Cross-Promotion for Mobile Games: Moving Players Between Your Own Titles

If you publish more than one mobile game, your players are an audience you already have. Cross-promotion uses the ad space in your existing games to show ads for your other games, usually a new release or a title with a similar audience. Done well, it lowers the cost of launching new games and keeps players inside your portfolio when they tire of one title. Done badly, it gives away ad revenue for installs that would have happened anyway.

How cross-promotion works

Every ad slot in your game is normally filled by an auction: ad networks bid, and the highest bid wins. Cross-promotion adds your own campaign to that process. Depending on how it is set up, your own ad either competes in the auction like any other demand, or fills slots only when no paid ad is available. Some publishers also build their own promotion surfaces outside ad slots: a "more games" button, an in-game banner, or a reward for trying the new title.

The main tools

Google AdMob house ads

AdMob calls them house ads: campaigns that promote your own apps in your own inventory, free of charge. Google recommends running them as backfill, so they appear when other demand does not fill, and you can cap how much a house campaign serves. Using AdMob campaigns requires a linked Google Ads account.

AppLovin MAX

AppLovin describes cross-promo campaigns as one of the direct-sold campaign types in MAX, its mediation platform. Promotion campaigns can compete with other demand in MAX's unified auction, in banner, interstitial, rewarded and native formats, with reporting in the MAX dashboard. Check AppLovin's current developer documentation for setup, as the material we found is mostly from the feature's launch.

Unity LevelPlay and Unity Ads

Unity's LevelPlay mediation offered cross-promotion as, in its words, a private bidding network competing against the other ad sources, and recommended it only for apps with substantial daily users and impressions. Unity's documentation has since announced that LevelPlay cross-promotion is deprecated, with 30 April 2026 given as the date, and points publishers to campaigns on Unity Ads instead. If your portfolio relied on it, check what your account manager offers now.

Your own surfaces

Outside ad slots, cross-promotion is simply part of the game: a featured tile on the menu, an event that rewards playing the new title, or a message to lapsed players. These cost no ad revenue, but they compete with the game's own interface for attention, so use them sparingly.

When it pays, and when it costs you

A house ad is free to show but not free to run: every impression it takes is one a paying advertiser did not get. The real price of a cross-promoted install is the ad revenue that impression would otherwise have earned. Three questions decide whether that trade is good:

1. Is the new game worth more to you than the ad revenue? A player who stays and spends in your new title is usually worth far more than one impression, but only if they would not have installed anyway.
2. Are the audiences actually similar? A match-3 player shown a strategy game is a wasted impression. Promote titles whose core mechanic or fantasy overlaps.
3. Will the player leave the first game for good? Moving a player to a better-monetising title is a gain; moving an engaged spender away from the game they love is a loss.

Backfill-only setups avoid most of the cost, since they use impressions nobody bought, but they also give the least volume. Competing in the auction gives volume at a measurable price. Many publishers run backfill always, and switch to competing for a few weeks around a launch.

Measuring across your own portfolio

Measurement is one place where cross-promotion is easier than paid acquisition. On iOS, apps from the same developer on the same device share an identifier for vendor (IDFV). Apple's privacy guidance says the IDFV may be used for analytics across apps from the same content provider without the App Tracking Transparency prompt, but may not be combined with other data to track a user across other companies' apps and websites. On Android, apps installed from Google Play under one developer account share a developer-scoped App Set ID, intended for uses such as analytics and frequency capping across an organisation's apps.

That lets you answer the questions that matter: how many players moved, whether they kept playing the original game, and what both games earned from them afterwards. Ad-attributed installs from cross-promotion still flow through your mobile measurement partner as with any campaign, and Apple's AdAttributionKit adds measurement of re-engagement, which suits campaigns that bring a player back to a title they already have.

Creative for cross-promotion

The audience for a cross-promo ad is unusual: they already like your games, they are in the middle of playing one, and they will recognise your art style. That changes what works.

• Lead with what is new. They know your style; tell them what this game does that the one they are playing does not.
• Let them try it. A short playable of the new game's core mechanic suits an audience that already plays, and full-screen interstitial and rewarded slots are where playables run. Playable ad examples has mechanics to start from.
• Offer a reason to switch. A welcome reward in the new game, stated honestly on the end card, gives an existing player a reason to install now.
• Respect the game they are in. Cap frequency, keep cross-promo out of the first sessions of a new player, and never interrupt a level.
• Make the end card clear about which game it is. Similar art styles can make two of your titles look like the same app. See what is an end card.

A launch plan using cross-promotion

1. Pick the source games whose players most resemble the new game's target audience.
2. Make two or three creatives for the new game: a video, a playable of the core mechanic, and an interactive end card.
3. Start in backfill a week or two before the launch push to check that the creative and tracking work.
4. Around launch, let the campaign compete for a limited share of impressions and measure the revenue given up against the value of the players gained.
5. After launch, keep a backfill campaign running and use the best cross-promo creative as a starting point for paid acquisition, since it was proven on a similar audience.

The same playable can serve both jobs. Playable Ads Maker exports one project in the format each of 13 ad networks asks for, so a creative proven on your own players can go straight into paid campaigns on the networks your mediation already works with.