AppLovin took 44 percent of all iOS mobile game ad revenue in Q2 2026, up from 39 percent in Q1.
Its own publisher policy, updated 18 June 2026, says this: “When you use the Services for mediation purposes in connection with a given impression, the Services serve as the final auction for that impression. As such, once you have made an ad request for mediation through the Services, you may not redirect the impression associated with that ad request through any other auction or system that allocates ad requests based on actual or estimated pricing information.”
Read those two facts together. The largest single buyer of iOS game inventory also writes the rules of the last auction that inventory passes through, and the publisher contractually gives up the right to take that impression anywhere else.
The question is not mediation against bidding as technologies. It is who owns the auction, and what they charge you for it.
Almost nobody publishes what they charge
Here is the entire set of published take rates I could find from major players in this market.
Digital Turbine states that DT FairBid “is provided to Supply Partner free of charge” and that the publisher receives “sixty-five percent (65%) of the Net Revenue” on DT Exchange. That is one disclosure, implying a 35 percent exchange take.
Google publishes 80 percent for AdSense for content and about 68 percent after the advertiser platform fee, then says openly: “We don’t disclose the revenue share for all AdSense products”.
Unity’s Advertising Additional Terms, effective 30 June 2026, commit to paying “a percentage of Net Revenue” and add that “The Net Revenue share percentage applicable to you may be varied from time to time in Unity’s discretion”.
AppLovin publishes no MAX fee or revenue share anywhere in its publisher policies or payment documentation.
So for most publishers the mediation fee is not a number you negotiated. It is a residual you can only infer by reconciling two dashboards.
The concentration that makes the lock-in matter
Tenjin’s 2026 benchmark, built on 146 billion ad impressions, puts AppLovin at 44 percent of iOS game ad revenue in Q2 2026. On Android, AdMob held 25 percent and AppLovin rose from 19 to 23 percent.
On footprint rather than revenue, 42matters finds AdMob mediation adapters in 95.34 percent of ad-mediated Android apps, AppLovin in 19.34 percent and ironSource in 14.74 percent. Those shares sum well past 100 because apps run several adapters, so read it as reach, not as revenue.
The structural point is simple. When the mediator is also one of the largest sources of demand, the neutrality of the final auction is a matter of trust rather than of architecture.
What changed in 2026
Unity announced on 26 March 2026 that ironSource Ads direct demand would stop serving on 30 April, with final invoices on 15 May and reporting access ending 31 May. Its own FAQ then tells publishers: “We recommend keeping the iAds SDK in your monetization stack for the time being, as programmatic campaigns will continue to serve through the ironSource Exchange.”
A demand source stopped serving and publishers were advised to keep carrying its SDK. That is the clearest illustration available of who bears the cost of stack decisions.
The counterfactual exists. Prebid’s mobile SDK takes no revenue cut: “Prebid takes no revenue cut, meaning publishers get paid directly by advertisers or bidders”, with the SDK integrated into over 2,000 apps as of October 2025. Zero fee, and correspondingly zero managed service.
Four things worth doing this quarter
Where an exchange relationship sits in this
None of the above is an argument for removing mediation. It is an argument for knowing what the layer costs and what it forbids, then deciding deliberately rather than by default.
For example, at AdSpin the exchange runs its own bidder on OpenRTB and connects to publisher supply directly, which means the auction terms and the path are inspectable rather than inferred. It is a different trade: fewer intermediaries between the bid and the impression, and a relationship where the publisher can see what the connection is worth.
If you cannot currently state your effective mediation take as a number, that is the diagnostic worth running before your next stack decision, at adspin.io.
