Mobile app growth is increasingly becoming a problem of coordination rather than simply acquisition. User acquisition teams are measured on installs and campaign efficiency, while monetization teams focus on ad yield, purchases and revenue. BIGO Ads, the advertising platform operated by JOYY Inc., is arguing that those functions should be evaluated as parts of the same economic system.
The company is encouraging mobile developers and advertisers to move beyond isolated metrics such as cost per install (CPI), effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPM) and short-term return on ad spend (ROAS). Instead, it wants teams to evaluate the entire player journey—from acquisition and onboarding through engagement, retention and monetization—and determine whether each stage contributes to long-term user value.
The argument arrives as mobile advertising becomes more measurement-constrained and increasingly competitive. For app businesses, acquiring a user cheaply is only useful if that user stays, engages and ultimately generates enough revenue to justify the acquisition cost.
From cheap installs to valuable users
CPI remains a useful indicator of acquisition efficiency, but it can provide an incomplete picture of campaign performance.
A user acquired at a low CPI may churn quickly, generate little advertising revenue or never make an in-app purchase. Conversely, a more expensive user can be economically attractive if that user remains active longer, produces advertising impressions, purchases virtual goods or maintains a subscription.
That makes metrics such as retention, engagement, lifetime value (LTV), ROAS and payback period increasingly important alongside CPI.
This is consistent with the direction of the wider mobile marketing industry. Adjust’s 2025 mobile app growth research moved beyond installs and cost efficiency by incorporating engagement and retention into its Growth Score, arguing that acquisition should be assessed according to whether it produces lasting app growth.
For advertisers, the implication is straightforward: the best-performing media source may not be the one delivering the cheapest users. It may be the one delivering users whose downstream behavior produces the strongest contribution margin.
Why eCPM can also be misleading
BIGO Ads applies the same logic to monetization.
A rising eCPM is normally interpreted as a positive signal because publishers are generating more revenue per thousand impressions. But eCPM alone does not reveal whether total revenue has increased.
For example, an app could remove lower-value inventory and see its average eCPM rise while serving fewer impressions overall. Similarly, aggressive ad frequency could increase short-term advertising revenue but reduce session length, retention or the likelihood that a player makes an in-app purchase.
For mobile game publishers using a combination of in-app advertising (IAA), in-app purchases (IAP) and subscriptions, monetization therefore becomes partly a product-management decision. Where an ad appears, how frequently it appears and which users see it can influence both immediate revenue and longer-term LTV.
The broader market is already moving in this direction. AppsFlyer’s 2026 State of App Monetization report found that hybrid monetization continues to expand, with mobile businesses increasingly combining advertising, purchases and subscriptions rather than relying on a single revenue stream.
That makes the relationship between advertising demand, user acquisition and product engagement more important than a single monetization metric.
The growing case for a shared value model
The bigger issue is organizational.
When UA and monetization teams operate against separate objectives, each group can improve its own dashboard while weakening overall economics. A UA team might optimize campaigns toward an early ROAS threshold, while monetization teams maximize advertising yield without accounting for potential retention damage.
A shared view of user value attempts to solve that disconnect by bringing acquisition cost, retention, advertising revenue, IAP and subscription revenue, payback and longer-term margin into the same decision framework.
This approach is particularly relevant as mobile measurement becomes more privacy-conscious. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, platform-level changes and broader privacy requirements have made deterministic user-level measurement more difficult in many markets.
Adjust reported that global ATT opt-in rates reached 35% by the first quarter of 2025, illustrating the continuing importance—and limitations—of privacy-aware measurement strategies.
For European developers, where privacy requirements are especially significant, the ability to make decisions from aggregated signals and modeled LTV rather than relying exclusively on granular user-level data is becoming an important capability.
Where BIGO Ads fits into the AdTech market
BIGO Ads positions itself across both sides of the mobile advertising equation. On the demand side, it offers user acquisition capabilities intended to identify and optimize toward valuable users. On the supply side, the platform works with publishers to monetize applications through advertiser demand and real-time in-app bidding.
That puts its proposition into a competitive market that includes mobile advertising and growth platforms such as AppLovin, Liftoff, Moloco and Unity’s mobile advertising ecosystem. These companies increasingly compete around automated campaign optimization, audience intelligence, creative performance and downstream outcomes rather than simply delivering impressions or installs.
AppsFlyer’s 2025 Performance Index analyzed 16.2 billion installs across 39,000 apps and 88 media sources, highlighting the scale and fragmentation of today’s mobile acquisition ecosystem. It also identified Google Ads and Apple Ads as leading platforms while noting strong competition from companies including AppLovin, Mintegral, Meta, TikTok and others.
The competitive question, then, is less about whether a platform can acquire users or sell advertising inventory. Many can. The differentiator increasingly becomes how effectively the platform can connect acquisition signals with retention and monetization outcomes.
Paid growth cannot compensate for a weak product
BIGO Ads’ broader argument also puts a limit on what advertising technology can accomplish.
Paid acquisition can accelerate a strong app, but it cannot permanently fix poor onboarding, weak retention or an immature monetization model. If users leave quickly, increasing the volume of acquired users simply scales the underlying problem.
For enterprise app teams, this means UA, monetization, product and analytics functions may need to share more data and common performance objectives. Campaign optimization should increasingly consider predicted LTV, retention cohorts and monetization behavior, while monetization decisions should account for their impact on user engagement.
The result is a more holistic definition of mobile growth: not how cheaply an app can acquire users, or how much revenue it can extract from an impression, but how efficiently it can turn media spend into durable customer value.
That shift is significant for the mobile AdTech ecosystem. As privacy restrictions reshape measurement and competition pushes acquisition costs higher, the next phase of optimization is likely to focus less on isolated funnel metrics and more on the economics of the entire user lifecycle.
Market Landscape
Mobile advertising is moving toward full-funnel optimization, with acquisition, engagement, retention and monetization increasingly treated as connected signals.
- Scale is still available, but efficiency matters more. AppsFlyer reported that 2024 mobile user-acquisition spend reached $65 billion, up 5% year over year.
- Gaming remains a major battleground. Adjust found gaming installs increased 4% in 2024, while average global gaming sessions reached 30.75 minutes.
- Hybrid monetization is gaining ground. AppsFlyer’s research shows developers increasingly combine advertising and IAP rather than treating them as mutually exclusive models.
- Competition is shifting toward optimization quality. Major mobile media platforms including Google Ads, Apple Ads, AppLovin, Meta, TikTok and others increasingly compete on measurable downstream performance rather than inventory alone.
Top Insights
- BIGO Ads is advocating a unified mobile growth model that connects user acquisition, retention, advertising revenue, purchases and lifetime value.
- The strategy challenges advertisers to treat CPI, eCPM and short-term ROAS as inputs rather than definitive measures of campaign success.
- Hybrid monetization is making the relationship between advertising yield, in-app purchases, retention and product experience increasingly important.
- Privacy-driven measurement changes are pushing European app businesses toward aggregated signals, modeled LTV and broader lifecycle performance metrics.
- Mobile AdTech platforms increasingly compete on their ability to identify valuable users and optimize campaigns toward downstream business outcomes.
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