The Best Ad Networks for Mobile Game User Acquisition — and How to Choose

There is no single best ad network for a mobile game. There is a best starting set for your genre, your budget, your geography and the creative you can produce — and a short list of networks that appear in almost every serious user acquisition plan. This guide maps them: what kinds of network exist, what each major one is good at, what creative each takes, and how to pick where to start.

Three kinds of network

The networks that sell app installs fall into three groups, and they behave differently enough that mixing them up leads to wrong expectations.

Self-attributing platforms

Google, Meta, TikTok and Apple sell their own inventory — search, social feeds, video, the App Store — plus, for some, a network of partner apps. They have huge reach and their own audience data, and they report their own attribution. They are usually where a game's first paid installs come from, because the setup is familiar and the targeting does much of the work.

In-app ad networks

Unity (which merged with ironSource in 2022), AppLovin, Mintegral, Liftoff (which merged with Vungle in 2021), Chartboost, InMobi and Pangle serve ads inside other apps — overwhelmingly games. Their audiences are people who are playing mobile games right now, which makes them the natural home for game UA and for playables, whose full-screen interstitial and rewarded placements are these networks' core inventory.

Programmatic DSPs

Moloco, Liftoff's DSP and others buy in-app inventory through exchanges on your behalf, using their own models to bid per impression. They reach across many apps and networks at once and are strong when your measurement is mature enough to feed their optimisation. The Liftoff and Moloco guide goes deeper.

The major networks, one by one

Google App campaigns

One campaign runs across Search, Play, YouTube, Discover and the AdMob network, assembling ads from the text, images, videos and HTML5 playables you supply. Broad reach and little control — the system chooses placements and combinations. Playables must be a ZIP of up to 5 MB using ExitApi.exit() for the store exit. See Google playable ad specs.

Meta

App promotion campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, with strong audience modelling. Playables are accepted with a stricter layout than most: a ZIP up to 5 MB but an index.html under 2 MB, the store exit through FbPlayableAd.onCTAClick(), and no mraid.js. See Meta playable requirements.

TikTok and Pangle

TikTok's app campaigns reach its feed and the Pangle network of partner apps. Vertical, fast creative dominates. Playables are a ZIP under 5 MB with a config.json declaring orientation and the Pangle SDK loaded before your own script. See TikTok playable ads.

Unity Ads and ironSource

One of the largest sources of in-game inventory, with deep reach into casual and mid-core audiences. Playables are a single inlined HTML file up to 5 MB, MRAID 3.0, supporting both orientations, with no external requests. See Unity playable end cards.

AppLovin

The other giant of in-app games inventory, with the MAX mediation platform giving it a view across much of the market. Playables are a single HTML file up to 5 MB with resources inlined, and smaller files perform better. See AppLovin MAX playables.

Mintegral

Strong in Asia and increasingly global, with a large playable business. Its playables are a ZIP up to 5 MB with index.html, calling window.install() for the store exit and reporting gameReady, gameStart and gameEnd. See exporting for ironSource, AppLovin and Mintegral.

Liftoff, Vungle, Chartboost and InMobi

Each has its own audience strengths and MRAID-based playable format. Liftoff recommends small files — under 700 KB without video where possible. Chartboost requires its MRAID playable format and publishes no hard cap, only a recommendation to stay under 5 MB. See Vungle, Chartboost and InMobi.

Apple Ads

Formerly Apple Search Ads, renamed in 2025. It serves ads in App Store search and browse placements, built from your product page and custom product pages rather than from uploaded creative — so it takes no playables, but it pairs well with them: a custom product page that matches a playable's mechanic can also carry an Apple Ads variation.

How to choose your first networks

1. Start with two or three, not ten. Each network needs enough budget to exit its learning phase; spread thin, none of them does. The learning phase guide explains why.
2. Match the audience to the genre. Casual and puzzle games do well on in-app networks, whose viewers are already playing similar games. Games with broad or older audiences often start well on Meta and Google.
3. Match the geography. Networks differ in strength by region, so check each one's reach in your launch countries before budgeting.
4. Check what creative you can supply. A network whose best inventory wants playables is a poor fit if you can only produce static images — or a good reason to start producing playables.
5. Get measurement in place first. A mobile measurement partner gives every network the same yardstick, and on iOS the SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit setup decides what you can learn at all. See SKAdNetwork and playables.

Why creative decides more than network choice

Modern networks optimise delivery automatically, and they lean heavily on creative performance to decide how much to spend. A strong creative on a middling network routinely beats a weak creative on the best one. That makes the ability to supply many creatives — and playables in particular, which the in-app networks are built around — a bigger lever than any single network decision.

It also makes packaging a real cost. Every network above has a different wrapper, exit call or size rule, so a team supplying five networks is maintaining five builds of each creative unless its tools handle the difference. Test each file before submission with the spec checker.

One creative, every network

Playable Ads Maker exports each project as a ready-to-upload file for every network you pick — the right wrapper, exit call and packaging for each, from one design. The ad network pages list the export details network by network.