Want to know which apps are buying mobile app ads in 2025?
AppGoblin is excited to share the latest ad network rankings for August 2025, based on our ongoing scans of live mobile app ads.
AppGoblin SDK scans already make it clear which apps are monetizing with which ad networks, or which companies provide the technology behind a given app. But the most important question was missing: which apps are actually buying ads?
With the release of AppGoblin’s in-app advertiser tracking, you can now browse August 2025’s top mobile app advertisers and their creatives. This allows for mobile marketers to see real advertising activity from competitors, measure market momentum, and understand where budgets are being spent. It’s also useful for B2B companies looking to identify active app advertisers they may want to approach.
Example: Water Sort
Let’s start with Water Sort, a hyper-casual puzzle game that I myself recognize from seeing Water Sort ads constantly.
On Water Sort’s AppGoblin ad creatives page. you can view the full gallery of creatives currently being run. These include both video and static variations, and you can track how they evolve from month to month.
From there, head to Water Sort’s ad placements to see which apps were publishing Water Sort’s creatives and on which mobile ad networks.
For some programmatic ad buys we can also see the buy side DSP that was used. For example, we can see that Appreciate.mobi (a DSP owned by Digital Turbine) is a major buy side channel for Water Sort. This means Water Sort is buying inventory through Appreciate, which in turn places ads into the monetizing games connected to the exchange.
By clicking into a specific placement, you can trace which publishing app was showing the Water Sort ad, and which intermediary companies (exchanges, SSPs, or other ad tech vendors) were involved in the transaction. This type of visibility is key for understanding both competition and the ad tech supply chain.
Plarium’s Throne: Kingdom at War
Other than TikTok, Plarium’s Throne: Kingdom at War, a midcore strategy game that has been active in the market for years but still spends aggressively to acquire new players.
On Throne’s AppGoblin ad placements page you can see the current campaigns in action and the creatives being used.
In August, Throne ads were observed across dozens of publishing apps mostly using Google Ads (on the publishing side that would be AdMob), the ads here are mostly served via doubleclick.net which is common.
Ad Network Analysis
This new layer of insight—connecting advertisers to placements—lets us go beyond simply knowing which SDKs apps use. For traditional SDK-based integrations, the story is straightforward: publishers monetize directly through the SDK.
But in the programmatic ecosystem, things are more complex. Daisy-chained connections between SSPs, exchanges, and DSPs mean that an ad for Water Sort or Throne might pass through multiple intermediaries before it reaches the end-user’s screen. By mapping this supply path, AppGoblin allows marketers to better understand where budget is flowing, and how networks interact with one another in practice.
Ad Creative Analysis
Finally, the ad creative library provides a quick way to compare formats. You can browse still image ads, video ads, and even see how creative strategies differ between hyper-casual titles like Water Sort and midcore strategy games like Throne: Kingdom at War.
Over time, this archive will highlight broader creative trends—such as the dominance of puzzle-to-win ads, cinematic battle simulations, or the rise of interactive playable ads. For now, thumbnails of captured creatives are available to browse, with expanded metadata coming soon.