Premium: Evolution of Axon Ads

AppLovin is about to announce Q425 results tonight. As noted before, this quarter will see the first fruits of the expansions of their e-commerce pilot. They opened up the platform on multiple fronts – and all this hits right as advertisers were already ramping up ad spend for the holiday season (BFCM into Christmas).

• They started accepting international advertisers (mostly Canada & Australia) in early September.
• They had a limited release of their new self-service platform, Axon Ads Manager, on October 1, where new advertisers are being accepted via referrals from existing customers and partners.
• This was coupled with a brand change of their advertising segment into Axon.ai. I have started seeing performance ads for Axon.ai ever since.

Let's look at how AppLovin's shift into e-commerce evolved over the past year and half, and the challenges that remain. In part two, I'll walk through what e-commerce customers & tooling partners are saying about the e-commerce pilot.