Performance is a critical factor in user engagement, where even minor delays in loading can deter users. A clean and simple user interface also contributes significantly to user retention.
When someone taps your link in a social app or email, it often opens in an in-app browser (embedded browser), a contained environment inside that app. Those in-app browsers don't share cookies, logins, or referral data with Safari or Chrome. They sever the continuity that website-centric analytics depend on. So these sessions look like anonymous visits.
Several Reddit users are complaining that the YouTube Android and iOS apps now show annoyingly persistent overlay ads in the bottom-left corner. These ads are usually for third-party apps or websites, and persist even after the user repeatedly taps "Dismiss" in the three-dot menu. Note that there is no "X" on the banner itself, so several users don't even know they could dismiss the ad from within the three-dot menu in the first place.
Your mobile phone is a treasure trove of personal and confidential information. That's why it's a prime target for hackers who want to compromise or steal your data. Through malicious apps and websites, phishing attacks, and other threats, an attacker can gain control of your device through spyware. But how can you tell if your phone has been hacked or tapped?
Mobile game developers have largely been locked into app store distribution as the primary way to reach players. RCS games live in the messaging inbox, the stickiest surface on mobile, where people are already spending huge amounts of time talking to friends and family. We're building on an interaction pattern people already use every day.
TikTok's newly formed US entity is off to a very bumpy start. As the app continues to face technical issues affecting the recommendation algorithm, view counts and other features, TikTok is also seeing a wave of frustrated users uninstalling it, according to new data. Analytics firm Sensor Tower, which tracks downloads and other app store-related metrics, told CNBC that there has been a 150 percent rise in uninstalls of the TikTok app in the United States compared with the last three months.
The trial is taking place in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where jury selection started on January 27. It's testing out a new legal theory intended to spur greater regulation of social media platforms like TikTok, Snap, YouTube, and Meta's Facebook and Instagram: Lawyers are gearing up to argue that the companies behind these platforms are designing their sites to be deliberately addictive, resulting in direct personal injury to users, especially children.
For example, CPA models tend to be very popular with on-demand apps or apps with subscription models based on, say, a free trial event. Examples of these include fitness apps (such as Peloton and Obe Fitness) or entertainment or VOD apps (such as Showtime, VUDU etc). In these instances, CPA is preferable as a performance model because it's easier to optimize towards a certain fixed price based upon fixed subscription fees and expected conversion rates.
Google AdSense seems to be rolling out new metrics for the AdSense reports in the console. These include Browser breakdown, Hosting App breakdown and Operating system breakdown metrics and data. Browser breakdown: You can use this breakdown to understand the browser from which your ads were viewed. It categorizes browsers such as Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and "Other" browsers. Hosting App breakdown: Use this breakdown to understand the origins of your page traffic. Whether from a webview or a Non-webview source.
In the fintech vertical, where growth depends on trust, the decision to monetise through in-app advertising is a bold bet, one that could backfire if a bad ad experience undermines user confidence. But Toss, South Korea's leading fintech super app with over 25 million users, turned that risk into a major revenue win by implementing filters based on user-level relevance and using behavioural signals and first-party data to block disruptive or inappropriate ad categories.
During my week-long binge, I played games that paused their own tutorials to run ads. I saw endless fake X icons and banners that hid the close button under the iPhone's Dynamic Island. Now, I'm not against ads, but I hate it when they feel like a penalty. I'm a gamer, and from what I've seen, PC and console games integrate ads much better. If mobile devs followed suit, mobile games might finally climb out of the mess they're in.
iOS 26 adoption isn't as bad as reported earlier. Not that it's great. Apple's attempt to keep online advertisers from tracking Safari users had the unintended effect of completely throwing off reporting on iOS 26 adoption. Rather than only a small percentage of iPhone users installing some version of Apple's latest operating system, iOS 26 adoption is only a bit below average.
In-app is far from a lawless, unpopulated no man's land of advertising. In fact, the latest stats show it's actually where audiences are spending most of their time. In the UK for example, just over two and a half hours a day are spent in the in-app environment, compared with only 20 minutes on the mobile web. That's a staggering 90% of the time on mobile spent in apps - whether messaging, social media, music, or gaming. It's a huge opportunity.
After launching almost three years ago, Meta's Threads is now reportedly attracting more daily mobile users than rival platform X. According to Similarweb data shared by TechCrunch, Threads has 141.5 million daily active iOS and Android global app users as of January 7th, compared to 125 million users for Elon Musk's mobile platform. Similarweb reports that Threads actually overtook X sometime between late October and early November after a consistent period of growth, meaning this milestone wasn't suddenly achieved in reaction to recent Grok-related controversies.
The digital advertising industry has always been eager to create standards that simplify complexity. Taxonomies-structured systems for labeling content and products-are one such attempt. And while the IAB Tech Lab's new guidance to connect Content Taxonomy 2.1 with Ad Product Taxonomy 2.0 represents progress, it also raises a fundamental question: Is this really the evolution we need? Or is it just a neater version of a system that no longer fits the reality of how people engage with content?
Now, you might argue that I'm stretching the term "news" a little, since we've had ads in App Store search since 2016, and even this latest expansion of the program, creating multiple paid slots per query, was first floated last month. But you would be wrong, because we just learned two new nuggets of knowledge: the timeframe, and the markets which will get the extra ads first (the U.K., followed by Japan, followed by everyone else). So there.
Back in October, Nothing unveiled Essential Apps - AI-generated mini-apps and widgets based on prompts, that will live on your device and can be shared with others through Nothing's Playground community platform. Today, Nothing is announcing the rollout of Essential Apps Beta, following the Alpha release from late 2025, which was only available for a small group of early adopters. With the Beta, access is gradually expanding through a waitlist, with users added in batches.
