How RZR built the open internet’s top iOS gaming retargeting engine in under a year

• RZR achieved the No. 2 Power Rank globally for iOS gaming remarketing, sitting second only to Meta.
• The platform achieved this milestone less than twelve months after launching its dedicated iOS solution.
• The platform operates without device identifiers, relying on privacy-preserving machine learning.
• Studios including Highcore Games, Playtika and Zynga have seen multiple increases in re-engagement and ROAS metrics above targets.

Ever since Apple rolled out its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, retargeting lapsed players on iOS has stood as one of mobile marketing’s most persistent technical bottlenecks.

When most players opt out of cross-app tracking, the deterministic signals user acquisition and growth teams relied on for a decade vanished overnight. For many mobile studios, iOS remarketing budgets were either drastically curtailed or abandoned in favour of walled gardens capable of leveraging first-party login data.

The current economics of mobile games publishing have made player retention ever more critical. With user acquisition (UA) costs climbing and install volumes flattening across many territories, finding cost-effective ways to reactivate lapsed spending players is essential for sustaining a game's lifecycle.

The latest edition of the AppsFlyer Performance Index (2026 Edition) reveals that the industry's post-ATT technical puzzle has viable solutions on the open web. Less than a year after launching its iOS retargeting product, RZR secured the No. 2 Power Rank globally in iOS gaming remarketing, trailing only Meta, while capturing the No. 3 Volume Rank in the same category. The placement establishes RZR as the number-one ranked iOS remarketing solution across the open internet, operating entirely outside the walled gardens.

"Every edition of the index shows how quickly the industry can shift," noted Shani Rosenfelder, director of global content strategy and market insights at AppsFlyer.

"RZR's debut among the top iOS remarketing partners proves that a performance-led approach can stand next to the biggest names in the category, and proves that advertisers are rewarding measurable results over scale."

Machine Learning over identifier matching

The challenge of modern remarketing is, at its heart, about incrementality: verifying whether an ad exposure caused a valuable player to return and spend, or if that player would have re-opened the game organically. Doing so without the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) requires a fundamental shift in algorithmic design.

RZR’s approach removes reliance on device identifiers. Instead, the company built a proprietary neural network architecture engineered to evaluate incoming ad impressions in real time. By analysing contextual signals, environmental parameters, and historical engagement patterns, the engine forecasts both the likelihood of a user returning and their projected lifetime value (LTV) post-re-engagement.

To run these predictions with the latency demanded by real-time bidding exchanges, RZR chose not to use public cloud infrastructure, in favour of four owned and operated data centres. Processing upwards of six million queries per second (QPS), their infrastructure evaluates auction dynamics and delivers privacy-compliant bids without third-party tracking dependencies.

"Retargeting is the most demanding discipline in performance marketing because it asks whether your ad brought a user back or whether they were coming back anyway," said Aman Sareen, CEO of RZR Global.

"Our technology has proven it can do more than bring users back. It finds the right users at the right cost, at the right moment, on a platform we rebuilt to meet what mobile marketers need today. Ranking No. 2 in the AppsFlyer Performance Index makes us the top-ranked iOS remarketing product outside the walled gardens. That's the standard we're setting for every product we launch."

Measurable results across tier-one studios

For performance marketers, theoretical machine-learning models matter far less than verified return on ad spend (ROAS). RZR’s debut in the AppsFlyer rankings is backed by published performance benchmarks across competitive mobile gaming segments.

Independent mobile studios and global tier-one publishers alike have documented concrete gains:

• Highcore Games: Running campaigns for Roadside Empire, the studio faced widespread ATT tracking opt-outs that made conventional iOS re-engagement uneconomical. Deploying RZR’s proprietary neural modelling delivered Day 7 and Day 30 ROAS up to 5x above target performance metrics.

• Playtika: Deploying RZR’s retargeting engine for its flagship social casino title Bingo Blitz, the publisher achieved a 5.5x increase in re-engaged players while lowering acquisition overhead.

• Zynga: The mobile gaming giant won back 2x to 3x more high-value players on some of its titles compared to legacy remarketing channels.

"On iOS, almost all our players opt out of tracking, so retargeting is genuinely hard," explained Masha Astapkovich, head of UA at Highcore Games. "RZR made it work anyway. Their privacy-preserving approach re-engaged our players without device identifiers and kept our D7 and D30 ROAS above target month after month."

Anatomy of a strategic rebuild

RZR’s top ranking caps a comprehensive, multi-year business and technical transformation. Formerly operating as Aarki - which previously earned No. 1 rankings for Android remarketing in North America and top-three global placements in casual and casino categories - the company pivoted direction following the appointment of Aman Sareen as CEO in 2023.

Recognising that mobile privacy changes were permanent, Sareen initiated an ambitious transformation of the company’s core technology stack. Rather than patching legacy systems designed for the cookie and device-ID era, RZR retired its older software and invested heavily in proprietary neural networks and high-throughput physical infrastructure.

"New architecture, long memory. Most companies have one or the other," Sareen observed. "Fresh technology with no history makes for weak models. Deep history on old technology means you can't use it. We have both."

Expanding beyond the app sandbox

While iOS games remarketing served as the benchmark for validating RZR’s neural bidding engine, the company has expanded its application across a far broader user lifecycle.

The company’s predictive core now powers RZR’s user acquisition operations and Connected TV (CTV) products across both iOS and Android. By treating programmatic bidding as a unified performance challenge, the company is beginning to apply its retention-led infrastructure to consumer brands, digital commerce, and non-games mobile categories.

As privacy constraints continue to tighten across mobile ecosystems, RZR's success indicates that sustainable growth outside closed advertising platforms will likely belong to infrastructure built specifically for the post-identifier era.