For most of its history, advertising with AppLovin meant working with its team: an account manager, an insertion order, and a minimum spend. In 2025 and 2026 that changed. AppLovin launched a self-serve ads manager powered by Axon, its machine-learning engine, first by referral and then, from mid-2026, open to advertisers worldwide. It also opened the network to advertisers that are not apps at all, most visibly e-commerce brands.
This guide explains what the platform is, where its ads run, what creative it accepts, and what that means for the ads you make. AppLovin has changed names and details quickly, so confirm specifics against AppLovin's own help centre before you build.
What Axon Ads Manager is
Axon is the AI system that decides which ad to show to which person across AppLovin's inventory. The ads manager is the self-serve interface for buying that inventory: you create a campaign, connect your measurement, upload creative and set a budget, and Axon optimises delivery. Recent coverage refers to the platform as AppLovin Ads, with Axon as the engine behind it.
The timeline, as reported in AppLovin's results and the trade press: a referral-only self-serve launch in October 2025; an announcement with the first-quarter 2026 results that the platform would open to all advertisers worldwide in June 2026; and general availability around the start of July 2026, with no referral needed.
Who can advertise
- Mobile apps and games: AppLovin's long-standing core business.
- E-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands, which send traffic to a website rather than a store. AppLovin offers a Shopify app and a web pixel for conversion tracking.
- Subscription services, with other categories such as lead generation reported as being in testing.
Where the ads run
The ads appear inside mobile games, mostly as full-screen interstitial and rewarded placements. That is the most important fact for creative: the viewer is in the middle of playing something, the ad takes the whole screen, and in a rewarded placement they have chosen to watch in exchange for something in their game. AppLovin's help centre describes an impression for web advertisers as a full-screen video, followed by an interactive page or image, followed by a catalogue of products.
This is a very different context from a social feed. Nobody scrolls past; the question is whether, after fifteen to sixty seconds of attention, the viewer wants what they saw enough to leave their game for it. Rewarded versus interstitial placements explains how each placement changes the viewer's state of mind.
Creative for web and e-commerce advertisers
AppLovin's published asset specifications for advertisers promoting websites are, at the time of writing:
- Video: vertical 9:16, at least 270 x 480, up to 60 seconds, MP4, MOV or M4V, up to 1 GB. AppLovin recommends a mix of lengths, including some of 30 seconds or longer, and captions.
- End card, which AppLovin calls an interactive page: either a portrait image (GIF, JPEG or PNG, up to 10 MB, at least 270 x 480) or an HTML page made in AppLovin's own creative studio.
AppLovin has also rolled out AI tools that generate interactive pages, with an AI video generator reported as in final testing in mid-2026. We found no source saying AppLovin generates full playable ads for web advertisers.
What works in that slot
- Use the length. A viewer in a rewarded slot will watch; a 30-second video can demonstrate a product properly in a way a six-second social cut cannot.
- Show the product in use, early and clearly, and keep the offer on screen at the end.
- Design the end card as the decision screen: the product, the price or offer, and one button. What is an end card covers the anatomy.
- Remember the audience is mid-game. Playful, tactile product demonstrations fit the setting better than glossy brand films.
Shoppable and e-commerce playable ads covers interactive formats for retail in more depth.
Creative for app and game advertisers
App advertisers can use the format AppLovin's network is best known for: the playable ad. AppLovin's guidelines ask for a single HTML file of 5 MB or less with every asset embedded, no external resources, a timer that starts on the first interaction, and support for both orientations. Full-screen video and interactive end cards are available too.
In practice most successful game campaigns on AppLovin combine video and playables: video to reach and explain, the playable to let the viewer try the mechanic before they install. The AppLovin playable ads guide covers the file requirements and review in detail.
Whose size target
AppLovin publishes 5 MB for a playable. Playable Ads Maker builds AppLovin exports to a stricter target of its own, as a safety margin, and says so in the export window. If you hand-build, smaller is better regardless: a lighter playable starts faster in a placement where every second of waiting is visible.
A first-campaign checklist
- Set up measurement first: AppLovin's pixel or Shopify app for a website, or your measurement partner for an app. A campaign that cannot see conversions cannot optimise for them.
- Make at least two different videos, not two edits of one. A product demonstration and a problem-and-solution story test different reasons to buy.
- Make one length of 30 seconds or more, since AppLovin recommends a mix and the placement allows it.
- Design the end card as its own asset, readable in portrait at a glance, with one button.
- For apps, add a playable of the core mechanic alongside the video.
- Give the campaign a fixed test budget and a date to review it, and judge it on purchases, revenue or retained players.
The same checklist applies when you add a market or a product line: new creative for the new audience, measured on its own, before it shares a budget with what already works.
Measurement
App advertisers connect a mobile measurement partner as with any network. Web advertisers install AppLovin's pixel, or use the Shopify app, so that purchases can be attributed and used for optimisation. As with any automated platform, give new campaigns enough budget and time to learn before judging, and judge on purchases or retained players rather than clicks.
Is it worth testing?
For game advertisers, AppLovin has long been one of the core in-app networks, and the self-serve manager mainly lowers the barrier to starting. For e-commerce brands it is a genuinely new channel: an audience reached in full-screen, often opt-in placements, in an environment unlike social feeds. Treat it as a test with its own budget and its own creative, not as a place to recycle the cut-downs made for feeds.
For app advertisers, Playable Ads Maker exports an AppLovin-ready single HTML playable or interactive end card from the same project as the other 12 networks, and the spec checker reports anything AppLovin's review would object to before you upload.
Create playable end cards in minutes—no code required.
Open Playable Ads Maker