on-brand assets, maintaining brand consistency with style references, and enabling quick collaboration through shareable previews.

AI Max for Search campaigns is now globally available in beta. It integrates Google AI for one-click optimization. New experiments and text guidelines enhance brand safety and performance.

Holiday shopping has extended from October through New Year, driven by AI-powered retail tools. Google Ads enables brands to connect with shoppers via AI solutions like AI Max for search optimization and omnichannel bidding for in-store/online integration. Notable results include Rare Beauty's 7X ROAS, L'Oréal's 2X conversion rate at lower cost, and Louis Vuitton's 41% higher omnichannel ROAS. Creative AI tools like Gemini and ImageFX boosted Hatch's click-through rates by 80%. Loyalty personalization drove 20% higher click-through for Sephora. Decision-makers should prioritize AI adoption, omnichannel strategies, and loyalty engagement.

The article discusses consumer behavior shifts with reduced impulse buys and longer holiday seasons. It highlights Google's AI tools like AI Max for Search, shoppable YouTube Masthead, and Demand Gen to help retailers connect with customers and boost sales.

Google launched AI-powered advertising tools at Think Week to help retailers connect with shoppers. Innovations include better search engagement, ad creative, and performance tools, aiming to build high-performing campaigns with less effort.

Vungle Exchange now supports LiveRamp RampIDs, enabling buyers to target authenticated audiences with higher accuracy and persistent targeting, while publishers can unlock premium demand.

Retail media success now hinges on measuring true incremental sales, not just ROAS. 71% of advertisers prioritize incrementality, yet many rely on legacy attribution. Traditional testing methods are manual, revenue-limiting, and incompatible with AI-driven optimization. AI-native ghost bidding—using randomized controlled trials during live campaigns—cleanly separates ad-driven impact from organic behavior. Early results show iROAS from 253% to 1,609%, with up to 29% of conversions being truly incremental. Best practices include statistical rigor, clean population definitions, comprehensive conversion tracking, and regular testing. Future-proof incrementality solutions will be privacy-compliant and integrated into ad serving.

Non-gaming apps increasingly adopt game engagement mechanics to boost retention. Duolingo uses AI for premium subscriptions, BeReal struggles to balance authenticity with growth features, Tinder leverages LiveOps events like Swipe Night, DraftKings adds social betting features, and Crypto.com uses token rewards and streaks. For ad ops, these examples show how engagement systems create returning users and new monetization opportunities beyond traditional ads.

TikTok Search Ads Campaign reaches high-intent audiences via keyword-based ads. Aerie saw 3%+ conversion lift, 3,800 incremental purchases, and $2.64 iROAS. 61% of users find search results more action-inspiring.

Adjust's bulk QR code generation enables marketers to create thousands of branded, deep-linked QR codes from a spreadsheet or API, eliminating developer dependency. Each code embeds attribution data for real-time performance tracking at campaign, store, or salesperson level. This empowers offline-to-app, CTV-to-app, and desktop-to-app use cases, turning QR campaigns into measurable growth drivers.

Retail media ad spend has reached $140B globally, but performance hinges on personalized customer experience, where a gap exists between retailer perception (92% believe they deliver personalization) and shopper reality (48% agree). AI-powered personalization can bridge this gap, debunking myths about data readiness, resource intensity, privacy risks, and growth ceilings. Modern AI handles imperfect data, automates campaign management, requires less PII, and enables real-time inference for higher engagement and revenue. Retailers can achieve 3-5x growth even in mature networks.