Mobile games continued to capture the lion’s share of mobile advertising dollars in Q3, according to a new report from Pixalate.
Analysts at Pixalate estimate advertisers spent $6.55 billion globally on mobile ads in Q3 2024 through the open programmatic ecosystem. Of that number, they estimate around $4 billion went to ads running inside mobile games.
Here’s the list of the 10 mobile app categories that pulled in the greatest share of open programmatic advertising dollars in the most recent quarter:
| Mobile app category | % of total dollars spent | Open programmatic ad revenue |
| Video gaming | 62% | $4.06 billion |
| Music and audio | 10% | $655 million |
| Technology and computing | 7% | $458.5 million |
| Hobbies and interests | 4% | $262 million |
| Sports | 2% | $131 million |
| News and politics | 2% | $131 million |
| Books and literature | 2% | $131 million |
| Healthy living | 1% | $65.5 million |
| Science | 1% | $65.5 million |
| Business and finance | 1% | $65.5 million |
| Other | 8% | $524 million |
| Totals | 100% | $6.55 billion |
Source: Pixalate
Mobile apps that fall into the Sports category, as defined by the IAB, grew their share of mobile ad spend by the biggest year-over-year margin, growing by 46 percent, according to Pixalate.
“Sports” apps include more than 65 sub-categories, covering nearly every major sport on the planet.
Similarly, apps in the “Science” category saw their share of mobile ad spend grow by 41 percent.
On the flip side, the relative share of ad dollars going to mobile apps in the “Video Gaming” and “Books and Literature categories fell by 10 percent year over year, while ad spend with apps in the “Hobbies and Interests” category fell by 12 percent.
For this analysis, Pixalate’s data science team analyzed 10 million active iOS and Android mobile apps, and more than 70 billion open programmatic advertising impressions in Q3 2024. Pixalate excluded suspected invalid traffic in its analysis.
