🔥AppLovin just posted $1.66B in Q4 alone
Up 66% year-over-year.
Then the stock dropped 13%...
The market is pricing in a risk that most studios haven't thought about yet
Because here's what nobody's saying out loud...
One algorithm is deciding the fate of thousands of mobile games.
Every UA manager in gaming knows this. The dependency is real and growing
Some numbers that put it in perspective
AppLovin now controls more mobile gaming ad spend than Google.
Their Q4 revenue alone is bigger than most studios' entire annual revenue.
The platform helping you acquire users is one of the most powerful companies in your industry
And AXON — AppLovin's AI bidding engine — is the thing your whole funnel runs through
We've been here before.
Post-ATT, we all said the industry would diversify. It concentrated instead.
Now we're having the same conversation about a single algorithm at a single platform
The stock dropping 13% on a beat tells you something
Investors aren't worried about last quarter
They're worried about what happens when the algorithm changes, when a competitor catches up, or when studios start asking whether they've built their entire acquisition model on one foundation
Meta and Google are already building the answer to AppLovin. They're not going to let this stand
The UA managers who are already diversifying channels aren't being cautious. They're being early