Mobile UA Report - May 2026
The ad campaigns behind May's fastest growing mobile apps. AppGoblin breaks the best creatives we tracked in app ad campaigns.
Full advertiser CSV with estimated buying size
App advertising overview - May 2026
Executive Summary
Key findings and performance overview for May 2026
Overview
In May 2026, AppGoblin analyzed 15K mobile apps and captured 875.5K HTTPS events across 4.6K unique API domains, providing a comprehensive view of acquisition activity.
This activity spanned 214 AdTech platforms supporting 604 advertisers and 13.1K creative assets driving some ad campaigns to 54.8% week on week installs growth.
AppGoblin collected millions of data points to show you how mobile app user acquisition works.
- Which apps were advertising the most — 604 apps were actively running ads
- What their ads looked like — nearly 13.1K different commercials, banners, and videos
- Where they were advertising — 214 different advertising platforms and services
- How the whole system works — over 875.5K technical interactions captured (clicks, loads, redirects)
Ad Impacts on Weekly Install Growth
New titles and returning old games
Rhythm Tiles: Pop Songs had a blowout end of May with 379,000 weekly installs and a composite score of 7.6. This music game was advertising via Google's ad network and using AppMetrica and AppsFlyer for attribution.
A smaller app that saw big % gains in May 2026 was Pitch Changer - Music & Video with 1.4K weekly installs and 16.2% week-over-week growth. The creatives we tracked look like they might have been made with the new AdMob AI creative generator tools, though that is just conjecture based on the style.
Animal Hunter : Wild Sniper has 10x their weekly installs since March and saw a notable 74.7% week-over-week growth in May. This game has been steadily ramping up for a couple months now and the ads are helping.
| Rank | App | Installs (week) | Ad Creatives | Ad Networks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rhythm Tiles: Pop Songs com.piano.music.rhythm.tiles.games | 2026-05-25 Accel 0.54 | 379K Base 47.6K | Strong Uptrend | Breakout WoW +1.7% | |    | |
| 2 | Pitch Changer - Music & Video com.vandele.pitchchanger | 2026-05-25 Accel 0.36 | 1.4K Base 439 | Strong Uptrend | Breakout WoW +16.2% | | — | |
| 3 | Silly Fun Live Wallpaper 4K com.silly.fun.smile.videolive.wallpaper | 2026-05-25 Accel 0.51 | 34.9K Base 6.5K | Uptrend | Breakout WoW +182.9% | | | |
| 4 | Traffic Moto Rider City com.arc.moto.traffic.rider | 2026-05-25 Accel 0.45 | 418.6K Base 93.6K | Uptrend | Building WoW -1.5% | | — | |
| 5 | Animal Hunter : Wild Sniper com.animal.hunting.sniper.match | 2026-05-25 Accel 0.61 | 107.9K Base 39.9K | Breakout WoW +74.7% | |   |
Most Popular Video Creatives
Video ads with the widest mobile app distribution during May 2026
Creative Performance
These mobile app ad video creatives achieved the widest distribution among mobile publishers in May 2026. The top performer was showing across 29 publishers demonstrating its popularity and success as a mobile app ad creative.
The leading creative in this sample belongs to com.buysellcyprus.android.app and gives a concrete example of the kind of asset that managed to travel broadly across publisher inventory.
Because the top five are still based on relatively small publisher counts, changes from month to month are best treated as directional signals rather than absolute market-share conclusions.
Ad Network Landscape
The advertising platforms that powered May 2026 user acquisition campaigns
Network Distribution
May 2026 shows a mix of SDK inventory and programmatic distribution. In this sample, Google led the network table with 2,711 publisher apps and 510 advertisers.
Note on Methodology
When looking at this data its important to keep the context of how it was collected. The data is aggregated from API calls made by opening apps and watching the ad network connections. As such, this does not include App Store advertising (Apple/Google) or social media ads (TikTok/Facebook/Instagram). Facebook Audience Network (FAN) is included, but as it is quite small it didn't make the top 10.
| Rank | Ad Network | Publishers | Advertisers | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Google google.com | 2,711 | 510 | 2,724 | 50.6% |
| 2 | AppLovin applovin.com | 1,200 | 0 | 1,184 | 22.4% |
| 3 | Mobvista mintegral.com | 390 | 31 | 174 | 7.3% |
| 4 | BidEase bidease.com | 337 | 13 | 149 | 6.3% |
| 5 | Yandex yandex.com | 279 | 15 | 322 | 5.2% |
| 6 | Unity unity.com, unity3d.com | 161 | 41 | 151 | 3.0% |
| 7 |  Afflejampp.com, revx.io, youappi.com | 147 | 5 | 46 | 2.7% |
| 8 |  Remergeremerge.io | 63 | 2 | 25 | 1.2% |
| 9 |  Loopmechartboost.com | 41 | 4 | 22 | 0.8% |
| 10 |  Adikteevadikteev.com | 32 | 2 | 15 | 0.6% |
Campaign Reach Analysis
Publisher distribution strategies and market penetration insights
Reach Tiers & Distribution
These are the advertisers that appeared in the most unique publisher apps during May 2026. Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire led the reach table with 98 publishers and 61 creatives.
This is a useful set of apps for understanding which advertisers were able to spread creative across the widest publisher footprint in May 2026.
| Rank | App | Publishers | Creatives | Ad Networks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire shopping | 98 | 61 | | |
| 2 | Lords Mobile: Kingdom Wars game strategy | 65 | 27 | | |
| 3 |  Tic Tac Toe 2 Player: XO Game game puzzle | 44 | 11 | | |
| 4 |  BuySell Cyprus productivity | 41 | 11 | | — |
| 5 |  Benjamin - Earn Cash Rewards shopping | 41 | 14 | | |
| 6 |  Яндекс — с Алисой AI tools | 41 | 28 | | |
| 7 |  Loopit - Make Playables entertainment | 38 | 14 |   |  |
| 8 | Pitch Changer - Music & Video music and audio | 35 | 11 | | — |
| 9 |  Going Balls game casual | 33 | 19 | | |
| 10 |  Huuuge Casino 777 Slots Games game casino | 32 | 15 |  | |
New Releases Buying Ads
Brand new apps starting off running ad campaigns during May 2026
New Release Highlights
These apps were released recently, some even in May 2026, and were already running ad campaigns tracked by AppGoblin in May.
Super Rope Hero: Crime City was a brand new game released by CORGY TECH COMPANY and led by installs with 2.1M total downloads, using Google for acquisition.
Crime State: Block City RP by NOVA GAMES LLP has eye catching GTA like creatives and a fun blocky style. Notably they use AppMetrica and AppsFlyer for attribution and analytics.
🎮 New Games (10 titles)
📱 New Non-Game Apps (5 titles)
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B2B Intelligence — Full Advertiser CSV
All 604 advertisers we tracked in May 2026 with estimated buying size, ad networks, publisher reach, and creative counts — one row per advertiser.
CSV Columns
Data source: AppGoblin Ad Intelligence Platform | Report Period: May 2026
For more insights and detailed analytics, visit AppGoblin.info
Report Generated: June 8, 2026