ironSource

To make sense of changes to mobile campaign reporting, marketers need to understand postbacks ­– the most essential element of mobile attribution.

Following a dramatic courtship between Unity and ironSource, Unity put a ring on it. The merger closed on Monday. The purpose of the deal is to bring all of the tools developers need to create, test, launch, grow and monetize their games together under one roof.

Looks like AppLovin’s attempt to wedding crash Unity’s planned merger with ironSource isn’t going to work. On Monday, Unity’s board of directors rejected AppLovin’s bid to buy the company and reaffirmed its commitment to merge with ironSource.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…  

What’s the rationale behind AppLovin’s bid to merge with Unity (kicking ironSource to the curb in the process)? Adam Foroughi, AppLovin’s CEO, got into the details on the company’s Q2 earnings call.

AppLovin wants Unity – but only if Unity calls off its planned acquisition of ironSource. Why doesn’t AppLovin want ironSource? And how is Apple’s ATT driving consolidation in mobile ad tech? Listen in. Plus: The Trade Desk claims to benefit whenever a regulator starts investigating Google.

TFW you think you have a date to the dance … and then it turns out you don’t. On Tuesday, AppLovin offered to buy Unity in an all-stock merger valuing Unity at $20 billion – but the offer doesn’t include ironSource.

Unity will merge with ironSource in an all stock transaction that values the latter at $4.4 billion. The companies expect the merger to help deliver a $1 billion run rate by the end of 2024 and $300 million in annual EBITDA synergies the year after that.

Apple’s ATT rollout triggered an industry-wide freakout among mobile ad tech companies. But surprisingly, over the past year Apple has gotten “more accessible,” says Omer Kaplan, CRO and co-founder of ironSource. Also in this episode: Being a newly public ad tech company in a tricky market.

2021 brought unprecedented consolidation across ad tech. But there’s one particularly striking mini trend that’s emerging: Gaming studios are merging with ad tech platforms, writes Mike Peralta, VP and GM of Marketing Solutions, a division of T-Mobile USA.

Shortchanging YouTube? Are advertisers caught up in the CTV hype? Mike Shields thinks so. In a recent Substack post, he suggests advertisers ditch the various CTV walled gardens and head over to YouTube instead. There are thousands of streaming services, but YouTube and Netflix still corner about 47% of the market and haven’t lost share […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Dor Birnboim, US VP, Strategic Partnerships, ironSource Attribution is a key part of successfully scaling and optimizing user acquisition campaigns for the highest quality users. But there is no one-size-fits-all […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. SPAC Attack Mobile gaming monetization and ad tech provider IronSource began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), with the goal of raising $2 billion in capital at an $11 billion valuation. The IPO comes […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Omer Adato, director of product at ironSource. App monetization managers have an increasingly complex job. As the market grows, so does the technology to support it, leading to an ever-growing stream […]

Ad tech IPOs are back in fashion as online advertising continues to surge during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, there were seven ad tech transactions valued at more than $1 billion – double the number of unicorn-level deals that went down in the past few years combined. Public companies […]

ironSource is 2021 in a nutshell. It’s a mobile ad tech provider founded more than ten years ago, with a multibillion valuation that’s on the cusp of going public via a special purpose acquisition company by merging with a private equity firm. The SPAC in question is led by Thoma Bravo, whose blank check company […]

It’s mobile mania. There were three big pieces of mobile news before lunch on Monday – evidence that the mobile app market is white hot and only getting hotter. Content discovery provider Digital Turbine is acquiring app monetization company Fyber for $600 million in cash and stock – less than a month after spending $400 million to […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Dor Birnboim, VP of strategic partnerships at ironSource Aura. Whether it’s Uber trying to eliminate media waste or Deliveroo attempting to validate investment in a new channel, brands are rethinking […]

Mobile ad networks have been busily stress testing SKAdNetwork in preparation for Apple’s IDFA changes – but they’ve been doing so with one arm tied behind their back. For months, two of the most crucial pieces of information necessary for attribution were absent in the postbacks coming from SKAdNetwork, which is Apple’s API for enabling ad […]

Mobile app advertisers have been slower than their web counterparts to embrace programmatic-style RTB auctions. That’s starting to change as more app publishers test in-app bidding and see significant lifts in ARPDAU (average revenue per daily user). “Publishers are pushing their ad networks to get into bidding, and we’re beginning to see a snowball effect,” […]

Without a way to calculate ad revenue per user, optimization is just an educated guessing game. “I wouldn’t call it a complete blind spot, but the process is definitely not as efficient as it could be,” said Jeff Gurian, VP of marketing and ad monetization at Kongregate, a mobile and PC game publisher acquired from […]

Creative often gets neglected by app publishers gunning for installs – but it’s one of the most important aspects of any app-install campaign, said Artur Grigorjan, head of growth marketing at Russian game studio Playrix. “By this point, most advertisers have enough expertise when it comes to buying,” Grigorjan said. “Now they’re transitioning to the next […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Dan Frank, head of StreamRail Platform at ironSource. The digital advertising world has come a long way in the last couple of years in its mission to fight ad fraud. […]

App distribution platform ironSource launched a solution Tuesday to give mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers an alternative to pre-installed apps – sometimes called “bloatware” by consumers. Dubbed Aura, the platform aims to revamp the onboarding process for users when they buy a new Android or Windows phone by presenting recommended content to […]

Mobile monetization platform Supersonic on Tuesday released a souped-up version of its SDK, in beta for the last five months, that joins rewarded video mediation through its supply-side platform with mediation for mobile interstitials via ironSource’s technology. The two companies merged last September. Essentially, it’s a single SDK that enables developers to manage multiple demand […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is by Omer Kaplan, co-founder and CMO at ironSource. Performance advertisers looking to acquire users for their apps traditionally considered cost per install (CPI) their key metric. But as both brand and performance […]

Developers are up to their ears in mobile SDKs – and they’re not going to take it anymore. The trend toward consolidated mobile solutions is real, said Omer Kaplan, deputy CEO and co-founder of app discovery platform ironSource, which has acquired mobile monetization platform Supersonic. The deal was officially announced Thursday following a leak in mid-July when […]

IronSource is counting its cash. The Israeli ad distribution and app monetization company, which announced an $85 million round in September, said Wednesday that it’s brought in an additional $20 million from a group of unnamed investors led by Access Industries. These two funding events represent the first time ironSource, which works with Yahoo, Google, […]