In 2025, Generative AI boosted mobile ecosystem growth, with app downloads doubling YoY. Retail Media impressions surged 165% YoY, peaking in October due to Microsoft Copilot at Costco. Eight Gen AI brands drove category growth, with Copilot dominating at 392M impressions, followed by Google AI and Adobe.
Most brands focused on Amazon and Best Buy, while Copilot expanded to Costco. Video channels like OTT and YouTube were key for demonstrating AI use cases. ChatGPT ran 100% of impressions on OTT, showcasing everyday tasks.
Anthropic used OTT and OffSite Video for aspirational positioning. Creatives highlighted common themes and distinct strategies, such as Microsoft's laptop productivity, Google's daily companion, and Adobe's agentic AI in Acrobat Studio.
In 2025, non-game apps surpassed games in revenue, with total in-app spending hitting $167B. APAC publishers drove a $2.58B increase in gaming revenue. Short Drama and AI Assistant categories saw explosive growth, while Blinkit, Shopee, and DeepSeek led their sectors. For ad ops, this signals shifting user attention toward lifestyle, commerce, and AI tools, creating new inventory opportunities beyond gaming.
AI amplifies marketing's fragmentation tax—bad signals across platforms, channels, and tools produce faster wrong decisions. 62% of marketers cite data quality as top barrier to AI success. The fix is not more AI tools but governed signals, AI-ready data architecture (traceable, validated, privacy-compliant), and mobile-grade measurement applied universally. CMOs must prioritize foundation over hype to turn AI from liability into compounding advantage.
AppsFlyer MCP connects Claude directly to live attribution data, replacing manual reporting and CSV exports. Gaming teams catch budget anomalies overnight, finance teams compress multi-hour analysis into minutes, and e-commerce teams close the gap between measurement and spend decisions. Setup takes under 60 seconds, enabling real-time queries on channels, cohorts, and ROAS. The key insight is that AI-powered analysis requires live data connections, not stale exports.
MAMA SF 2025 emphasized that AI is reshaping consumer discovery and purchase behavior, with apps becoming essential owned infrastructure. Key insights for ad ops: measurement integrity is critical as AI automates budget decisions; 30% of campaigns are undervalued by last-touch models. Brands must measure total app value (direct revenue, influenced revenue, operational savings, LTV lift), often 5-6x ROI. AI's practical impact is eliminating friction through automation like natural language queries and AI-powered campaign checks. The marketer's role is evolving to owning end-to-end recommendations.
AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek are reshaping web discovery, with traffic surging 86% YoY. Mobile now accounts for over half of global visits, yet desktop dominates engagement. Search and social remain dominant discovery channels, but AI users convert at higher rates (e.g., Amazon Rufus shoppers convert nearly 2x). For ad ops, optimizing for AI-driven traffic and cross-platform user behavior is critical.
Ramadan drives high mobile engagement in the Gulf, but success hinges on pre-Ramadan acquisition for higher LTV and remarketing during the month. eCommerce peaks early; finance responds to mature market triggers; travel converts at Eid. Post-Ramadan, focus on retention over acquisition to stabilize. AI tools are operational but measurement lags. Key takeaway: plan early, leverage remarketing, and phase strategies by period.
Retail media networks report ROAS using different methodologies, causing up to 63% fluctuation across networks for the same campaign. This isn't a data quality issue but a structural one. Brands using multiple networks face a fragmentation tax where each network is its own source of truth, and budget decisions based on these irreconcilable figures are misleading. Independent measurement, applying the same attribution logic across all networks, is needed to reconcile data and enable confident cross-channel decisions. The signal infrastructure for this already exists from mobile measurement.
The 2025 mobile market hit record highs across downloads, IAP revenue ($167B, +10.6% YoY), and time spent (5.3T hours). Non-game IAP surpassed games for the first time (+21% YoY). Generative AI apps surged, with downloads doubling to 3.8B and IAP tripling to $5B. Key ad ops insights: attention competition intensifies, UA shifts to lifetime value, and AI expands monetization opportunities across categories.
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