Definition
In-app advertising is advertising shown inside mobile applications rather than on the mobile web — banners, interstitials (full-screen ads between app screens), rewarded video (the user watches an ad in exchange for an in-app reward), and native units within app feeds. It is bought through mobile ad networks, exchanges and demand-side platforms, and it reaches users in the context of games, utilities, streaming and other apps.
In-app inventory is large and can be precisely contextual — a casual game's audience, a sports app's audience — but the formats differ sharply in quality and intent. Rewarded video converts a captive viewer but the reward, not the ad, is the motivation, so downstream value is often low.
Interstitials get attention but also accidental clicks. Banners are low-CTR background.
The format mix and the app categories chosen determine whether the traffic is worth acquiring.
In context
For iGaming user acquisition, in-app is used mainly for app-install campaigns in markets where real-money gambling apps are allowed, and for web-to-app funnels elsewhere. Buyers target app categories whose audiences plausibly overlap with players — sports, card games, some casual games — and avoid rewarded placements for value-sensitive offers because rewarded installs and registrations rarely retain.
Measurement is the hard part. In-app attribution runs through a mobile measurement partner SDK, which works well on Android but is degraded on iOS by App Tracking Transparency, so iOS in-app performance is partly modelled.
Fraud is also concentrated here — SDK spoofing, click injection, fake in-app events — so buyers lean on MMP fraud filters and, above all, on cohort analysis of registrations and deposits by source app and placement, cutting any source whose users complete the install and then do nothing.
Worked example
A buyer runs a betting-app install campaign across sports and card-game apps, excluding rewarded placements. Cohort analysis by source app shows two card-game apps deliver installs that register and deposit at the brand average, while three casual-game apps deliver installs with near-zero second-day retention.
The buyer whitelists the two and cuts the three.
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