You’d be hard-pressed to find a DTC, ecomm, or retail growth marketer who isn’t all over the hottest advertising channel in the digital world right now: AppLovin.
AppLovin is an advertising platform that primarily delivers ads through mobile games. In late summer 2024, they expanded the types of advertisers who could advertise via their network to include DTC, ecomm, and retail brands as part of a beta – and the industry went wild.
Marketers are clamoring to understand if AppLovin is as potentially impactful as the platform claims. Early incrementality tests point to the platform being incremental and showing clear signs of lift across the board, but efficiency varies considerably, and in some cases, doesn’t seem incremental in terms of new customer revenue. In brand incrementality tests published and analyzed exclusively by Haus, the lift is there – but how the incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) compares to brand goals and profitability appears complicated.