In 2025, mobile game advertising revenue exceeded $12 billion, according to analytics
This conclusion was reached by the analytics company Sensor Tower.
Vita Mahjong
Note that the Sensor Tower report provides data not worldwide, but only for 19 countries: USA, Canada, France, UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, Brazil, and Vietnam.
Below are a few more observations from Sensor Tower analysts related to ad monetization in mobile games.
- In total, mobile game ads were shown 2.4 trillion times in 2025.
- Mobile games with ads were downloaded 24.6 billion times last year. The highest number of downloads occurred in January — 2.33 billion.
- The share of mobile games with ad monetization increased from 45.1% in July 2021 to 55.6% in May 2026. This happened amidst stagnation in in-app purchases (IAP) monetization.
- As noted by Sensor Tower, in developing countries, the primary revenue share of mobile games comes from ads, while in more mature markets, it’s from IAP. For example, in India, from January to May 2026, ads accounted for 70.3% of revenue, whereas in the USA during the same period, they were responsible for only 22.1% of revenue.
- Regarding game categories, from February to April 2026, casual and hyper-casual titles each accounted for 40% of ad revenue. Hybrid games generated another 16%, and midcore games 4%.
- Puzzle games are the leader among mobile game genres in terms of ad revenue share. From February to April 2026, they accounted for 53%. Arcades came in second, with a share of 13%.
- In May 2026, 65% of ad revenue was attributed to the ad networks AppLovin and AdMob. Just a year and a half earlier, their share was slightly less at 61%.
- The highest ad revenue from January to May 2026 was generated by the block puzzle Block Blast! — $127 million. Vita Mahjong ($89.8 million) and Candy Crush Saga ($81.1 million) also made it to the top three.
- Among publishers, the top three in ad revenue for the first five months of 2026 were Hungry Studio ($131.2 million), Easybrain ($117.3 million), and Onesoft ($113.5 million).
*Meta Audience Network is owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia.