Moloco Articles

Moloco's new Agency Partner Program helps agencies drive profitable performance via Moloco Ads, with education, dedicated support, and collaboration across mobile in-app and CTV. For ad ops decision-makers, the key insight is the ability to break beyond walled gardens and leverage machine learning to unlock incremental growth. Founding partners across global regions gain access to new inventory, optimization expertise, and closer product integration. This enables measurable, scalable results, as evidenced by partners citing D30 ROAS lifts and high-value user acquisition. Ad ops teams should evaluate the program as a strategic lever to differentiate their offerings and diversify media channels.

The open internet presents unique challenges for performance advertising: fragmented identity, closed first-price auctions, and non-stationary supply. Moloco's CARA compound architecture tackles this with six integrated technical domains—Campaign Automation, Supply, Ad Recommendations, Bidding, Creative, and Signals—running on a unified ML infrastructure. Key insights for ad ops: the system continuously learns from every interaction, uses knowledge distillation to serve real-time predictions under 10ms latency, and validates improvements through rigorous live experiments. In 2025, 65 validated model updates reduced CPA by 17% and improved ROAS by 27%. The key takeaway: compound AI architectures that connect prediction, bidding, creative, and data can unlock measurable performance gains beyond walled gardens.

AI is reshaping discovery, with web traffic declining sharply in information-heavy industries (news -26%, education -22%, health/fitness -16%) while transactional categories like travel hold up. App usage remains resilient, growing across most sectors (retail +6.1%, gaming +9.4%), and paid installs are rising in every industry, reflecting a shift to owned channels. For ad ops, the takeaway is clear: prioritize app-based acquisition, leverage first-party data, and adapt to AI-driven search behavior. Building strong customer relationships directly, rather than relying on SEO-driven web visits, is critical in an era where chatbots can answer queries instantly.

Sports publishers face unique monetization challenges due to event-driven traffic spikes. AI-native SDKs like Moloco optimize ad revenue in real-time without harming user experience. By connecting publishers to premium demand and leveraging machine learning, these tools help maximize yield during high-engagement moments. Key publishers (LiveScore, Sofascore, etc.) adopt Moloco to balance revenue growth with fan retention. The trend reflects a broader shift toward transparent, automated monetization across the app ecosystem.

AI is reshaping consumer behavior, with 80% of Google searches ending without a click and half of consumers using AI for product research. This disrupts traditional channels like search (CPC up 10-25%) and affiliate marketing (revenues down 7%). Meanwhile, mobile apps and CTV offer stable, high-engagement alternatives. Advertisers should diversify away from disrupted channels, targeting the independent app ecosystem where Day 30 ROAS can be 116% higher. Key metrics: organic direct traffic share (target >51%) and disrupted channel spend share (target <34%).

Gaming publishers treat monetization as infrastructure, using hybrid models with ads and in-app purchases to drive revenue without harming user experience. Non-gaming apps lag behind, relying on fragmented ad stacks. Gaming's success shows that optimizing competition for each impression yields higher LTV and revenue. Ad ops should prioritize demand competition and publisher control over impression performance.

Moloco ranks 5th in the 2026 Singular ROI Index with 29 leaderboard appearances, highlighting consistent ROI across global, regional, and new multi-touch attribution categories. It appears on all global and regional leaderboards (APAC, EMEA, North America, South America) and in both MTA leaderboards: Assist Power and MTA Uplift, showing value beyond last-click. This helps advertisers achieve profitable growth outside walled gardens like Google and Meta.

Costco partners with Moloco Commerce Media to power onsite ads on Costco.com, aiming to replicate in-warehouse discovery digitally. The AI-powered platform helps brands drive results while preserving Costco's member-first experience, as highlighted by Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail Media at Costco.

AI-driven disruption is reshaping consumer journeys, with 67% of marketing leaders expecting high impact. Brands risk losing direct customer access as 14% of shoppers start with chatbots and 80% of AI overview searches end without clicks. Key action: prioritize owned surfaces like mobile apps to build direct relationships and capture first-party data, which 77% of leaders are doing. Balanced channel investment is critical.

The Super Bowl drives huge deposit volume but is only average in cost efficiency due to competition. January NFL and college playoff games offer up to 3x better cost per first-time deposit (cpFTD), with lower CPMs and CPI. Advertisers should shift some Super Bowl budget to January playoff dates—especially the Triple Header weekend (Jan 17-19)—for more efficient acquisition. Extending optimized spend through March Madness also yields below-average cpFTD. The key insight: earlier activation captures high-intent bettors before market saturation.

MCM's outcome-based smart bidding enhancements help e-commerce platforms and advertisers thrive during Q4 holiday surges. Features like promotions context, dynamic bid multipliers, and an optimized feedback loop enable real-time adaptation to high-intent traffic, unlocking up to 25% additional ad spend while maintaining ROAS. This turns seasonal spikes into sustained revenue growth.

Moloco reached #5 in AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index, up from #15 in 2023. It ranked #4 in iOS gaming globally and top 5 in many categories. New recognitions include #2 in Creative Index and first entry in remarketing, highlighting AI improvements.

The 2025 holiday season offers peak engagement from Diwali through Q5. Key efficiency windows include Christmas-New Year for US gaming (ROAS +32% iOS, +15% Android) and social apps (+88% ROAS). Marketers should front-load testing in early Q4, then scale UA during festive dips in CPI. Timing spend to user behavior (e.g., Lunar New Year spikes in Korea and Japan) maximizes ROAS across verticals.

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.

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.

Analysis of thousands of real-money casino video ads reveals that on-screen text, home environments, text message UI, user POV gameplay, people interactions, and explicit legitimacy assurances boost IPM globally. Conversely, 'Play Now' CTAs, future level previews, skill-based framing, and seasonal content drag performance. Marketers should prioritize clear value props and relatable settings while avoiding pressure tactics and unnecessary complexity.

Moloco's In-App Bidding SDK achieved Google AdMob and Ad Manager certification, expanding its reach to four major platforms. With ~500 publisher integrations, including Voodoo and CrazyMaple, the SDK showed key improvements: bid error rates dropped from ~40% to under 1% on iOS, rewarded video skip-timer boosted ROAS by 8%, and smarter caching increased share of voice by up to 10%. The fully self-serve platform offers direct access to ~$2B in advertiser demand, enabling publishers to maximize revenue without intermediary fees.

The article discusses the evolution of in-app advertising for mobile game publishers, from direct deals to real-time bidding. It highlights challenges like network overlap and fee structures, and introduces new pricing models like dCPM. Moloco offers AI-powered tools for both advertisers and publishers, including the Moloco SDK that provides transparent, margin-free access to global demand, set for broader release soon.

Moloco supports the IAB Gold Standard to enhance trust, transparency, and ad quality. They reduce ad fraud with buyers.json, DemandChain Object, and Open Measurement SDK, ensure brand safety via TAG certification, and improve user experience through the Coalition for Better Ads. This commitment fosters a healthier ecosystem for all stakeholders.

RMG creatives must segment users into Active, Casual, and Inactive player types. Casino ads thrive with longer videos (30-53s) showing gamified visuals and big wins, while Sportsbook ads need short, offer-first videos (27-30s). Key formats are portrait orientation and banner sizes 300x50/320x50. Avoid short videos without value, landscape orientation, and hype-heavy testimonials. Top competitors like Chumba Casino and FanDuel use UGC, clear offers, and localized relevance to boost conversions.