App-Ads.txt Statistics Google Play
- Last update: 30 Mar 2023 CET
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has taken it upon themselves to help companies combat ad fraud. Back in 2017, they devised the “ads.txt” and “App-Ads.txt” internet fraud prevention standards. The initiative is aimed at enabling ad space aggregators to acquire ad space from legitimate and authorized suppliers only, thus addressing the pervasive issue of revenue loss precipitated by app spoofing. Indeed, by allowing app owners to declare which companies are authorized to sell their ad inventory, the IAB’s standards provide a crucial mechanism for mobile advertising transparency.
The following provides a deep dive on the state of “App-Ads.txt” adoption on the Google Play platform and will answers questions like how many apps finally implemented App-Ads.txt, what are the top ad providers listed in App-Ads.txt and more.
34.25% of all Google Play apps have implemented "App-Ads.txt". Overall that means 1,287,250 out of all 3,757,855 Google Play apps have finally adopted the standard.
72.2% of the top 1,000 Google Play apps implemented "App-Ads.txt". 722 of the top apps have adopted it. Overall a higher rate of the top apps adopted the new standard compared to the overall apps.
Ever since IAB announced these standards, we at 42matters have been keeping a close eye on their trajectory. Moreover, we’ve aggregated “App-Ads.txt” data for apps across all major app stores. This enables us to provide our customers and partners with insight into the authorized suppliers of any given “App-Ads.txt-” compliant app in a matter of seconds – critically, enabling them to reap the benefits of this data without expending valuable time and resources.
We cover App-Ads.txt insights about the following app stores:
We update this data on a weekly basis so that we can offer our customers the latest and greatest information at all times. By giving them access to our managed data service, they will have no need to implement their own crawler, nor to individually validate the data they acquire about each app. Reach out if you're interested in this data.
The following chart compares the adoption rate of App-Ads.txt among Google Play apps and games. Overall 36.7% apps have implemented the standard, whereas 15.68% of all games have adopted it.
The below chart shows the Google Play categories that have the highest App-Ads.txt adoption rate. The category Google Play Word Games is number one with the highest adoption rate of 49.77%.
Ad partners are companies that have been granted permission by app developers, either directly or indirectly as a reseller, to sell ad space on their apps. Google.com is listed as an ad partner on 90.33% of all "App-Ads.txt" files for Google Play apps. This makes it the most frequently listed ad partner for apps available on Google Play. Coming in at second is rubiconproject.com, which is listed on 30.73% of Google Play apps, followed by facebook.com, which is listed on 30.65%.
Direct ad partners are those which have been granted direct permission by app developers to sell app ad space. That is, they are explicitly listed on the app's "App-ads.txt" file. Google.com is listed as a direct ad partner on 88.84% of all "App-Ads.txt" files for Google Play apps. This makes it the most frequently mentioned direct ad partner for apps available on the Google Play. Coming in at second is tappx.com, which is listed by 20.81% of Google Play apps. facebook.com comes in at third with 18.74%.
Reseller ad partners are those which have been granted permission by the app developer to resell app ad space. Rubiconproject.com is listed as a reseller ad partner on 30.47% of all "App-Ads.txt" files for Google Play apps. This makes it the most frequently listed reseller ad partner for Google Play apps. Coming in at second is pubmatic.com with 30.28%. Openx.com places third, having been listed on 30.07% of Google Play apps which have App-Ads.txt.
