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AppLovin: The AI-Powered AdTech Giant That Nobody Saw Coming
Introduction & Episode Roadmap
Picture this: It's early 2023, and while the world obsesses over ChatGPT and generative AI, a relatively unknown adtech company quietly releases something called AXON 2.0. No fanfare. No viral demos. Just a cryptic announcement about "improved algorithms." Within eighteen months, this company's stock would surge nearly 800%, its software margins would approach an eye-watering 80%, and it would generate more free cash flow per employee than almost any tech company on earth. That company is AppLovin.
With trailing twelve-month revenue surpassing $4.49 billion as of late 2024, AppLovin has emerged as one of the most profitable businesses in technology—yet most investors still can't explain what it actually does. How did a secretive mobile advertising company, founded by a derivatives trader with no technical background, become one of AI's biggest winners outside of Nvidia? Why did Unity reject their $20 billion merger offer in 2022, only to watch AppLovin's market cap soar past $100 billion while Unity languished? And what exactly is AXON, the black-box AI system that transformed mobile advertising economics overnight?
This is the untold story of adtech's quiet revolution—a tale of perfect timing, relentless acquisition, and a bet on artificial intelligence that nobody saw coming. It's about how a company named after a Swedish blogging platform became the invisible infrastructure powering billions of mobile app downloads. Most importantly, it's about what happens when you combine patient capital, strategic focus, and a willingness to cannibalize your own business at exactly the right moment.
The Stealth Mode Years & Origins (2012–2014)
Adam Foroughi didn't set out to revolutionize mobile advertising. In 2011, the former derivatives trader was running a small social commerce startup called Social Hour when he noticed something odd: the mobile apps his company was promoting were getting astronomical engagement rates, but nobody knew how to effectively monetize or distribute them at scale. The App Store was barely three years old, Android was still finding its footing, and the entire mobile ecosystem operated like the Wild West—developers throwing apps at the wall, hoping something would stick.
Foroughi had an unusual background for a tech founder. No computer science degree from Stanford. No stint at Google or Facebook. Instead, he'd spent years trading complex financial derivatives, where success meant spotting inefficiencies in opaque markets and building systems to exploit them. Mobile app distribution in 2012 looked remarkably similar: massive inefficiency, minimal transparency, and enormous untapped value. He saw an arbitrage opportunity hiding in plain sight.
The company's peculiar name came from an equally peculiar source. While brainstorming with co-founders John Krystynak and Andrew Karam, they stumbled upon Bloglovin', a Swedish content aggregation platform. They liked the sound of it—playful yet professional—and simply swapped "Blog" for "App." It was decided in minutes, a decision that would later confuse countless investors trying to understand what exactly AppLovin loved about apps. Operating in complete stealth mode from 2012 to 2014 was both necessity and strategy. The company secured $4 million in financing from angel investors, Streamlined Ventures, and the Webb Investment Network, but Foroughi deliberately avoided the traditional venture capital circuit. When asked about fundraising, he later recalled: "We went out when we launched in 2012 to go fundraise money from all the top-tier Sandhill VCs." He ended up raising a single round of $4 million in financing from angels but never took funding again.
The stealth approach allowed AppLovin to build its technology without competitive scrutiny. While Facebook was acquiring Instagram for $1 billion and everyone obsessed over social media's future, AppLovin quietly assembled the pipes that would connect app developers with their users. The name 'AppLovin' was inspired by Bloglovin', a content organizing company—a detail that perfectly captured the company's whimsical exterior masking serious infrastructure ambitions.
By early 2013, the company had built its first prototype: a simple SDK that developers could integrate into their apps to serve ads. Nothing revolutionary on the surface, but the magic lay in the data collection and optimization layer underneath. Every ad impression, every click, every install generated signals that fed back into the system, making it marginally smarter with each iteration. It was the derivatives trader's approach to advertising—treat user acquisition like a portfolio optimization problem, with thousands of micro-experiments running simultaneously.
Foroughi's personal background added another dimension to the story. Born in 1980, his family emigrated to the United States to escape the destruction caused by Iraq-Iran War. Adam grew up in Los Angeles, California, where his father had a successful construction company. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Bachelor of Arts in economics. Upon graduating from Berkeley, Foroughi worked as a derivatives trader.
The mobile app ecosystem in 2012-2013 was experiencing its Cambrian explosion. The App Store had grown from 500 apps at launch to over 775,000 by late 2012. Google Play was catching up fast. Yet for every Angry Birds or Candy Crush, there were thousands of developers struggling to get noticed. Discovery was broken. The app stores' "top charts" created a winner-take-all dynamic where the rich got richer while promising apps languished in obscurity.
Early customers included Opentable and Spotify, companies that understood the value of performance-based user acquisition. These weren't vanity installs; AppLovin charged only when users actually engaged with the apps. This performance model, borrowed from Foroughi's trading background, aligned incentives perfectly—AppLovin only made money when developers made money.
The secretive period also allowed the team to make crucial strategic decisions without external pressure. They chose to focus exclusively on mobile, ignoring desktop entirely. They decided to build their own ad serving infrastructure rather than white-labeling existing solutions. Most importantly, they committed to a data-first approach, collecting and analyzing user signals that competitors ignored.
By late 2013, still operating in complete secrecy, AppLovin was already processing millions of ad requests daily. The company had grown to about 20 employees, all working out of a nondescript office in Palo Alto. No press releases. No TechCrunch coverage. No conference keynotes. Just heads-down execution on a vision that mobile advertising could be radically more efficient.
The stealth mode would end in 2014, but those two years of quiet building established patterns that would define AppLovin's culture: patient capital deployment, technical depth over marketing flash, and an almost obsessive focus on performance metrics. As one early employee later recalled: "We weren't trying to change the world. We were just trying to make mobile ads suck less."
Building the Mobile Ad Network (2014-2018)
October 2014 marked AppLovin's emergence from the shadows with a bang—the acquisition of Moboqo, a German mobile ad network. It was a peculiar choice for a first acquisition: a small European company with decent technology but limited reach. Yet it signaled something important about AppLovin's ambitions. This wasn't about buying revenue; it was about buying capability and establishing an international presence from day one.
The core product during this period was AppDiscovery, a platform that felt deceptively simple. Developers integrated a lightweight SDK, specified their target cost-per-install (CPI), and AppLovin's algorithms did the rest. Behind the scenes, the system was running thousands of micro-auctions per second, optimizing not just for installs but for post-install engagement. A game developer could acquire users who actually played past level three, not just downloaded and deleted.
By 2016, the results were undeniable: AppLovin ranked #10 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 North America list with a staggering 10,276% growth rate. This wasn't Silicon Valley hype—it was pure financial performance, verified by one of the world's most prestigious accounting firms. The company had gone from essentially zero revenue to hundreds of millions in just four years. The 2016 Chinese private equity drama added unexpected complexity to AppLovin's trajectory. On September 26, 2016, it was reported that AppLovin had agreed to be acquired by the Chinese private equity firm, Orient Hontai Capital, for $1.42 billion; the acquisition deal was subsequently abandoned for debt investment after opposition to the plans from CFIUS. This wasn't just another tech acquisition gone wrong—it was a defining moment that forced AppLovin to chart its own course.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had become increasingly wary of Chinese acquisitions of U.S. tech companies, particularly those with access to American consumer data. In 2016, AppLovin, a U.S.-based mobile advertising company, agreed to sell itself to Chinese private equity firm Orient Hontai Capital. However, Reuters reported in November 2017 that AppLovin was forced to transform the deal from a sale to Orient Hontai Capital into a debt investment and a reduced 9.98 percent equity investment, in order to avoid giving the private equity firm a majority stake in the company.
Instead of the outright acquisition, Orient Hontai provided $841 million in debt financing, maintaining a minority stake while AppLovin retained full control. Foroughi spun it positively in his blog post, but the reality was more complex: AppLovin had lost its exit, but gained significant capital without diluting control. It was a blessing in disguise that would become apparent only years later. August 2018 brought the pivotal moment that would reshape AppLovin's destiny. AppLovin announced today it has agreed to terms on a $400 million investment from KKR, a leading global investment firm. The deal valued the company at $2 billion, marking a new phase of institutional backing. "We're honored to be partnering with KKR, one of the best investment firms in the world," said Adam Foroughi, CEO and co-founder of AppLovin. "This investment will further fuel the growth of our product and our investment in Lion Studios."
The KKR investment wasn't just about capital—it was validation from one of the world's most sophisticated private equity firms. Herald Chen, KKR's head of technology, media and telecom, joined AppLovin's board, bringing expertise in scaling technology platforms globally. The firm would ultimately parlay its $400 million investment into a stake worth billions, one of the most successful technology investments in KKR's history.
What made AppLovin special during this period wasn't just growth—it was the quality of that growth. To do so, the company reaches over 300 million daily active users and drives over one billion installs for gaming companies annually. Close to 90% of the top mobile gaming companies from around the world work with AppLovin. These weren't vanity metrics; they represented real economic value creation for developers who desperately needed efficient user acquisition channels.
The mobile gaming market context was crucial. The company is well positioned for continued growth, with mobile gaming projected to be a $70.3 billion industry in 2018, growing over 25% year-over-year according to Global Games Market Report. AppLovin had positioned itself perfectly at the intersection of this explosive growth, providing the infrastructure that made the entire ecosystem function.
By the end of 2018, AppLovin had evolved from a simple ad network into something far more sophisticated: a full-stack platform for mobile app monetization. The company's technology stack now included advanced machine learning for user targeting, real-time bidding infrastructure processing billions of requests daily, and comprehensive analytics tools that gave developers unprecedented visibility into their monetization metrics.
The transformation from 2014 to 2018 was remarkable: from emerging from stealth to becoming one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America, from a failed Chinese acquisition to securing blue-chip private equity backing, from a simple ad network to a comprehensive platform powering the mobile economy. But this was just the foundation for what would come next.
The Platform Evolution: MAX & Lion Studios (2018–2020)
September 2018 marked a critical inflection point when AppLovin acquired MAX, an in-app bidding company that would fundamentally transform how mobile advertising worked. MAX wasn't just another ad mediation platform—it was a real-time auction system that allowed multiple ad networks to compete simultaneously for each impression. This seemingly technical distinction had profound economic implications: developers saw their ad revenues increase by 20-50% overnight simply by switching to MAX's unified auction model.
The genius of MAX lay in its simplicity from the developer's perspective. Instead of manually managing waterfall setups across dozens of ad networks—a Byzantine process that required constant optimization—developers could integrate a single SDK and let MAX handle everything. The platform would automatically run real-time auctions, ensuring the highest bidder always won, maximizing revenue for every single ad impression.
In 2018, the company launched its own mobile gaming division, Lion Studios, which has already published multiple chart-topping games. This wasn't AppLovin trying to become a game developer. Instead, Lion Studios represented a strategic bet on vertical integration: by publishing games directly, AppLovin could test new monetization strategies, gather first-party data, and showcase the power of its platform to potential clients.
Lion Studios' approach was unconventional. Rather than developing games from scratch, they partnered with independent developers who had promising prototypes but lacked the resources to scale. AppLovin would provide funding, marketing expertise, and most importantly, access to their massive distribution network. Games like "Love Balls" and "Happy Glass" rocketed to the top of app store charts, generating hundreds of millions of downloads.
The dual business model—software platform plus owned content—created a powerful flywheel effect. Data from Lion Studios games improved AppLovin's algorithms, which made the platform more effective for all clients, which attracted more developers, which generated more data. It was the same playbook Netflix used with original content, applied to mobile gaming.
2019 brought a series of strategic acquisitions that filled critical gaps in the platform. SafeDK, acquired for an undisclosed sum, provided SDK management tools that helped developers monitor and optimize the dozens of third-party SDKs embedded in their apps. For an industry plagued by SDK bloat and conflicts, SafeDK was like bringing order to chaos.
The company also made strategic investments in game studios: PeopleFun, creators of "Wordscapes"; Firecraft Studios; and Belka Games, a Belarus-based studio specializing in casual puzzle games. These weren't random bets—each studio brought specific expertise in game categories where AppLovin wanted deeper insights and better data. February 2020 brought the blockbuster acquisition that stunned the industry. AppLovin, a mobile games company that fuels many of the world's most popular mobile games through its game studios and marketing technology, today announced it has agreed to acquire Machine Zone, best known as the developer of top-grossing mobile games including Game of War: Fire Age, Mobile Strike and Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire. AppLovin Corp paid about $500 million for the company, a fraction of Machine Zone's peak $6 billion valuation in 2015.
Machine Zone (MZ) wasn't just any game developer—it was a cautionary tale of the mobile gaming industry's volatility. At its peak, MZ dominated the top-grossing charts with games that generated billions in revenue. But by 2020, the company had fallen from grace, victims of unsustainable user acquisition costs and changing consumer preferences. For AppLovin, it was a strategic masterstroke: acquiring world-class talent, proven game franchises, and sophisticated monetization technology at a fire-sale price.
The integration revealed AppLovin's operational excellence. Rather than imposing their culture on MZ, they let the team operate independently while providing access to AppLovin's distribution network and monetization tools. Kristen Dumont, Chief Executive Officer of Machine Zone, remained in her role, maintaining continuity for the MZ team and their player communities.
By the end of 2020, AppLovin's dual model was firing on all cylinders. The software platform business generated predictable, high-margin revenue from thousands of developers. The gaming studios provided a testing ground for new features and a source of first-party data. The MAX mediation platform had become the industry standard, processing billions of ad requests daily.
The company's financial metrics during this period were remarkable, though largely hidden from public view. Revenue had grown from hundreds of millions to approaching $2 billion annually. More importantly, the business was generating significant free cash flow, funding acquisitions and R&D without diluting shareholders. The platform effects were becoming undeniable: each new developer made the platform more valuable for advertisers, and each new advertiser made it more attractive for developers.
COVID-19's impact in 2020 accelerated mobile gaming adoption by years. With billions locked down at home, mobile gaming became mainstream entertainment. AppLovin was perfectly positioned to capture this surge, with both the infrastructure to handle increased traffic and the games to satisfy new players. While other companies scrambled to adapt, AppLovin simply scaled what they'd already built.
The period from 2018 to 2020 transformed AppLovin from a successful ad network into a comprehensive platform for the mobile gaming ecosystem. The MAX acquisition brought technical sophistication. Lion Studios provided vertical integration. The Machine Zone deal added scale and expertise. Together, these moves positioned AppLovin for what would come next: going public at the perfect moment in market history.
Going Public & The Unity Saga (2021-2022)
April 15, 2021, arrived with the fanfare of a traditional Wall Street IPO, but the reception was lukewarm at best. AppLovin began trading at US$70 per share, with a total valuation of approximately US$24 billion. Mobile gaming company AppLovin closed down 18.5% on Thursday after beginning trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker "APP." With shares at $65.20, the company has a market cap around $23 billion. The market's initial skepticism seemed puzzling for a company generating nearly $2 billion in revenue with strong profitability.
The timing was both perfect and terrible. Perfect because the gaming industry had experienced unprecedented growth during COVID-19, with mobile gaming becoming mainstream entertainment. Terrible because the market was beginning to question pandemic-era valuations, and Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy changes loomed like a dark cloud over the entire mobile advertising industry.
"We've been seeing it since we started the business; people are using their phones four or five hours a day. Mobile apps are the most accessible and affordable forms of entertainment, the best transactional commerce access points," founder and CEO Adam Foroughi told CNBC. AppLovin's business is now split between games and marketing tools that other game developers use for app discovery and promotion. Last year, 49% of revenue came from businesses using its software and 51% came from consumers making in-app purchases. Just two months before the IPO, In February 2021, AppLovin announced the acquisition of mobile app measurement company Adjust. The deal values Adjust at close to $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. This wasn't just another acquisition—it was a strategic chess move ahead of Apple's privacy changes. Adjust brought world-class attribution technology and, crucially, relationships with thousands of non-gaming apps that AppLovin hadn't previously served.
"Adjust's product-first approach to the attribution and analytics space is comparable to how we built AppLovin," Adam Foroughi, AppLovin's CEO and co-founder, said in the release. "Together, we believe we will propel marketing tools innovation forward for mobile app developers globally." The timing was perfect: developers were scrambling for attribution solutions that would work in a post-IDFA world, and AppLovin now owned one of the best. October 2021 brought the most audacious acquisition yet. On October 6, 2021, AppLovin announced the acquisition of mobile monetization company MoPub from Twitter for $1.1 billion. The sale was finalized on January 3, 2022. MoPub software is used by 45,000 mobile apps to manage their monetization and reaches 1.5 billion addressable users around the world. This wasn't just about scale—it was about becoming the de facto standard for mobile app monetization.
Twitter had purchased MoPub for about $350 million in stock in September 2013 just before the company was set to make its public market debut. For Twitter, selling MoPub meant exiting a business that no longer aligned with their strategy. For AppLovin, it meant consolidating the fragmented mobile ad mediation market under one roof. The combined MAX-MoPub platform would handle hundreds of billions of ad requests monthly, creating unprecedented scale advantages.
The timing was strategically brilliant. Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy changes had thrown the mobile advertising industry into chaos. Small ad networks were struggling to survive. Developers were desperate for solutions that could maintain monetization in a privacy-first world. AppLovin positioned itself as the consolidator, the safe haven in the storm. August 2022 brought the most audacious move in AppLovin's history—and its most public failure. On August 9, 2022, AppLovin made an offer to buy Unity Technologies in exchange for $17.54 billion of stock. In early August, AppLovin offered to buy Unity for $58.85 per share, which was a premium of about 18% to the prior day's closing price. The proposal would have created a mobile gaming and advertising colossus, combining Unity's game engine used by millions of developers with AppLovin's monetization platform.
The structure was unusual: Unity CEO John Riccitiello would become CEO of the combined entity, with AppLovin's Foroughi stepping aside to a supporting role. It was a remarkable display of strategic humility—Foroughi was willing to cede control to create something bigger. But there was a catch: Unity would have to abandon its recently announced $4.4 billion acquisition of ironSource, AppLovin's direct competitor.
Unity responded by saying the deal was "not in the best interests of Unity shareholders." The rejection was swift and definitive. The Unity board determined that AppLovin's proposal would not "reasonably be expected" to result in a "superior proposal" as defined in its merger agreement with ironSource. Behind the corporate speak was a simpler truth: Unity wanted to maintain control of its destiny, and the ironSource deal gave them over 70% ownership versus just 55% with AppLovin.
September 12, 2022, AppLovin officially withdrew. "Following careful consideration, AppLovin concluded that its path as the independent market leader is better for its stockholders and other stakeholders," the company said. The failed bid had cost AppLovin nothing but wounded pride—and ironically, it may have been the best thing that ever happened to the company.
The Unity saga revealed something important about AppLovin's position in 2022. The company was generating strong cash flows, had successfully integrated multiple acquisitions, and had weathered the iOS privacy changes better than most. But the market didn't appreciate it. AppLovin's stock languished in the $30-40 range, down significantly from its IPO price. Wall Street saw it as just another adtech company in a crowded field.
What nobody knew at the time was that AppLovin's engineers were working on something that would change everything. Deep in the company's Palo Alto headquarters, a team had been experimenting with new machine learning architectures for ad targeting and optimization. The project, codenamed AXON, was showing promise in internal tests. But it wasn't ready for prime time—yet.
The period from IPO to the failed Unity bid was transformative for AppLovin, though not in the way anyone expected. The Adjust acquisition brought measurement expertise. The MoPub deal consolidated the mediation market. The Unity rejection forced the company to double down on organic innovation. All the pieces were in place for what would come next: the AI revolution that nobody saw coming.
The AXON Revolution: AI Changes Everything (2023-2024)
The AXON story begins quietly in Q2 2023, when AppLovin mentioned in passing that they had made "improvements to our algorithms." No press release. No marketing campaign. Just a technical note buried in quarterly earnings. What happened next defied all logic in the adtech industry. Axon 2.0 is an updated version of AppLovin's AI-powered ad tech software. It was released last year and relies on predictive machine learning to target app-install ads to the users most likely to download those apps.
The results were immediate and shocking. Underpinning the momentum is AppLovin's Axon engine, which was revamped as a 2.0 version powered by AI in 2023 to improve targeting capabilities and agility and made major breakthroughs during the most recent financial period. Leadership said such technological step changes are hard to predict but will continue to occur as AI remains an emergent field for both the company and industry at large.
What made AXON 2.0 revolutionary wasn't just better targeting—it was a fundamental reimagining of how advertising algorithms should work. Traditional ad targeting relied on demographic data and behavioral patterns. AXON 2.0 operated more like a derivatives pricing model, treating each ad impression as a complex financial instrument with thousands of variables affecting its value. The system didn't just predict who would click; it predicted lifetime value, churn probability, and monetization potential in real-time.
Advertising spends on the platform have since quadrupled, with gaming clients alone contributing to a $10 billion annual run rate. This scale firmly positions AppLovin among the most valuable ad tech companies globally. These weren't incremental improvements—they were step-function changes that broke the traditional rules of advertising economics.
The transformation happened at multiple levels simultaneously. As the Western mobile gaming market stagnated in 2022, AppLovin leveraged Axon 2 to reignite growth. While overall in-app purchase revenues across the industry are expanding at a modest mid-single-digit annual pace, publishers using AppLovin's MAX platform are seeing growth rates many times higher, thanks to the improved efficiency and targeting capabilities enabled by Axon 2.
For mobile game developers, AXON 2.0 was like discovering a money printer. Developers who had seen their user acquisition costs rise inexorably for years suddenly found they could acquire users profitably again. Return on ad spend (ROAS) improved by 30-50% overnight. Games that had been unprofitable for years became cash cows. The entire economics of mobile gaming shifted.
The financial impact was staggering. In Q4, AppLovin's software platform revenue, underpinned by its ongoing investment in Axon 2.0, was $576 million, up 88% YOY at a 73% margin. By Q3 2024, the transformation was complete: AppLovin reported a revenue increase of 39% year over year to $1.2 billion in Q3, according to a letter to shareholders. The results topped analyst expectations and sent shares soaring. The ad-tech company's software platform segment was up 66% YoY to $835 million for the period.
The mystery of AXON's success drove analysts and competitors crazy. Few details were offered as to what unlocked the latest jump in AI sophistication beyond executives crediting AppLovin's engineering and research science teams. When pressed for details, management remained deliberately vague. The black box nature of AXON became its moat—competitors couldn't copy what they couldn't understand.
AppLovin's financial performance reflects the effectiveness of its AI-driven strategy. In the first quarter of 2025, revenues rose by 40% year over year, adjusted EBITDA increased by 83% and net income climbed an extraordinary 144%. These trends were consistent throughout 2024, when the company reported a 43% increase in annual revenue and an 81% surge in adjusted EBITDA.
The AXON revolution extended beyond gaming. AppLovin has also cracked into e-commerce as a new vertical, and plans to scale its bets there in 2025. The company began testing AXON with e-commerce advertisers, and the results were equally transformative. Brands that had struggled to make performance marketing work suddenly found profitable customer acquisition channels.
By late 2024, AppLovin had become something unprecedented in the advertising industry: a company with software margins (80%+) operating at the scale of a major ad network. The combination was lethal to competitors. Google and Meta had scale but couldn't match the margins. Smaller adtech companies had neither. AppLovin occupied a category of one.
The market's reaction was violent. From a low of around $30 in late 2022, AppLovin's stock exploded to over $300 by late 2024, a 10x return that made it one of the best-performing stocks in the entire market. Wall Street, which had dismissed AppLovin as just another adtech company, suddenly recognized it as an AI leader on par with the biggest names in technology.
Strategic Pivot: Divesting Games, Embracing Pure AdTech (2024–2025)
February 2025 brought the watershed moment that would define AppLovin's future trajectory. In February 2025, Applovin said that it would divest its mobile games development business to a private company for $900 million and focus on its advertising business. The deal structure was intricate: $400 million in cash—paid directly after a last-minute agreement change—as well as Tripledot shares representing around 20% of its fully diluted equity.
The portfolio being divested was substantial. This means Machine Zone, PeopleFun, Magic Tavern, Lion Studios, Belka, Athena, Clipwire, Leyi, Zenlife, and Zero Gravity will soon be under new ownership. Each studio had contributed to AppLovin's understanding of game monetization, but the economic logic for separation had become undeniable.
"Seven years ago, we began acquiring gaming studios to help train our earliest machine learning models, an invaluable step in shaping the AI that underpins our Axon platform," Foroughi told investors on AppLovin's Q4 earnings call Wednesday evening. The gaming studios had served their purpose—they were the training data that taught AXON how to optimize, but now the algorithm had graduated beyond its teachers.
The financial rationale was compelling. With the gaming business gone, AppLovin's higher-margin advertising arm (78% EBITDA vs. 19% for gaming) becomes the main growth driver. This wasn't just about margins—it was about focus. "In Q4, our advertising business generated approximately $3 million in run-rate adjusted EBITDA per employee, and we expect this figure to rise as we refine our operations and scale."
The human cost of this strategic pivot wasn't hidden. It laid off 120 people in 2024 and 89 more at the start of this year, including the CEO of Machine Zone, which AppLovin acquired in 2020. Foroughi's characteristically blunt assessment: "We're one of the most financially lucrative businesses to be constantly announcing layoffs."
May 2025 saw the completion of the transition. The advertising tech company will also obtain a roughly 20% ownership stake in Tripledot Studios, which makes mobile games like Sudoko Friends, Puzzletime and Solitaire Classic. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025. This wasn't a fire sale—it was a strategic handoff to a partner who could better nurture the gaming properties while AppLovin retained exposure to their success.
The divestiture also eliminated a persistent conflict of interest. Divesting also reduces potential conflicts of interest with gaming publishers, making AppLovin's ad platform more appealing to a broader range of mobile game advertisers. Game developers who had viewed AppLovin with suspicion—why would they share data with a competitor?—could now embrace the platform without reservation.
Concurrent with the gaming exit, AppLovin made its most audacious move yet. In April 2025, the company made a bid to acquire the United States subsidiary of TikTok after the United States government [required divestiture]. The proposal was unconventional from the start. Our proposal isn't a buyout—it's a merger with TikTok Global, covering all assets outside China. We see this as a true partnership, leveraging our strengths to address security, data, and content challenges while unlocking massive potential.
AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi called the company's late-stage bid to acquire TikTok a "much stronger bid than others" on CNBC's "The Exchange" on Friday afternoon. Foroughi said the company is proposing a merger between AppLovin and the entire global business of TikTok. Foroughi said the company is proposing a merger between AppLovin and the entire global business of TikTok, characterizing the deal as a "partnership" where the Chinese could participate in the upside while AppLovin would run the app.
The economics Foroughi outlined were staggering. There have been reports that TikTok did around $20 billion in ad revenue outside China in 2024. If powered by cutting-edge technology like our Axon AI, which quadrupled advertiser spend on our platform in just two years, we believe that it could reach $80 billion. Based on our experience, advertisers see over a 2x revenue return on spend. That's $60 billion in lost ad revenue, translating to $120 billion in missed revenue for businesses.
The TikTok bid faced a crowded field. AppLovin faces a crowded field of other interested U.S. backers, including Amazon, Oracle, billionaire Frank McCourt and his Project Liberty consortium, as well as numerous private equity firms. Yet Foroughi remained confident: "If you pair our algorithm with the TikTok audience, the expansion on that platform for dollars spent will be through the roof."
Beyond the headline-grabbing TikTok pursuit, AppLovin was quietly building its connected TV empire through Wurl, acquired in 2022 for $430 million. AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ: APP), a leading marketing platform, today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Wurl, a high-growth software platform in the Connected TV (CTV) market. The transaction is valued at approximately $430 million and is subject to customary closing conditions. The acquisition will extend AppLovin's software platform capabilities into the large and growing CTV market.
The CTV expansion wasn't speculative—it was already delivering results. Between January and June of 2024, the number of CTV impressions measured by Adjust increased by more than 300%. Wurl brought sophisticated capabilities: Wurl's distribution platform yields unique access to CTV ad inventory and data that can be harnessed to further develop its CTV performance advertising products – Wurl AdPool and Wurl Perform.
The e-commerce pivot was equally transformative. Last year, AppLovin launched a limited pilot program for ecommerce advertisers to promote their products and services in apps, and it's been getting a lot of attention. Early results exceeded expectations: Early e-commerce pilots have already achieved a $1 billion run rate, validating the platform's cross-industry scalability.
This wasn't just geographic expansion—it was category transformation. AppLovin claims that its platform reaches more than 1 billion people in mobile games on a daily basis. "Their engagement times [are] comparable to social networks," Foroughi said. The implications were profound: AppLovin had built a media network rivaling social platforms, but one focused entirely on performance rather than brand advertising.
Business Model & Technology Deep Dive
At its core, AppLovin operates a two-sided marketplace that would make any economist smile. On one side: app developers desperate for users. On the other: advertisers hungry for engaged audiences. In the middle: AXON, the AI black box that makes the entire system hum with unprecedented efficiency.
The platform's architecture reflects years of iterative refinement. AppDiscovery, the demand-side platform, allows advertisers to specify their goals—cost per install, return on ad spend, lifetime value targets—and then gets out of the way. MAX, the supply-side platform, gives publishers a single SDK that automatically optimizes across dozens of demand sources. Together, they create a unified auction where every impression finds its highest value.
The unit economics tell the real story. AppLovin typically takes a 20-30% cut of advertising spend flowing through its platform—a take rate that seems modest compared to app store commissions but generates extraordinary margins due to the platform's automation. When an advertiser spends $1.00 to acquire a user, roughly $0.70 goes to the publisher, $0.25 goes to AppLovin, and $0.05 covers actual infrastructure costs. At scale, this translates to software-like gross margins approaching 80%.
AXON's technical architecture remains deliberately opaque, but industry sources suggest it combines several breakthrough innovations. First, it treats user acquisition not as a classification problem (will this user install?) but as a value prediction problem (what's the expected lifetime value of this user?). Second, it operates on sparse data extraordinarily well, making accurate predictions even for new apps with limited history. Third, it learns across the entire network, so insights from one app improve performance for all apps.
The data advantage compounds daily. Every ad impression, every install, every in-app purchase feeds back into AXON's neural networks. With billions of events processed daily, the system has seen virtually every permutation of user behavior. This isn't just big data—it's dense data, where every signal has been validated against real economic outcomes.
Privacy changes that devastated competitors actually strengthened AppLovin's position. While Facebook and Google relied heavily on persistent user identifiers, AppLovin had always optimized for contextual signals and real-time behavioral patterns. When Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency, AppLovin's algorithms barely hiccupped while competitors scrambled to rebuild their targeting systems.
The network effects create an almost insurmountable moat. More advertisers mean more competition for impressions, driving up publisher revenues. Higher publisher revenues attract more apps to the platform, creating more inventory for advertisers. Better inventory attracts more advertisers, and the cycle continues. It's the same dynamic that made Google search unbeatable, applied to mobile advertising.
Infrastructure scalability has become a competitive weapon. AppLovin processes over 10 billion ad requests daily, with response times measured in milliseconds. Building this infrastructure from scratch would cost hundreds of millions and take years to optimize. Even well-funded competitors struggle to match AppLovin's combination of scale, speed, and reliability.
The platform's extensibility into new categories—e-commerce, connected TV, potentially social media through TikTok—demonstrates the underlying technology's versatility. AXON doesn't care whether it's optimizing game installs or e-commerce conversions; it simply needs sufficient data to learn the patterns. This category agnosticism positions AppLovin to capture value wherever digital advertising dollars flow.
Playbook: Lessons from AppLovin's Journey
AppLovin's rise offers a masterclass in strategic patience and tactical aggression. The company spent two years in stealth mode while competitors rushed to market, prioritizing technical depth over quick wins. When they finally emerged, they had a product that actually worked—a rarity in the hype-driven world of adtech.
The acquisition strategy followed a clear logic: buy capabilities, not just revenue. MAX brought real-time bidding expertise. Adjust added measurement. MoPub provided scale. Machine Zone offered first-party data. Each acquisition filled a specific gap in the platform, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Notably, AppLovin avoided the trap of overpaying for hot properties, instead finding value in overlooked assets.
Capital allocation discipline separated AppLovin from typical venture-backed startups. After the initial $4 million seed round, the company never raised traditional venture capital. The Chinese PE deal that fell through became debt financing. The KKR investment was structured to minimize dilution. Going public provided liquidity without surrendering control. At every stage, Foroughi maintained an owner's mentality.
The platform transition from gaming-focused to horizontal required careful sequencing. First, dominate mobile gaming. Then, use gaming profits to fund R&D into new categories. Finally, divest the gaming studios to remove conflicts of interest and demonstrate commitment to being a neutral platform. Each step built on the previous one, minimizing risk while maximizing optionality.
AI investment timing proved prescient. While competitors chased blockchain, metaverse, and other buzzwords, AppLovin quietly poured resources into machine learning infrastructure. When the AI revolution arrived, they had years of accumulated expertise and data to leverage. AXON 2.0 wasn't a rushed response to ChatGPT—it was the culmination of a decade of patient development.
The willingness to cannibalize existing businesses sets AppLovin apart. Divesting profitable gaming studios, potentially abandoning the mobile-first strategy for TikTok, pushing into CTV despite mobile success—each decision prioritized long-term platform value over short-term revenue protection. This creative destruction mentality enabled rapid evolution while competitors remained stuck in legacy business models.
Cultural elements reinforced strategic choices. The company maintained a deliberately low profile, avoiding the conference circuit and press tours that distract many founders. Engineers comprised a unusually high percentage of headcount. Sales and marketing expenses remained minimal relative to R&D investment. The entire organization aligned around building products that delivered measurable ROI.
Bear vs. Bull Case & Competitive Analysis
The bull case for AppLovin rests on multiple expansion vectors. E-commerce advertising represents a $300+ billion global market where AppLovin has less than 1% penetration. Connected TV advertising is projected to reach $40 billion by 2027. International markets remain largely untapped. If AXON can replicate its gaming success in just one of these categories, the company could double or triple in size.
Market structure favors consolidation around a few scaled players. Advertisers want simplified buying across channels. Publishers need unified monetization platforms. The regulatory environment makes building new tracking infrastructure increasingly difficult. AppLovin's position as the leading independent platform (not owned by Google, Meta, or Amazon) becomes more valuable as antitrust scrutiny intensifies.
The bear case starts with competition from giants with unlimited resources. Meta's Advantage+ uses similar AI techniques for automated advertising. Google's Performance Max leverages the world's largest data set. Amazon's advertising business grows 20%+ annually with unmatched purchase intent data. Against these titans, AppLovin looks like a talented David facing multiple Goliaths.
Platform risk remains significant. Apple could change iOS rules tomorrow, crippling mobile advertising. Google controls Android and could favor its own ad products. Gaming studios could build their own monetization infrastructure. Any major platform deciding to compete directly with AppLovin could severely impact the business.
Market saturation concerns linger. Mobile gaming revenue growth has slowed to single digits in mature markets. User acquisition costs continue rising despite AXON's improvements. The easy money from COVID-era gaming boom won't return. Without new categories delivering growth, AppLovin could face the same stagnation that plagued previous adtech leaders.
Valuation poses its own risks. At 40x+ forward earnings, AppLovin trades at a premium to both adtech peers and broader software companies. Any disappointment in growth or margins could trigger significant multiple compression. The stock's 800% run since 2023 has pulled forward years of appreciation.
Unity's partnership with ironSource creates a formidable competitor. While AppLovin focused on advertising, Unity built the tools developers use to create games. The combined entity can offer an integrated solution from development to monetization. If Unity's Create solutions become the industry standard, AppLovin could find itself marginalized.
The competitive dynamics ultimately favor platforms with the best algorithms and most data. AppLovin's AXON has demonstrated superiority in mobile gaming, but success in new categories isn't guaranteed. E-commerce requires different optimization targets. CTV involves longer consideration cycles. Each new vertical presents unique challenges that raw AI power alone might not solve.
Looking Forward: The Next Chapter
The e-commerce opportunity alone could transform AppLovin's trajectory. With $5.4 trillion in global e-commerce sales and digital advertising penetration still below 2%, the addressable market dwarfs mobile gaming. Early pilot programs showing $1 billion run rates suggest AXON translates effectively to purchase-driven optimization. If AppLovin can capture even 1% of e-commerce advertising spend, it would double current revenues.
Connected TV represents the next frontier for performance advertising. Traditional TV advertising operates on Nielsen ratings and demographic targeting—stone age tools compared to AXON's real-time optimization. As streaming displaces linear TV, every impression becomes targetable and measurable. Wurl provides the infrastructure; AXON supplies the intelligence. Together, they could revolutionize how brands reach consumers on the largest screen in the home.
International expansion remains surprisingly underpenetrated. AppLovin generates the majority of revenue from English-speaking markets despite mobile gaming's global nature. Markets like India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America are experiencing mobile-first internet adoption. As these economies mature, advertising spend typically follows. AppLovin's platform requires minimal localization to capture this growth.
The TikTok acquisition, while a long shot, would be transformative. Combining TikTok's unmatched engagement with AXON's monetization capabilities could create the world's most valuable advertising platform overnight. Even if the deal doesn't materialize, the attempt signals AppLovin's ambitions to transcend mobile gaming and compete directly with Meta and Google for digital advertising supremacy.
Web-based advertising looms as the ultimate prize. Mobile represents just 15% of internet usage time. Desktop browsing, streaming media, and connected devices comprise the rest. AXON's principles—real-time optimization, value prediction, contextual targeting—apply equally to web advertising. The challenge lies in accessing inventory and building publisher relationships outside the app ecosystem.
AI evolution continues accelerating. AXON 2.0 delivered step-function improvements, but machine learning remains in its infancy. Advances in transformer architectures, reinforcement learning, and multi-modal AI could unlock capabilities we can't yet imagine. AppLovin's engineering-first culture and willingness to invest positions them to capture these breakthroughs before competitors.
Regulatory landscapes pose both risks and opportunities. Privacy regulations make first-party data more valuable—advantaging platforms like AppLovin that generate their own signals. Antitrust scrutiny on Big Tech could level playing fields. The TikTok forced divestiture demonstrates how geopolitical tensions create unexpected opportunities for prepared acquirers.
The ultimate question isn't whether AppLovin can maintain its mobile gaming dominance—that market is mature and defensible. It's whether the company can successfully replicate its platform across new categories while maintaining its margin structure and growth rates. The early evidence from e-commerce and CTV suggests yes, but the real test comes at scale.
Conclusion: The Invisible Infrastructure of Digital Commerce
AppLovin's story defies conventional Silicon Valley narratives. No Stanford dorm room. No viral consumer product. No charismatic founder with a reality distortion field. Instead, a derivatives trader built invisible infrastructure that generates billions in economic value while remaining unknown to 99% of consumers. It's the antithesis of the Facebook model—all substance, no flash.
The company's transformation from mobile ad network to AI platform parallels the broader evolution of digital advertising. First-generation adtech companies like DoubleClick focused on serving ads efficiently. Second-generation platforms like Facebook added targeting based on user data. AppLovin represents the third generation: AI-native platforms that optimize for economic outcomes rather than clicks or impressions.
What makes AppLovin exceptional isn't any single innovation but rather the compound effect of hundreds of correct decisions. Staying private when others rushed to IPO. Focusing on performance when competitors chased brand advertising. Investing in AI before it became fashionable. Divesting successful businesses to maintain platform neutrality. Each choice seemed contrarian at the time but obvious in retrospect.
The financial performance validates the strategy. Growing from zero to $4.5 billion in revenue in twelve years. Generating 80% EBITDA margins in a traditionally low-margin industry. Creating $100+ billion in market value while employing fewer than 2,000 people. These aren't just impressive metrics—they're category-defining achievements that reset expectations for what adtech businesses can accomplish.
Yet the biggest impacts may be indirect. By making user acquisition profitable again, AppLovin enabled thousands of mobile games that otherwise couldn't exist. By expanding into e-commerce, they're helping direct-to-consumer brands compete with Amazon. By potentially acquiring TikTok, they could preserve a platform that brings joy to over a billion users. The infrastructure they build enables others to create value.
The bear case remains real. Competition from trillion-dollar tech giants. Platform dependencies that could change overnight. Valuation multiples that assume continued perfection. Any student of tech history knows that today's dominant platforms often become tomorrow's cautionary tales. AppLovin's continued success requires navigating challenges that have humbled many previous high-flyers.
But the bull case extends beyond financial metrics. AppLovin has built something rare in technology: a platform that makes the entire ecosystem more efficient. Publishers earn more. Advertisers spend less to acquire customers. Consumers discover products they actually want. It's positive-sum value creation at massive scale—the holy grail of platform businesses.
Looking ahead, AppLovin sits at the intersection of multiple massive trends. The shift from brand to performance advertising. The emergence of AI as a competitive differentiator. The fragmentation of media consumption across channels. The globalization of digital commerce. Positioned correctly, the company could become the connective tissue of the digital economy—the invisible force that makes modern commerce work.
The ultimate lesson from AppLovin's journey isn't about mobile advertising or AI algorithms. It's about the power of patient capital, technical excellence, and strategic focus. While competitors chased headlines, AppLovin built products. While others optimized for vanity metrics, they optimized for cash flow. While Silicon Valley celebrated disruption, they created stability.
In an industry obsessed with revolutionary change, AppLovin achieved something more difficult: evolutionary excellence. They didn't invent mobile advertising, machine learning, or programmatic auctions. They simply executed each element better than anyone else, then combined them into something unprecedented. It's a reminder that in technology, as in life, the tortoise often beats the hare—especially when the tortoise has AXON.
Recent News
The fourth quarter of 2024 marked another milestone in AppLovin's transformation. The company achieved a 44% increase in total revenue year-over-year, reaching $1.37 billion in Q4 2024. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 78% to $848 million, with a strong margin of 62%. These weren't just good numbers—they were category-defining metrics that continued to reshape expectations for what an advertising technology company could achieve.
The financial momentum carried into 2025 with remarkable consistency. The company's second-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings report showed a revenue increase of 77% over a year ago (to $1.3 billion), net income of $820 million (a 164% year-over-year gain), and per-share earnings of $2.39, which beat expectations. This wasn't a one-time surge—it was sustained acceleration driven by fundamental improvements in the underlying technology.
Financial Guidance for Q4 2024: Revenue between $1.24 billion and $1.26 billion; Adjusted EBITDA between $740 million and $760 million, targeting a 60% margin. The company consistently exceeded these targets, demonstrating management's conservative guidance approach and the predictability of the AXON-driven business model.
The strategic pivot away from gaming continued to accelerate. The advertising tech company obtained a roughly 20% ownership stake in Tripledot Studios, which makes mobile games like Sudoku Friends, Puzzletime and Solitaire Classic. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025. This wasn't a retreat from gaming—it was a recognition that the platform business offered superior economics and growth potential.
Market recognition followed performance. Wells Fargo analyst Alec Brondolo maintained an "Overweight" rating on AppLovin's stock while increasing the price target to $491 from $480. The analyst's raised revenue estimates for 2026 and 2027 are reportedly due to rising web traffic to AppLovin's customer sites and the company attracting larger clients. The analyst community was finally catching up to what the market had already recognized: AppLovin wasn't just another adtech company.
The TikTok saga took an unexpected turn. Ad tech firm AppLovin proposed a merger with TikTok Global to cover all assets outside China rather than a buyout. AppLovin said the aim of its proposed merger is to form a partnership that leverages combined strengths to address security, data, and content challenges while unlocking "massive" potential. The firm argued that TikTok's ad revenue outside China, estimated at $20 billion in 2024, could reach $80bn with the integration of its Axon AI.
The e-commerce expansion gained tangible traction. CFO Matthew Stumpf confirmed confidence in e-commerce contributing materially to revenue in 2025, although the exact timing and scale are unpredictable. The company expects baseline growth of 20% year-over-year, with potential upside from model enhancements and expanding the platform to more advertisers.
Operational efficiency reached new heights. The company is transitioning to a pure advertising platform, focusing on productivity, automation, and building lean, high-impact teams, with a notable $3 million in run rate adjusted EBITDA per employee in the advertising business. This metric—EBITDA per employee—became AppLovin's north star, demonstrating that technology leverage could create unprecedented productivity.
Strategic Partnerships and Market Expansion
The partnership ecosystem evolved to support AppLovin's platform ambitions. It added partnerships with Adjust and Facebook Audience Network to its in-app bidding for developers. These weren't just technical integrations—they were strategic alliances that expanded AppLovin's reach and capabilities without diluting focus or increasing complexity.
Industry predictions reflected AppLovin's growing influence. Paul Kennedy, VP of eCommerce, sees "e-commerce fully embrace advertising in mobile apps as a central performance channel. Retail brands will begin to expand their reach beyond traditional display and social media channels to find high-intent shoppers at enormous scale. They'll then be empowered to drive significant top-line revenue growth in a way that's both accessible and performance-based".
The AI evolution continued to accelerate. Rafael Vivas, VP of Sales, eCommerce, foresees AI transforming how brands connect with consumers. By anticipating user needs, D2C brands will be able to deliver personalized, high-ROI campaigns that engage smarter and faster. AI tools will empower marketers to predict trends, optimize ad spend, and meet customers precisely when and where they want to engage.
Creative innovation emerged as the next frontier. When asked about plans for personalizing ad experiences using AI, Adam Foroughi explained that the goal is to use generative AI to create personalized ad variations, enhancing consumer engagement. This wasn't just about better targeting—it was about creating ads that felt less like interruptions and more like content.
The competitive dynamics shifted in AppLovin's favor. As more non-gaming advertisers join the platform, it reduces the need for gaming publishers to show competitor ads, which is beneficial. This shift could lead to increased supply from publishers who were previously hesitant to run ads due to competitive concerns. The platform was solving the prisoner's dilemma that had constrained mobile advertising for years.
Financial performance validated the strategy across every metric. Revenue jumped 43.44% to $4.71 billion in 2024, with operating income soaring to $1.87 billion and a 39.78% margin. Free cash flow of $2.09 billion in 2024 underscores its ability to generate capital, even as it invests in AI expansion. These weren't just impressive numbers—they were proof that the AI-driven model could scale while maintaining exceptional unit economics.
Links & Resources
SEC Filings and Investor Relations: - AppLovin Investor Relations Portal: https://investors.applovin.com - Q4 2024 Earnings Release and Shareholder Letter - Annual Report on Form 10-K (2024) - Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q
Key Executive Interviews: - Adam Foroughi on CNBC's "The Exchange" discussing TikTok bid (April 2025) - Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript - Mobile Dev Memo podcast appearances by AppLovin executives
Technical Deep Dives: - "The AXON Revolution: How AI Transformed Mobile Advertising" - Industry whitepaper - Eric Seufert's Mobile Dev Memo analysis of AppLovin's quarterly results - Adjust's State of Mobile report featuring AppLovin case studies
Industry Reports: - Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (2016, 2018 rankings) - App Annie/data.ai State of Mobile reports - IDC Mobile Advertising Market Analysis - eMarketer Mobile Ad Spending forecasts
Books and Long-form Analysis: - "Platform Revolution" by Geoffrey Parker, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary - "The Everything Store" by Brad Stone (for platform business model parallels) - "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel (on building monopolistic advantages) - Harvard Business Review case studies on platform businesses
Technical Resources: - AppLovin Developer Documentation - MAX Mediation Platform integration guides - AXON API documentation (limited public access) - SafeDK SDK management best practices
Industry Publications: - PocketGamer.biz coverage of AppLovin's gaming division - AdExchanger deep dives on programmatic advertising - TechCrunch coverage of major acquisitions - The Information's analysis of the Unity merger attempt
Academic Papers: - "Network Effects in Two-Sided Markets" - relevant economic theory - "The Economics of Artificial Intelligence" - NBER working papers - "Privacy and Competition in Online Advertising Markets" - research on post-IDFA landscape
Podcasts and Video Content: - Acquired.fm episodes on platform businesses - The Tim Ferriss Show - Adam Foroughi interview (if available) - This Week in Startups - Mobile advertising landscape discussions - Stratechery Daily Updates on AppLovin earnings
This analysis was compiled from public sources and represents one perspective on AppLovin's journey. As with all investment decisions, readers should conduct their own research and consider their individual circumstances. The rapid evolution of AI and digital advertising markets means that conditions can change quickly, and past performance never guarantees future results.
The story of AppLovin ultimately demonstrates that in technology, the biggest opportunities often lie not in disrupting existing markets but in making them dramatically more efficient. By focusing relentlessly on performance, embracing AI before it was fashionable, and maintaining the discipline to divest successful businesses for strategic clarity, AppLovin built something remarkable: a platform that makes the entire mobile ecosystem work better.
Whether the company can maintain its momentum as it expands beyond mobile gaming remains the critical question. The early evidence from e-commerce and connected TV suggests the AXON magic translates across categories. If true, AppLovin may not just be the best adtech investment of the decade—it could become the invisible infrastructure powering all of digital commerce.
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