Top In-App Advertising Companies (2020)

In-app advertising is the most popular kind of online advertising that drives revenue for hundreds of thousands of app brands and indie developers who have mobile ad inventory.

The majority of mobile users spend the bulk of their mobile time in apps; advertisers are focused on running ads in iOS and Android apps. These ads can be either rotated using the Waterfall rotation method when ads from multiple advertisers are rotated in a queue or using a more sophisticated method, called header bidding – when advertisers need to bid for ad inventory inside a publisher’s app.

In this section, we list all of the in-app advertising platforms.

In-App Advertising Guide

There are many benefits to using in-app advertising over other forms of advertising. For example, in-app advertising allows the advertiser to easily track the in-app behavior of that individual, meaning the data is more direct and easy to decipher.

Other advantages of in-app advertising include:

• There’s a high level of personalization available for mobile apps
• There are better opportunities to directly reach users
• A variety of advertising methods, including video, display advertising, and even playable advertising
• In-app ads are scaled to fit the app, and therefore look much more appealing to the user than mobile web ads
• A mobile phone is a personal possession that most people carry with them wherever they go – meaning the chances to reach people are numerous

The key challenge for marketers is that people aren’t always keen to pay for a mobile app. That’s where creative solutions come in, such as allowing a user to experience the starting functionality of an app and then asking them to upgrade to the full experience if they liked their experience.

The same can be said for mobile gaming apps where a user is given access to the starting levels or challenges of the game, and then has the option to pay to unlock the rest of the game. When executed correctly, this method can work well, as long as the user feels the value on offer to them.

In-app advertising example

Source: eMarketer

In-App Advertising Formats

There are many different ways of reaching mobile users – these come in a variety of in-app advertising formats that drive revenue.

The following are the main ad formats:

• The most standard format are in-app ads that offer animations and effects to entice the user. These could be ads like banners, native ads, and reward ads.

In-app ads example

Source: nmpidigital

• Interstitial ads are like full-screen banners that show up between game levels and serve to break up the user experience.

Interstitial ad example

Source: nmpidigital

• Mobile video ads tend to produce the best engagement rates, as you might expect. These ads include the pre-roll ad format, the mid-roll ad format (that appears in the middle of the video), and post-roll ads.

Mobile video ads example

Source: nmpidigital

• Rewarded video ads are often successful and offer the user an in-game reward, such as extra lives and power-ups, for watching and interacting with the ad.

Rewarded video ads example

Source: nmpidigital

• Native ads can be a powerful ad format due to their ability to blend into the content on screen. A good native ad won’t even appear as an ad to a user, thereby driving engagement rates and interactions.

Native ads example

Source: nmpidigital

In-app advertising is growing in strength every day, so to think about a marketing budget without it is not really a viable choice. Below you’ll find some of the best in-app advertising companies to help get you started.

List of in-app advertising services