Q3 earnings ad networks: AppLovin and Unity diverge again

Q3 earnings for ad networks landed within a day of each other this week, and the two reports told buyers something they should already have suspected from the year's earlier quarters: AppLovin and Unity are no longer competing in the same weight class. AppLovin reported revenue in the region of $1.41 billion for the quarter, beating its own Q2 guidance of $1.32 billion to $1.34 billion, while Unity's report pointed to continued growth in its rebuilt Vector ad product without giving buyers a number that changes the overall competitive picture. Both are real results. Neither is a surprise, which is itself the point worth dwelling on.

AppLovin's number, in context

AppLovin's reported Q3 revenue extends a run that has been consistent all year: roughly $1.16 billion in Q1, $1.259 billion in Q2 (up about 77% year on year), and now a Q3 figure in the region of $1.41 billion, a pace the company has sustained since completing its Tripledot sale at the end of June and becoming a pure advertising-technology business. That divestiture was supposed to be the moment analysts tested whether AppLovin's growth was carried by its former games portfolio or by the Axon 2.0 ad engine itself. Four months on, the engine is carrying it, with self-serve e-commerce advertising reportedly scaling as a second growth lever alongside gaming demand. For a UA buyer, the practical read is that AppLovin's pricing power in gaming inventory is not going to soften because of e-commerce diversification. If anything, a network with a second demand source under one auction has less incentive to discount gaming CPMs to fill volume.

Unity's smaller, slower story

Unity's Q3 update continues the trajectory it showed across the year: a Q1 revenue figure around $435 million, a Q2 figure of $441 million that beat expectations despite being down slightly year on year, and an Ad Network segment that grew 15% sequentially to reach roughly half of the Grow Solutions business by August. Vector, the AI-driven ad model CEO Matt Bromberg has framed as Unity's turnaround bet since GDC in March, is still the story management wants told, and this quarter's update reportedly keeps that growth trajectory intact. What it does not do is close the gap with AppLovin in absolute scale. Unity is recovering from a smaller base and a longer product rebuild, and buyers should read this quarter as confirmation of direction, not confirmation of parity.

A third data point: the mid-tier networks

AppLovin and Unity are not the only Q3 earnings ad networks story worth reading this week, even if they are the two with the widest gap between them. Digital Turbine's on-device business has spent most of 2025 stabilising after several difficult quarters, and Mobvista's interim results in August showed its Mintegral network still leaning heavily on Smart Bidding automation, with gaming reportedly making up roughly three-quarters of Mintegral's revenue. Neither company is playing in AppLovin's league, and neither is attempting Unity's scale of product rebuild. What both show is a mid-tier of ad networks settling into narrower, more defensible positions rather than trying to compete head-on with the two companies dominating this week's headlines. For a buyer managing a diversified network mix, that stabilisation matters as much as the two headline numbers, since a mid-tier network that has found a stable niche is a more reliable secondary allocation than one still searching for its footing.

Why the divergence matters more in Q4

Two networks growing at different speeds is not news by itself. What matters for a buyer heading into the heaviest spend weeks of the year is what that divergence implies about bidding behaviour and inventory quality under holiday pressure, when every network's algorithm is optimising against the same seasonal demand spike.

• AppLovin's scale advantage compounds during CPM inflation. A network with more advertiser demand and more first-party signal has more room to hold margin while still winning auctions, which means Q4 CPM increases on AppLovin inventory are likely to reflect genuine demand rather than a network protecting a thinner margin.
• Unity's Vector migration is still mid-flight. A buyer allocating fresh Q4 budget to Unity Ads should expect continued volatility in reporting and optimisation quality as the migration proceeds, not the stability of a fully bedded-in product.
• Diversification decisions should be made on trend lines, not single quarters. One strong AppLovin quarter and one steady Unity quarter do not tell you which network will perform best for your specific creative and genre in December; they tell you which network has more room to be aggressive if it chooses to be.
• Genre matters more than network brand when reading these results. A survival or kingdom-builder title spending heavily through Q4 will feel AppLovin's pricing power differently than a puzzle title relying more on Unity's rebuilt inventory, so the practical read of this earnings week should be run against your own portfolio's genre mix, not treated as a single verdict for every advertiser.

What it means for buyers this quarter

Treat this earnings week as confirmation to keep testing Unity's Vector product at a measured pace rather than a signal to abandon it, and as confirmation that AppLovin's holiday pricing is unlikely to soften on its own. As we noted in AppLovin and Unity, Q2 2025: two networks, the gap between these two companies has been widening since spring, and nothing in this week's results reverses that. The number worth tracking into December is not this quarter's revenue figure from either company, but whether Unity's Ad Network segment keeps growing as a share of Grow Solutions at the same pace it managed between Q2 and Q3, because that ratio is the clearer signal of whether Vector is actually taking share rather than simply riding overall ad-market growth.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• AppLovin Unity Q2 2025 Earnings: Two Diverging Paths
• Unity's Q1 2025 earnings and Vector's cautious guidance