Most advertisers still think mobile gaming is a niche channel. The stereotype is stubborn.
In reality, the typical casual mobile gamer is an adult playing puzzle games, crosswords, and card games, many of whom make financial decisions at home.
70% of these gamers drive most household purchasing decisions, vastly outpacing the general population.
They shop online at least weekly.
77% spend $100 or more per month online.
Their intent to purchase in categories like travel, electronics, furniture, and vehicles is also strong.
These are consumers with real purchasing power.
More on the mobile gaming consumer here: https://t.co/lWHzFctfxm
What actually happens when a major DTC brand bets on a new performance channel?
Home Chef is one of the most recognized meal kit brands in the US, and their paid media manager is going live to share how they’re scaling on Axon.
In this live webinar, you’ll get real learnings from someone hands-on the account and walk away with practical tips you can actually apply to your own brand.
DTC founders, media buyers, performance marketers. This one’s for you.
Register here: https://t.co/kIM2VDvtkm
Ready to start advertising on Axon?
We're hosting a free live training on May 28th at 1PM EST.
We'll cover campaign setup, winning creative formats, and real case studies.
Everything you need to hit the ground running.
Register here: https://t.co/J7dbuaF429
Yesterday, Adam gave the commencement speech at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he graduated 24 years ago.
He talked about graduating with no job, getting kicked out of his parents' house, and finding his way into advertising by accident.
But the part that stuck was this: when Adam was four, his parents uprooted everything.
They gave up their home, community, and careers, moving the family across the country so he could have a shot.
His dad gave up a company he founded to make it happen.
That sacrifice stayed with him. It gave him a chip on his shoulder that he says never really went away.
A few things he left the class of 2026 with:
- "Your degree from Haas is a starting line. It's a ticket to the arena, not a trophy.”
- “Ask as many questions as you can. Consume as much knowledge as you can. Trust me, you do that, and you will get noticed."
🎥 @BerkeleyHaas
This is WHOLESOME AF
1 - great proof point that Boostcous customers do live on mobile games
2 - that we need to double down on the GLP1 angles. More to come there!
2.35 incremental ROAS.
Results Honeylove Co-CEO Igor says they hadn't seen from another channel before.
Honeylove is a DTC shapewear brand with a product story that needs more than a few seconds to land.
In this clip, Igor shares how longer watch time gave the team room to explain the product, communicate value props, and tell a fuller story without sacrificing performance.
Next Thursday, @ezrafirestone and @pephufen are teaching the Axon playbook live.
They’ll cover everything you need to know:
‣ How to set up your first campaign
‣ The creative formats winning right now
‣ Real case studies with actual numbers
One hour, totally free. Sign up here: https://t.co/VfYqFrdYT6
AppLovin MCP is now in limited beta.
Connect your Axon Ads Manager account to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client and manage your campaigns through natural conversation.
Pull reporting, adjust budgets, clone campaigns, upload creatives.
Reach out to your AppLovin account manager to get access.
Setup guide here. 👇https://t.co/Di7dsiUVCW
Boarderie deals with massive seasonal spikes, so being able to scale quickly really matters.
Lexi Grossman, Director of Growth at Boarderie, shares how Axon by AppLovin helped them ramp campaigns from $2K/day to $50K/day in under a week, while continuing to see strong new customer CPAs relative to their top-performing channels.
When asked what she’d say to brands that assume their customers aren’t mobile gamers, her response was simple:
“Do you REALLY know that your customers aren’t mobile gamers?”
Q1 was another strong quarter for AppLovin: $1.84B in revenue, 59% year-over-year growth, 85% adjusted EBITDA margin.
These results reflect the progress we've made. But they are not what drives us.
The work isn't done.
This blog from our Head of IR, David Hsiao, touches on that, along with what's ahead for the rest of the year:
• Axon opening to the public in June
• Continued momentum in consumer advertising
• Expansion into new verticals
• Building Axon to work directly with AI agents
More here: https://t.co/AhqKlGpIiN
$APP
AppLovin founder Adam Foroughi on why a billion-person gaming audience is the most underrated ad platform in the world:
"A couple years ago on our platform, we only served gaming ads. We used to take a user and say, game, game, game, game, game. If you weren't switching games, that's a pretty bad ad format to show you.
Now as we've gotten into product ads for ecommerce businesses and really as we go forward, it'll be for any kind of business in the world, the diversity will go up.
The hope we have is that we can get the local laundromat discovered by someone playing a game because we serve a really good ad to someone who needs their clothes washed.
If we get to that level of scale, this business is going to be much, much bigger than it is today."
One great person using AI can be as powerful as 100 people.
Adam Foroughi, founder of Applovin, on why he’s not hiring even as his business expands:
People are always saying to me:
You have a huge opportunity.
You're doing really well.
Why aren't you hiring people?
We have a big business opportunity in front of us right now. Most people look at that and go:
Why aren't you hiring a sales force?
Why aren't you hiring a CRO?
Why aren't you hitting it hard?
The reason I don't is that now with AI tools one person who's really good can be as powerful as 100 people.
Why would I go hire in advance of that versus go find those single individuals who can be really good, who understand how to deploy agents to tackle jobs that many people would have done before?
I've stuck to this view with high conviction because I've seen companies do exactly that, hire into opportunity, dilute their IQ, and then you're stuck with a mess.
How do you unravel a mess?
If you lose those A people there's no way to do it.
You're just hosed.
Adam Foroughi borrowed money to buy back @AppLovin stock when it was down 92%.
They went in at a $3.8 billion market cap.
They peaked at $250 billion.
"People like to be conservative when it comes to cash. One to lever up is scary to people but then two to lever up to buy your own shares when everyone's telling you your company's a piece of shit. That's really scary to do.
If I believe in the future and we're a really high cash-generative business we should always be buying back our shares."
GOAT Foods is a holding company behind some of the most recognizable domain-based food brands on the internet.
Co-founder Jonathan Packer already had a good paid media mix, but at the end of 2024, he heard about AppLovin from his peers and decided to give it a shot.
The setup was easy, the early results were strong, and Jonathan kept increasing the budget. As he put it: "We went to the moon."
Since then, GOAT Foods has launched a Discovery campaign on Axon. Now they reach both new customers and new site visitors, opening up the top of the funnel in ways they couldn’t before.
For DTC brands looking to diversify their media mix, scale ecommerce revenue, and find new customer acquisition channels that actually perform, Jonathan puts it simply: "easy to get started and worth a shot."
The only constraint on scaling is how much money you have in your bank account.
If you put $1,000 in and you're certain to make more than $1,000 back — you're going to put as much as you can in.
That's @AppLovin's whole model:
"Make the advertiser an arbitrager.
Very few people define performance marketing as that. Very few companies have executed it.
Facebook's done a fantastic job of it.
This is entirely what we're focused on.
If they're making money, they're going to spend."