In-App Advertising Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Opportunity, and Forecast, 2021-2031

The Global In-App Advertising Market is projected to expand from USD 94.87 Billion in 2025 to USD 235.84 Billion by 2031, reflecting a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.39%. This digital monetization strategy involves embedding promotional content directly into mobile software on smartphones and tablets. It utilizes various formats - including banners, interstitials, native ads, and rewarded videos - enabling developers to earn revenue while offering users free or subsidized content access. By harnessing device functionality and user data, this approach fosters highly targeted commercial engagement within the mobile ecosystem.

Market expansion is driven by widespread smartphone usage and the increasing amount of digital media time consumers spend in apps versus mobile browsers. This trend causes advertisers to reallocate budgets to capture user attention, while developers focus on ad-supported models to maintain freemium offerings. For instance, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that social media advertising revenue - largely derived from in-app environments - hit $88.7 billion in the United States in 2024. Despite this growth, the market faces significant hurdles regarding data privacy regulations, such as App Tracking Transparency frameworks, which restrict advertisers' ability to track behavior and measure campaign success.

Market Drivers

The robust growth of the mobile gaming sector serves as a primary engine for market expansion, particularly as developers increasingly utilize hybrid models combining in-app purchases with ad-revenue streams. This sector creates substantial ad inventory and attracts high-intent audiences, especially within leisure categories. Data from AppsFlyer's January 2025 trends report highlights a 102% year-over-year surge in casino and leisure app downloads in 2024, indicating massive consumer engagement that advertisers are keen to leverage. This activity supports the ecosystem's financial scale, with the same report noting that global app user acquisition ad spending hit $65 billion in 2024, reflecting the significant capital brands invest to ensure mobile visibility.

Additionally, the prevalence of high-engagement formats like video, native, and playable ads drives market value by providing better conversion rates than static assets. Video advertising has emerged as the dominant medium for capturing attention, prompting a shift of digital budgets toward these dynamic options. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau's 'Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2024', released in April 2025, digital video advertising revenue increased by 19.2% year-over-year to $62.1 billion. This trajectory illustrates how rich media empowers advertisers to present compelling narratives that boost engagement and maintain pricing power in the programmatic marketplace.

Market Challenges

Strict data privacy regulations and tracking restrictions act as a major constraint on the global in-app advertising market by dismantling traditional user identification methods. Frameworks such as App Tracking Transparency disrupt the connection between ad exposure and user action, resulting in signal loss. Without access to persistent identifiers like the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers), advertisers cannot serve highly personalized ads or accurately calculate return on ad spend (ROAS). This lack of clarity forces brands to lower bids due to uncertainty, consequently depressing cost-per-mille (CPM) rates and reducing the overall revenue potential for developers.

As a result, ad spending is consolidating toward fewer, verifiable inventory sources, with buyers moving away from the long tail of smaller apps that lack strong first-party data. This trend highlights a preference for quality and transparency over reach to minimize privacy risks. According to the Association of National Advertisers' Programmatic Transparency Benchmark Study from early 2025, the number of mobile applications and domains used in programmatic campaigns fell significantly to 22,634 in 2024. This contraction demonstrates how privacy challenges are physically altering the market landscape, limiting opportunities for smaller publishers as advertisers demand more accountable environments.

Market Trends

The incorporation of shoppable ads and in-app commerce is transforming the market by condensing the marketing funnel into a single, immediate transaction within the app. Platforms are shifting from simple discovery channels to comprehensive marketplaces, enabling users to browse, purchase, and track orders without leaving the interface, which minimizes friction and cart abandonment. This shift is especially prominent in social video apps that convert engagement into sales via embedded links and live shopping. For example, a November 2025 Quartz article titled 'TikTok Shop now rivals eBay' noted that the platform's marketplace handled $19 billion in merchandise globally during the third quarter of 2025, underscoring the vast consumer spend moving through in-app environments.

Simultaneously, the adoption of generative AI for creative optimization is standardizing the production of personalized, high-volume ad assets. Advertisers are leveraging automated tools to create various iterations of video and static creatives, facilitating real-time testing that was once too expensive. This approach speeds up campaign launches and improves performance by matching visuals and copy to specific contexts with high precision. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau's '2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report' from November 2025, 50% of U.S. ad buyers are already using generative AI to build or improve digital video ads, marking a significant industry shift toward automated content creation.

Key Players Profiled in the In-App Advertising Market

• Meta Platforms, Inc.
• Amazon.com, Inc.
• Digital Turbine, Inc.
• Smaato, Inc.
• Unity Software, Inc.
• AppLovin Corporation
• Chartboost, Inc.
• Verizon Communications Inc.
• Apple Inc.
• Criteo S.A.

Report Scope

In this report, the Global In-App Advertising Market has been segmented into the following categories:

In-App Advertising Market, by Type:

• Native ads
• Video ads
• Banner ads
• Rich media ads
• Intertidal ads

In-App Advertising Market, by Platform:

• IOS
• Android

In-App Advertising Market, by Application:

• Online Shopping
• Messaging
• Entertainment
• Gaming & Ticketing

In-App Advertising Market, by Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• South America
• Middle East & Africa

Competitive Landscape

Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Global In-App Advertising Market.

Available Customization

The analyst offers customization according to your specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:

• Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players (up to five).

This product will be delivered within 1-3 business days.