Liftoff revenue rises 35% to $220 million as non-gaming apps drive expansion

Liftoff Mobile reported $220 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up 35% year over year, as the mobile performance marketing company used its first earnings call since going public to emphasize growth opportunities beyond gaming. The quarter marked Liftoff’s 11th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

CEO Jeremy Bondy told investors that more than half of Liftoff’s advertiser demand now comes from non-gaming categories, including finance, prediction markets, travel, shopping and productivity apps. While gaming remains a major part of the business, Liftoff is positioning the broader app economy as a significant source of future growth.

The company operates across both sides of mobile advertising. Its demand-side technology helps advertisers acquire users, while its supply-side platform and SDK allow app publishers to monetize their audiences. Both sides feed signals into Cortex, Liftoff’s machine-learning platform for optimizing mobile advertising campaigns.

Liftoff estimates that third-party in-app advertising remains under-monetized relative to the amount of consumer attention mobile apps receive. Bondy said third-party in-app ad spending is approximately one-sixth of television advertising on a per-user-hour basis, arguing that advertising budgets have yet to fully follow the shift in consumer attention toward apps.

The company expects the third-party in-app advertising market to reach $136 billion by 2030. Non-gaming verticals are projected to expand at an annual rate of 14%, compared with 11% for gaming, making categories outside mobile games an increasingly important part of Liftoff’s addressable market.

Liftoff pointed to the World Cup as an example of how advertising demand can move across multiple app categories around major events. During the second quarter, travel, finance, ecommerce and live-score apps increased user acquisition spending around the tournament alongside sports betting and prediction apps.

Gaming nevertheless remains central to Liftoff’s business. Roughly half of the company’s revenue continues to come from the category. Bondy argued that gaming has played a foundational role in developing mobile business models including free-to-play, in-app advertising and hybrid monetization, which have subsequently spread across other parts of the app economy.

The company’s diversification strategy also has implications for its machine-learning systems. A single mobile user can interact with games, financial services, travel, ecommerce and other app categories, creating signals across multiple verticals that can feed into Cortex and inform campaign optimization.

Liftoff’s Q2 results were its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company. Despite the 35% revenue increase, its shares declined slightly more than 5% in after-hours trading following the results.

The company’s first public earnings call therefore centered on a broader message than its quarterly financial performance: although gaming remains a major part of Liftoff’s revenue base, management sees finance, travel, shopping, productivity and other non-gaming app categories as increasingly important to its next phase of growth.