Webinar Recap | Diversifying Revenue Streams: Modern Monetization Strategies for Consumer Apps
It’s been a busy few years for consumer (non-gaming) apps. Research from Sensor Tower projects revenues to surpass those from mobile games, currently the most lucrative app segment, by 2026. As time spent in consumer apps continues to rise, the attention apps command is also becoming more lucrative, and more app publishers are prioritizing ad monetization as a revenue stream.
But how can publishers ensure they’re getting the best results possible? What are some of the key monetization challenges facing consumer app publishers, and what knowledge can product managers, UA managers, and monetization managers equip themselves with to ensure they are aligned when it comes to best practices?
Our recent seminar, Diversifying Revenue Streams: Modern Monetization Strategies for Consumer Apps, featured unmissable advice from leading figures at prominent consumer app publishers. Alex Moore, Sales Director at Liftoff Monetization, was joined by Guy Tikochinski, Monetization Team Lead at 365Scores, and Nicolas Rames, Ad Operations Lead at Moovit, to discuss the biggest opportunities in an expanding market.
The Key Challenges Facing Ad Monetization
Many successful consumer apps may be new to ad monetization, depending on the app vertical. One of the biggest challenges facing app publishers is how their users react to new monetized features, especially the introduction of ads.
“It’s very unusual for a consumer app to be more aggressive with ads,” says Guy Tikochinski, Monetization Team Lead at 365Scores. He highlights the importance of constant A/B testing to ensure marketers are getting the balance right. Apps can alienate their organic user base through overly aggressive ad monetization.
“[It’s about] finding the right solutions in A/B testing and keeping the tests ongoing,” he explains. “This involves tracking the performance of as many variables as possible, from the amount of ads you show and the type of ads you show, right down to the pricing of your setup.”
Another challenge for consumer apps within larger teams comes from disagreements over monetization strategies. Product managers, product owners, and monetization managers will each have their own opinions on what’s best for the app. Tikochinski believes it’s important for team members to approach any conversations about app monetization with a degree of open-mindedness. Office politics must be put aside because successful marketing strategies depend on successful cross-communication within teams.
“Monetization is acquisition,” Tikochinski says. “Marketing can drive your product to the top. And dealing with the politics in your company and convincing people to be open-minded and base the product more around advertising and the monetization method is key to success.”
Monetization Opportunities for Consumer Apps
Nicholas Rames explains that consumer apps often have their own direct advertising channel—a unique asset compared to most gaming apps. Entertainment apps, such as on-demand streaming apps, are a great example. Once downloaded, users usually keep streaming apps for months, if not years. Advertisers have a direct channel to engage with users continually. Often, the returns speak for themselves. Liftoff’s 2025 Non-Gaming Ad Monetization Report found that ad revenue for entertainment apps is growing 200% YoY.
Leaning too heavily on ad monetization can disrupt user experience and increase churn, but it’s a challenge that leads to new opportunities. Rames believes ad monetization opens up opportunities for subscription-based monetization strategies—something he’s seen great success with in his journey planner app, Moovit.
“There are users that are allergic to ads and don’t want to see ads in consumers’ apps,” he explains, which led to Moovit introducing an ad-free subscription for a small fee. This new subscription saw a lot of traction from users, so Moovit used that positive momentum to enhance the subscription with additional benefits and premium features to convert more users. Rames explains that the results have been “substantial.”
Where subscription tiers are not on the table, Rames says he’s seen a lot of success with rewarded interstitials and banner ads. Rewarded interstitials are placements that appear automatically during natural app transitions. Banner ads are less popular in gaming apps, but can be a great way to integrate non-intrusive ads.
“We don’t see any complaints from users about them, so it’s great,” Rames explains. “And because of the amount of banners that we show, the amount of banners in revenue is almost close to what we get from interstitial. So there is a big opportunity there.”
How to Maximize Ad Revenue While Maintaining a Strong User Experience
While interstitial ads are a great way to boost revenue, app marketers and publishers must ensure they’re hitting the right balance between how often and, perhaps most importantly, when the ads are shown. Speaking from experience, Rames says that many of the retention issues they’ve experienced have come from too many interstitial ads. Still, user experience issues can usually be solved by A/B testing frequency capping.
“For example, we have a preloading mechanism that sends requests to different advertisers,” Rames explains. “When we get the response from the advertiser who won the auction, we won’t immediately show the impression. We won’t display the interstitial. We’ll wait until the user has finished their action and they’re on the transition screen to show it. So it’s how it’s recommended and how we see the best results for interstitials.
Rames recommends sensitive category blocking to ensure quality ads (Moovit doesn’t accept dating ads, for example). He also suggests attentiveness to ad placement and finding specific points in the user journey. Moovit completely blocks interstitials during pivotal touchpoints such as ticket validation and purchases. While this comes at the expense of ad revenue, it provides a smoother user experience, lowers uninstall rates, and contributes to better LTV.
Tikochinski echoes Rames’s advice on blocking specific ad categories. One of the biggest challenges is that ad networks have their own rules for routing ad displays. Users may be shown explicit content if ad networks determine that the content aligns with their preferences. This can be particularly damaging from a PR perspective if the ads are displayed in sensitive markets.
To prevent this, 365Scores has introduced an internal process for quickly blocking specific ads, publishers, and apps. Direct communication with network providers on Slack is a useful additional communication channel to alert ad networks when sensitive ads are filtering through.
“Whenever we spot a publisher, advertiser, or app that we’re not interested in showing, we automatically approach the networks in our auction pool and block each one through its own system,” Tikochinski explains.
Of course, working with bigger networks known for stricter vetting processes is another way of reducing the chances of problematic ads being displayed. “We work only with big networks like Liftoff,” Rames says, adding they also set specific rules with ad networks to ensure the user experience isn’t compromised. In the case of Moovit, these rules include the removal of end cards from interstitial ads and the muted placement of any ads containing music.
The Most Effective Ad Formats for Consumer Apps
While the success of specific ad formats for consumer apps will largely depend on the app category and user preferences, Tikochinski and Rames shared some examples of formats that they’ve found are particularly effective.
Rames has also seen success with in-line ads, which are only available with the Vungle SDK. These ads are similar to static native ads but allow publishers to integrate video ads for high CPMs without disrupting the user experience.
“We listened to our account managers at Liftoff, tried it, and saw great success with it,” he says. “It’s about trying [new] things, being in the betas for every ad network you’re working with, and sometimes you see great results.”
Liftoff’s 2025 Non-Gaming Ad Monetization Trends Report found that in-line and app open, non-disruptive placements supporting high-engagement video ads deliver much higher eCPMs for non-gaming publishers than static native ads. Average eCPMs for App Open ads are 8x that of static native ads and second only to rewarded ads. In-line ads deliver eCPMs 2x that of native ads.
For Tikochinski, interstitial ads are still the most successful by a long mile. “Nothing pays off more than an interstitial, and nothing is as easy to check since there’s no rendering problems,” he says. “You can see immediate results. You can see the CPMs.”
The challenge now, specifically for Tikochinski and his users on Moovit, is to improve the monetization of other ad formats such as MRX and banners to offset the revenue from interstitials—but this will require a lot of testing to get it right.
Trends and Innovation Shaping Consumer App Monetization
Spending in consumer apps is expected to outpace gaming apps by 2026, and there’s never been a better time to strengthen app monetization strategies. There are plenty of lessons that publishers and app marketers can learn from mobile game monetization.
One of the biggest trends leading innovation for consumer apps is gamification. Integrating gamified features such as leaderboards, badges, and user rewards is a great way to improve user engagement and retention, ultimately leading to more advertising opportunities. Any new app features can also open up new opportunities for higher-value ad placements.
“Gamification would enable us to get a lot more of the rewarded ads and make the app more likable,” Tikochinski says, summarizing that more opportunities mean more screen time and engagement.
Rames agrees, sharing that Moovit is developing gamification features that will eventually be incorporated into the app. A journey-planning app like Moovit offers plenty of opportunities for rewards and challenges since its users are constantly on the go.
Outside of gamification, Rames hopes to see more opportunities with app developers and publishers, where they can receive and incorporate first-party data into ad requests. This will give networks more information and hopefully improve CPM while delivering better results for advertisers. Early examples of this already exist at Google.
“The PPS publisher provides the site signals from Google Ads Manager when you use the Google platform. It’s already sending and translating your first-party data to IAB categories and into the taxonomy,” Rames says. “You can send anything that you have about your user. You can translate it to IAB categories, then send it to every network, not only to Google, but also to third-party SDKs, bidders, open auction, open bidders… everywhere.”
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