AppLovin brushes off Unity Vector challenge to ads business

• AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi touts the reach of its ads business in response to question on Unity's Vector challenge to its business.
• The exec anticipates the Epic vs. Apple ruling in the US to open up the App Store could eventually have a material impact on its business.
• AppLovin plans to open the Axon Ads Manager self-service portal on a referral basis on October 1st, 2025, ahead of a 2026 global rollout.

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi has brushed off Unity’s challenge to its ad tech with Vector during an earnings call.

Unity CEO Matt Bromberg told investors earlier in the day that it plans to tap its game engine data for its AI ads platform in a move that would give it access to “highly differentiated behavioural data”.

The company claims 70% of the top 1,000 mobile game studios use its tech and that it reaches billions of consumers worldwide.

“We don't know what game engine data even means, but when you're integrated inside an application, both as a publisher and as an advertiser, you have a lot of data points that you're able to extract that are behavioural data points of how the consumer is playing into a game,” said Foroughi. “We're obviously very good. Our models are cutting edge. 

“Axon 2 has shown phenomenal growth for, I don't know, eight, nine quarters now since release. You have to assume we're pretty good at using the data we have available to us. So what we don't know, as you didn't define game engine data, is is there some magical data out there.

“But our market penetration inside gaming is really large at this point. It's materially higher than 70%. We've got very good visibility into what matters in the gaming category given how large we've become.”

Foroughi added the company has more than a billion users. He also noted that the firm is looking to expand outside of just gaming, which would give it more visibility on consumer behaviour across all categories, he said.

"Material impact"

Elsewhere in the earnings call, Foroughi discussed the ramifications of the Epic vs. Apple lawsuit that has opened up the US App Store to linkouts to alternative payment methods.

The exec said he believes the impact to take longer than people might expect as the largest companies “tend to move really slowly and tend to operate in fear of the big platforms”.

Foroughi anticipates it will take large publishers a few quarters to optimise user experiences. 

“From there, you'll start seeing it compound pretty quickly in terms of benefit to us as an ad platform,” he said. “Because once the very large leaders start doing it, you'll start seeing the smaller to mid-size ones really pick it up quickly. 

“So, no impact yet. And I would guess it'll probably take two to four quarters for some impact and by four to eight quarters, you're going to get a pretty material impact in pricing on our platform.”

Earlier in the call, Foroughi said the company plans to open the Axon Ads Manager self-service portal on a referral basis on October 1st, 2025. AppLovin is targeting a global public launch during the first half of 2026.

AppLovin revenue rose by 77% year-over-year to $1.3 billion in Q2 2025. The company also reported that net income for continuing operations - excluding its now sold games division - was up 156% Y/Y to $772m.