Web shops are 15% of mobile IAP. Xsolla's ecosystem play and the D2C creative brief

Xsolla announced its Web Shop Ecosystem on August 12: more than 800 mobile game web shops built on its infrastructure, more than 700 supported payment methods, and a claim that direct-to-consumer web-shop revenue across the industry now runs around $17B a year, close to 15% of global mobile in-app purchase spend. That figure has been building all year. Apple's EU fee changes in January replaced the per-install Core Technology Fee with a 5% commission, and Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 flagged strategy shifting toward lifetime-value expansion over new-user volume, both of which favour a channel developers control directly.

The number matters because web shops stopped being a niche workaround for large publishers avoiding platform fees and became, on Xsolla's account, a meaningful share of how the industry gets paid. Whether that 15% figure holds up under independent scrutiny is a separate question. Xsolla is the vendor selling the infrastructure, and the number is self-reported. It is directionally consistent with the broader move toward retention and owned revenue that Sensor Tower and AppsFlyer have both documented this year, which is why it is worth taking seriously rather than at face value.

Why this is a UA and creative problem, not just a finance one

A web shop only earns its keep if traffic reaches it, and that traffic has to come from somewhere: in-app prompts, email, push, or paid media that sends users off-platform to a browser checkout. That last category is where most UA teams have no established playbook. Buying installs and optimising in-app purchase events inside the App Store or Play ecosystem is a well-worn discipline. Buying or organically driving traffic to a web shop, then attributing the resulting purchase back to a campaign that never touched an app store listing, is not.

What the creative brief needs that it didn't before

A campaign built to send users to a web shop needs a few things a standard install campaign brief does not:

• A clear value proposition for why the user should leave the app or the store listing, typically a discount or bonus currency, stated plainly rather than implied, because ambiguity here kills conversion at the handoff point.
• Creative that sets an expectation of a browser transition, so the user is not confused when a checkout page rather than a native purchase sheet appears. Cutting from an app screenshot straight to a payment page without any transitional beat increases drop-off.
• A measurement plan agreed before the brief goes out, not after. Web-shop conversions typically rely on deep links, promo codes, or a separate pixel rather than SKAdNetwork or AdAttributionKit, and creative variants need to carry trackable identifiers cleanly through that path.
• Compliance language appropriate to the platform the ad runs on. Apple and Google both permit external purchase links under current rulings stemming from the Epic litigation, but platform ad policies on how explicitly an ad can promote off-platform purchasing still vary and are worth checking before a campaign, not after a rejection.

Xsolla's ecosystem announcement is a vendor pitching infrastructure, and buyers should read it that way. But the underlying trend, web shops moving from edge case to a double-digit share of IAP revenue, is real enough that any studio without a web-shop creative playbook by the end of this quarter is behind a shift that has been building since January.

Related archive reading

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

• Direct-to-consumer web store adoption hits 96%
• The Ledger #7: Gamescom week preview