Mobile app advertising had another strong quarter at the platform level. Liftoff Mobile reported third-quarter revenue of $238 million on Nov. 12, up 32% from $180 million a year earlier, and said the result came in well above the high end of its previously published guidance.
What happened
Core Advertising Revenue was $237 million, up 33% year over year and 8% from the second quarter. Net income was $87 million, against a $6 million loss a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA rose 45% to $145 million, a 61% margin. Trailing 12-month free cash flow was $249 million. Liftoff guided fourth-quarter revenue to $244 million to $249 million and full-year 2026 revenue to $907 million to $912 million. CEO Jeremy Bondy said the company saw “strength across key app categories.”
Why it matters
Liftoff runs its marketing, creative and monetization tools on one AI platform, Cortex, for app advertisers and publishers. Its quarter follows AppLovin’s Q3 revenue of $2.18 billion, up 55%, so two of the main mobile performance platforms both grew revenue by more than 30% year over year this quarter. App marketers buying installs or in-app inventory are buying from suppliers whose businesses are expanding quickly.
Our take
The release does not break revenue out by category, so the split between gaming and other apps is not visible. We covered Liftoff’s push past gaming after its second-quarter results. In our reading, app marketers outside gaming should ask their Liftoff team for category-level performance benchmarks for their own vertical before Q1 2027 budgets are set, since the company-wide growth rate tells them little about their own costs.
