AppsFlyer in advanced talks for $3.5 billion valuation.
This number could’ve been much bigger.
I’m certain, that several years ago, this number ($3.5B) could’ve been 𝗠𝗨𝗖𝗛 bigger.
With Apple and SkAN, Google and their upcoming sandbox, ad networks will have more and more noise in the signals available to them.
One of the key drivers of Applovin growth has been their acquisition of Adjust MMP, and there are many reasons for that:
• acquiring Adjust positioned them to maintain attribution capabilities and potentially become a self-attributing network when traditional mobile attribution would become difficult
• controlling attribution, advertising, and publishing (well, as we recently learned with gaming division departure, publishing isn’t the most interesting business, at all 🙂 )
• visibility into conversion data on the great level of details. Combined with mediation and ability to understand the distribution of non-attributed ad revenue data allowed Applovin to build a superior engine and expand into ecommerce.
But this is all from 2021.
What do we have in 2025?
• Largest channels are self-attributed or want to be there soon.
• More and more developers focus on incremental gains that don’t require accuracy that MMPs promise – and MMPs just simply can’t provide that level of accuracy anymore
• A significant chunk of mobile revenues transitioned to web – via web funnels and D2C web shops like Appcharge or Xsolla. On web… there’s no critical need in MMPs
• Margins on the paid UA market dropped down significantly due to CPM and ad networks growth, resulting in reduction of budgets.
• Appsflyer is the most expensive MMP on the market and the price becomes harder and harder to justify. I’m certain that they observe a significant churn in their customer base right now.
Heard, that the possible buyer is Blackstone, the company behind Liftoff. It would be a very bold move – who could’ve believed that we gonna prioritise Liftoff in our ad budgets in 2026?
