AppLovin has filed a lawsuit against Unity over the collection of advertising data
A conflict has erupted between the companies AppLovin and Unity.
According to Digiday, at the end of September, AppLovin filed a lawsuit in California court, claiming that Unity collected its data without permission using the Ad Quality SDK. Allegedly, this allowed Unity to obtain information on AppLovin’s advertising revenue, audience engagement with creative ads, and much more.
AppLovin claims that Unity could have used the collected data to train AI models to predict AppLovin’s actions during ad auctions.
AppLovin also initiated a separate arbitration proceeding, accusing Unity of breaching the contract, misappropriating trade secrets, interfering in business, and violating California’s antitrust laws.
Unity has denied the allegations and described AppLovin’s actions as an attempt to tackle a major competitor.
“The lawsuits filed against us by AppLovin are a classic example of a market-dominant player resorting to litigation and intimidation to cope with increasing competition and slowing growth,” Unity stated in their declaration.
Interestingly, both parties tried to resolve the conflict before going to court but to no avail. As early as August, AppLovin demanded that Unity cease its illegal activities. In response, Unity offered to stop collecting data from auctions on the MAX mediation platform via the Ad Quality SDK within five business days. However, AppLovin declined because it believed this would not address the issue of the already collected data and potentially trained AI models.