AppLovin - Is Anyone Still Using This? Where It Stands in DTC Advertising Today

Tap, tap—is this thing on? 

In late 2024, AppLovin surged as a major ad channel for DTC brands, quickly gaining traction as a serious alternative to Meta.

But with recent controversy and evolving Meta ad performance, where does AppLovin stand now?

We spoke with advertisers, reviewed performance data, and analyzed the latest claims to break down what’s real, what’s speculation, and what it all means for ecommerce brands.

AppLovin: From Apps to Ecomm Carts

AppLovin started as a mobile technology company that helped app developers grow and monetize their apps through advanced advertising solutions. 

It gained traction in the mobile gaming world, offering a powerful platform to drive user acquisition and monetization through its ad network and in-app bidding system.

But over the last year, AppLovin has pivoted aggressively into the ecommerce space.

At the heart of this shift are its technologies AXON 2.0—a predictive machine learning engine—and MAX, its in-app bidding platform. 

AppLovin says the tools enable precise audience targeting, real-time bidding optimization, and smarter ad placements across mobile inventory. 

And they’ve been using that pitch on DTC marketers looking for new acquisition channels. 

The Timeline

Q2 2024: Early Testing and Rumblings on Socials

At this point, AppLovin wasn’t making headlines yet in the ecommerce world—but they were laying the groundwork. 

In Q2, they reported $1.08 billion in revenue (+44% YoY) and quietly began testing campaigns tailored to ecommerce brands. 

While most of AppLovin’s attention had historically been focused on gaming, Q2 saw them experimenting with ways to bring game ad mechanics into ecommerce acquisition.

Everything was still under the radar.

AppLovin’s X profile was still focused on gaming devs. No one in ecommerce was talking publicly about results—yet.

But on June 17, KnoCommerce, a survey and attribution platform, recorded its first order with a click source of AppLovin.

Q3 2024: Adoption Spikes

AppLovin started making a substantial impact on ecommerce by Q3 2024. 

Halfway through the quarter, we saw a noticeable shift in AppLovin’s X profile.

The team started: 

• Sharing more mobile advertising tips for brands, 
• Getting involved in panels
• Resharing posts from brands and agencies who are “testing AppLovin as an advertising channel.”

What sparked the shift? 

Generous ad credits—offered to some of the most well-known voices in ecommerce.

Essentially, AppLovin intensified its efforts to attract brands by offering generous incentives and targeting high-spending advertisers.

The company launched a closed beta program, extending ad credits of up to $10,000 to select DTC brands. 

Eligibility for this program was restricted to advertisers with significant daily spend on platforms like Meta, with some reports indicating a minimum spend requirement of $20,000 per day.

During this time, attribution data from Knocommerce showed AppLovin driving a rapidly increasing share of ecommerce orders, leading all the way into late 2024. 

With this momentum, AppLovin was seeing a promising start to tackling ecommerce. 

Q4 2024: Adoption Skyrockets

The TLDR: Brand spending on AppLovin TOOK OFF in Q4. It peaked around Black Friday but remaining strong through December.

AXON, AppLovin’s AI-powered ad platform, seemed to show strength in targeting and personalization, leading to improved ad performance for ecommerce brands.

This success attracted DTC brands across verticals, including beauty, household, pets, and accessories.

 “As of today, KNO users have processed 120,000+ orders with a click source attributed to AppLovin. And as you can see, it's accelerating,” Jeremiah Prummer, CEO and Founder of KnoCommerce shared on X in November 2024.

Some brands, like Ridge Wallet, doubled down—pouring millions into AppLovin because it was outperforming Meta in Q4. 

By November, 1.37% of post-purchase survey responses cited AppLovin as the source of discovery—up 34x since June.

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Prummer shared on X in early 2025 why he thinks attribution from Q4 could reasonably be sourced to AppLovin: historical discovery through mobile games is “very low” but exploded starting in August.

Interestingly, most brands weren’t even tracking mobile games as a discovery channel.

But even without it being a listed option in post-purchase surveys, many customers typed in “mobile game” as their answer—often at higher rates than the attributed clicks.

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In Q1, though, things started to taper off, and fast. 

Now the conversation is shifting… 

2025: Post-Hysteria and Allegations

With all the forward momentum, AppLovin also started to face accusations, starring in some ecommerce controversy. 

Note: We are not able to prove or disprove these allegations. We’re simply reporting on some of what’s being shared industry-wide. 

Taking Credit for Meta Clicks?

Allegations have suggested that AppLovin’s MAX platform tracks Meta ads, potentially allowing it to claim conversions that Meta actually drove. 

(MAX is part of AppLovin’s product offering, designed to help mobile app developers monetize their apps through ad placement bidding by different ad networks.)

Additionally, AppLovin’s attribution tool, Adjust, was accused of manipulating performance reporting.

Alleged Silent App Installations and Privacy Risks

There have also been claims that AppLovin uses AppHub (a system-level app) to push installs without user consent, taking advantage of ad clicks.

AppLovin’s software development kit allegedly includes a hidden permission that allows apps to "bind" to AppHub, inheriting its direct install capabilities. 

Culper Research ​​ (a firm known for investigating companies, often as part of short-selling strategies) claims they found signs that AppLovin may be installing apps on users’ phones without their knowledge—what they call “silent backdoor installations."

If true, this suggests that install numbers may be inflated, which could boost AppLovin’s revenue while potentially misleading advertisers.

The Credits Controversy

In the later half of 2024, AppLovin gave thousands of dollars in ad credits to ecommerce brands, seeming to encourage them to become early adopters. 

While initially successful in drawing brands to the platform, this strategy came under scrutiny from industry observers earlier this year.

Critics argued that AppLovin's approach was designed to artificially inflate its user base and market share, potentially misleading investors about the platform's organic growth. 

Then, concerns were raised after Fuzzy Panda Research published an article that claimed AppLovin was leveraging these incentives to claim credit for sales that were primarily driven by other platforms (e.g., Meta), overstating its effectiveness in driving new customer acquisitions. 

The article stated: 

“Our research discovered that Axon 2.0 is the nexus of a House of Cards built upon tactics that formers and experts refer to as “Ad Fraud.”  We believe AppLovin has pulled every trick in the book. We’ve been told they are stealing data from Meta in their e-commerce push. We also discovered AppLovin exploiting consumers and their data in ways which are clear violations of Google and Apple’s app store policies. 

We are short AppLovin. We believe these so-called dark ad practices explain the truth behind how AppLovin seems to have achieved its great growth. We believe Apple, Google, and Meta all have a vested interest in putting a stop to it.”

This practice led to accusations of "shilling," where the perceived value and performance of AppLovin's advertising services were questioned.

In response to these allegations, AppLovin's CEO, Adam Foroughi, refuted the claims in a company article, stating that the reports were "false and misleading" and asserting the company's commitment to transparency and compliance with industry regulations. 

Then came the heated debates on X. 

Some brand operators argued about the ethics of accepting ad credits and promoting AppLovin without disclosing that they received credits to get started on the platform.

There were even rumors about marketers receiving kickbacks.

We have no evidence to suggest this is true.

Miranda Akins, marketing performance manager at 365 Holdings, wrote this:

Sean Frank also came with receipts: 

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And this brings us to today… 

What Advertisers Are Actually Saying

We spoke with brands actively spending on AppLovin to get their real-world perspective on its performance.

Seasonal Lovin

Sean Frank tells us that Ridge saw strong results, calling AppLovin the “Best Performing Ad Channel in Q4.” In Q4, Ridge Wallet spent 10–20% of a $21M ad budget on AppLovin, placing not only money but also trust into the AppLovin platform. 

However, their high advertising spend tapered off.

This doesn’t mean they’re moving away from AppLovin, but they’re paying attention to platform performance and doubling down where they’re seeing the best results.

Perhaps later this year, that could mean AppLovin takes majority of their spend again. It’s all about seasonality. 

“AppLovin could come in with a better ad engine and win business. For now, Meta is back to being best in class,” says Sean.

Ridge Wallet says AppLovin did, in fact, drive incremental results, so ad spend dollars are still going there. 

Movin’ from Meta

But while Ridge is scaling back a bit, others are going all-in. 

Advertisers including Miranda Akins are seeing so much success among her clients with AppLovin that they’re slowly decreasing Meta spend and putting it into AppLovin instead.

But not everyone feels the same about AppLovin lately. 

Leavin’ AppLovin

Nate Lagos from Original Grain wasn’t as keen on continuing to use the platform, decreasing spend consistently since the start of Q1. 

“I turned off all our AppLovin ads today. I suspect that they're not as incremental as previously thought,” says Nate.

Despite spending 6 figures on the platform, Nate still isn't confident enough in its true performance to have a strong opinion one way or the other—and this seems to be the story for many. 

Ryan Babenzien, Jolie Founder, also reported some significant mistrust in the platform and shared an article on Bloomberg from Muddy Waters Research.

We reached out to two other brands for comment. They shared that they turned off their AppLovin ads and won’t be continuing to use the platform.

Other marketers, who wish to remain anonymous, shared stronger opinions.

One told us that “AppLovin was terrible traffic that just took credit for Meta traffic—Meta was so bad in Q4 that brand owners were looking for reasons to believe in other platforms.” Others echoed sentiments about reduced performance in Q1.

The Nerd Word

So, where does all of this leave us?

It’s too early to fully validate AppLovin’s long-term credibility as an ecommerce ad channel. The performance spike in Q4 2024 was impressive—but a few big months don’t make a proven platform.

Zooming out, we also have to account for broader market dynamics.

For one, Steve Rekuc (one of the authors of DTC Index, a monthly report on the state of the ecommerce industry), shared:

“Consumers' sentiment about the economy dropped to the lowest level since October 14th. Apparently, consumers didn't like the stock market dropping [in early March]. There were signs of this slowdown before stocks did their thing last week.”

Our thoughts? 

AppLovin drove a compelling viral campaign last year based on giveaways, but that doesn't per se make for a viable channel.

Brands need to see results, and AppLovin needs to build staying power without relying on make-it-rain strategies and comparing itself 1:1 to Meta.

Let’s see what happens when the dust settles.

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