What Is Programmatic Advertising?

An Introductory Overview Guide for Marketers, Publishers, and Media Buyers in 2026

This guide covers everything you need to know about programmatic advertising in 2026 — how it works, which channels and formats are available, and how to build a strategy that performs. Use the sections below to read end-to-end or jump directly to the topic most relevant to you.

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory using software, data, and real-time auctions. Rather than relying on manual negotiations, programmatic systems connect buyers and sellers instantly, matching the right ad to the right user at the right moment, at scale.

The term covers a wide ecosystem of technology: demand-side platforms (DSPs) allow advertisers to bid for impressions; supply-side platforms (SSPs) allow publishers to offer their inventory; and ad exchanges act as the auction layer connecting the two. Real-time bidding (RTB) is the dominant transaction mechanism, conducting each auction in under 100 milliseconds.

Programmatic is no longer a niche channel. The programmatic model spans every major digital channel: display, video, native, connected TV (CTV), audio, digital out-of-home (DOOH), and in-app and in-game advertising, across desktop, mobile web, mobile applications, and connected devices.

Increasingly, AI and machine learning are being used across the programmatic ecosystem to help buyers and sellers analyze signals, optimize campaign performance, and operate more efficiently.

How does programmatic advertising work?

A typical programmatic transaction follows a real-time bidding (RTB) flow that completes in under a second. Here is how the seven steps unfold from the moment a user loads a page or opens an app.

Mobile App Example

A user opens a free-to-play mobile puzzle game. As the level loads, the game's SDK sends a bid request through Unity Exchange, including the device type (iOS), the app category (casual games), and the user's anonymised identifier. Multiple DSPs respond immediately. The winning DSP, running a campaign for a mobile fintech app, pays $12 CPM. A full-screen interstitial ad is served between levels. The user can dismiss it after five seconds or tap through to the App Store.

CTV Example

A viewer on a connected TV device opens a streaming app. As an episode begins, the app's SSP sends a bid request to a video ad exchange specifying the content genre, available audience signals (ex. household income, demo, etc), and the device type. A DSP running a campaign for an automotive brand wins the auction at $28 CPM. A 30-second non-skippable pre-roll plays before the content. The transaction was fully automated — no human negotiation required.

The programmatic advertising ecosystem: DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, and DMPs

Programmatic advertising isn’t a single platform. It’s an interconnected ecosystem of specialised tools, each handling one part of the buying, selling, and data layer. Understanding the stack is essential for any buyer or publisher entering the market.

Demand-side platforms (DSPs)

A demand-side platform (DSP) is the buyer's interface to programmatic supply: a software platform that allows advertisers and agencies to purchase ad impressions across multiple exchanges and publisher networks from a single unified interface.

DSPs connect to ad exchanges via real-time bidding protocols. When an exchange sends a bid request, the DSP evaluates it against the advertiser's targeting parameters; demographics, geolocation, device, behavioural audience segments, contextual signals, and first-party data, and calculates a bid price using its algorithms. The buyer configures campaign goals, budgets, frequency caps, and creative assets in the DSP's interface; the platform handles the real-time execution automatically.These platforms help advertisers buy and manage digital advertising across a wide range of websites, apps, and streaming environments from a single interface.

Supply-side platforms (SSPs)

A supply-side platform (SSP) is the publisher's interface to programmatic demand: a technology platform that allows publishers to expose their ad inventory to multiple exchanges and DSPs, maximise yield, and control access rules (floor prices, buyer blocklists, deal configurations).

SSPs aggregate demand from many sources simultaneously, enabling a single impression to be auctioned across dozens of DSPs at once. Publishers use SSPs to set floor prices, prioritise premium demand through private marketplaces, and access reporting on what their inventory earns.

In mobile gaming and in-app advertising, the SSP role is often handled directly by the ad exchange, integrated via a software development kit (SDK) rather than a server-side tag. This SDK-based model is standard practice in the mobile ecosystem.

Ad exchanges

An ad exchange is the auction layer that connects DSPs and SSPs: a technology marketplace that receives bid requests from SSPs, distributes them to DSPs, runs the auction, and routes the winning creative back to the publisher for delivery.

Exchanges operate on standardized protocols. One well known standard for web and video is OpenRTB, maintained by the IAB Tech Lab. OpenRTB defines the data fields in a bid request, the format of bid responses, and the auction mechanics. Most major exchanges are OpenRTB-compliant.

In mobile and in-app advertising, Unity operates two exchanges, Unity Exchange and ironSource Exchange, which are among some of the largest programmatic in-game supply sources globally. That scale gives buyers on both exchanges access to a breadth of gaming and app supply. For web and video, OpenRTB-compliant exchanges including Google AdX handle the bulk of open-market volume.

Data management platforms (DMPs) and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

A data management platform (DMP) collects, organizes, and segments audience data from multiple sources; publisher first-party data, third-party data providers, and advertiser CRM data, and makes those segments available for targeting activation in DSPs and SSPs.

A customer data platform (CDP) creates persistent customer profiles using consented first-party data, rather than anonymised third-party segments, from sources such as websites, mobile apps, CRM systems, loyalty programs, and purchase histories. Advertisers use CDPs to unify customer data, build audience segments, and activate those audiences across advertising and marketing channels.

As privacy regulations have evolved and third-party cookies have become less prevalent, many organizations have shifted from DMP-centric strategies toward CDPs and first-party data activation. The shift is driven by forces including the deprecation of third-party cookies across most major browsers, which has degraded the value of third-party DMP segments; and the growing enforcement of privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, and their successors), which are pushing advertisers toward first-party data strategies.

Types of programmatic deals: RTB, PMP, programmatic guaranteed, and preferred deals

Not all programmatic transactions work the same way. The market has evolved four distinct deal structures, each with different tradeoffs on price, quality, volume certainty, and targeting flexibility. Choosing the right deal type is as important as choosing the right targeting.

Real-time bidding (open marketplace)

Open RTB auctions are the foundation of programmatic. Any buyer with a DSP seat can bid on any available impression across all participating publishers. There are no exclusivity agreements, no floor price negotiations, and no commitment to purchase a set volume.

Open marketplace inventory offers broad reach, and access to a large pool of available ad impressions across websites, apps, streaming platforms, and other digital environments.. Buyers can access inventory from many publishers through a single DSP, making open marketplace buying a common approach for audience-driven campaigns. Advertisers often use tools such as pre-bid filtering, supply path optimization (SPO), and app-ads.txt verification to align inventory selection with campaign objectives.

Typical use case: Performance campaigns optimized to cost-per-install (CPI), cost-per-action (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS), where audience reach matters more than placement quality.

Private marketplace (PMP)

A private marketplace (PMP) is an invitation-only programmatic auction. A publisher or group of publishers makes a curated set of their inventory available to a defined list of buyers at a negotiated floor price. The auction mechanics are the same as open RTB, but access is restricted.

PMPs provide advertisers with access to selected inventory and give publishers greater control over who can participate in the auction. Because inventory and participants are pre-defined, PMPs can offer more predictable buying conditions and greater transparency around available supply. PMPs typically transact at higher CPMs than open marketplace auctions, reflecting the curated nature of the inventory and access.

Typical use case: Brand awareness and consideration campaigns that require premium publisher environments i.e; major news sites, top mobile games, premium streaming apps, but still want the efficiency of auction-based buying rather than direct deal negotiation.

Preferred deals

A preferred deal is a fixed-CPM arrangement where a buyer gets first look at a publisher's inventory before it goes to PMP or RTB. There is no volume commitment: the buyer pays the agreed CPM only for the impressions they choose to purchase.

Preferred deals sit between PMPs and programmatic guaranteed deals in terms of commitment. Buyers benefit from negotiated pricing and priority access to inventory, while publishers benefit from a direct, relationship-based demand source. Because there is no fixed volume commitment, preferred deals offer flexibility for both parties while maintaining many of the advantages of a direct partnership

Typical use case: Ongoing always-on campaigns that want predictable CPMs and early access to high-quality inventory without locking into a guaranteed volume commitment.

Programmatic guaranteed

Programmatic guaranteed (PG) is the closest analog to a traditional direct media buy, executed through programmatic infrastructure. Both the CPM and the impression volume are fixed in advance. The advertiser pays the agreed CPM; the publisher is contractually obligated to deliver the agreed number of impressions.

Unlike auction-based transactions, PG deals are reserved in advance and do not compete in real-time bidding environments. Campaign execution, delivery, and reporting are still managed through programmatic platforms, allowing buyers and publishers to streamline workflows while maintaining the benefits of a direct agreement.

Typical use case: Product launch campaigns, major seasonal events, and any scenario where delivery certainty is more important than CPM efficiency. PG is also the right structure when specific, high-value inventory needs to be reserved well in advance.

There is no universally "best" transaction type. Open marketplace, PMP, preferred deal, and programmatic guaranteed arrangements each offer different combinations of scale, control, flexibility, and predictability. Most advertisers use a mix of approaches depending on campaign goals, target audiences, and preferred inventory sources.

Programmatic channels and formats

Programmatic advertising has expanded far beyond its origins in web display. Each channel has distinct inventory mechanics, creative formats, and measurement approaches. Understanding where programmatic runs and how each channel works is the foundation of channel planning.

Display

Display is the original programmatic channel. Standardised banner and rich media units run across publisher websites and are bought through ad exchanges using OpenRTB. Common sizes include the 300×250 medium rectangle, 728×90 leaderboard, and 160×600 wide skyscraper.

Display programmatic remains the highest-volume channel by impression count, 92.5% of display ad spending will transact programmatically in 2026¹, and that share will keep rising. Because not every display impression receives the same level of user attention, viewability is a key measurement metric for many advertisers. Buyers often work with measurement vendors and use supply-path optimization (SPO) to help align spending with their campaign and viewability objectives.

Video and connected TV (CTV)

Programmatic video runs across three placement types: pre-roll (ads that play before video content), mid-roll (ads that run during content, like a traditional commercial break), and out-stream (video ads that appear in-feed on text pages, independent of video content). Video typically commands higher CPMs than display, reflecting strong advertiser demand for more immersive and engaging ad formats.

Connected TV (CTV) applies programmatic buying to television content streamed through internet-connected devices. This type of streaming content is often referred to as over-the-top (OTT), meaning it is delivered over the internet rather than through traditional cable or satellite services. CTV inventory runs on smart TV platforms, streaming services, and CTV devices. CTV remains one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising, as marketers continue shifting budgets from traditional television to streaming environments.

CTV buying often involves different supply relationships than open-web video. Many publishers make inventory available through private marketplaces (PMPs), programmatic guaranteed deals, and other curated buying arrangements alongside open auctions. Measurement approaches also differ from other digital channels, with advertisers using tools such as device graph matching, household-level identifiers, attribution partners, and brand lift studies to understand campaign performance.

In-app and mobile gaming

Mobile apps and mobile games represent a major programmatic advertising environment and is oftentimes the most underestimated by brand buyers. In-app programmatic advertising relies on SDKs (software development kit) rather than browser-based ad tags. Supply is verified through app-ads.txt (the app equivalent of ads.txt) and sellers.json. Attribution is typically handled through mobile measurement partners (MMPs) and platform-specific frameworks, including Apple's SKAdNetwork (SKAN) on iOS and Google's Attribution Reporting APIs initiatives on Android.

Mobile gaming has developed its own advertising ecosystem, with inventory commonly accessed through specialized mobile advertising platforms and exchanges. The most common in-game ad formats include:

• Interstitial: Full-screen ads served between natural content breaks, such as between game levels. High viewability and attention.
• Rewarded video: Opt-in video ads which users choose to watch in exchange for in-game currency, consumables, additional lives, or experience-multipliers. The highest-engagement format in mobile gaming, with Unity’s programmatic exchanges achieving over 96% average rewarded video completion rates as of February 2026² and delivering 4-5% average click-through rates³.
• Playable: Interactive mini-games that let users try a product or app experience before buying or installing. Highly effective for brand campaigns.
• Banner: Similar to web display formats, banner ads are smaller and typically sit at the top or bottom of the mobile screen

Unity delivers 90%+ average viewability across banner, interstitial, and rewarded video formats, making in-app mobile gaming a highly engaged environment.⁴

Programmatic audio

Programmatic audio delivers ads within digital audio content: podcasts, streaming music, and digital radio. Audio ads are typically 15 or 30 seconds and run as pre-roll or mid-roll placements.

Audio programmatic is a growing channel, driven by the rise of podcast consumption and the transition of radio audiences to streaming platforms. Audio inventory is bought through a combination of direct deals and programmatic, with open RTB less prevalent than in display or video.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH)

Programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) applies programmatic buying to screens in physical environments: outdoor billboards, transit displays, airport and mall screens, retail point-of-sale screens, and stadiums. DOOH programmatic allows buyers to activate inventory dynamically based on location data, time of day, weather conditions, and audience footfall patterns.

One of the defining characteristics of DOOH is that ads are displayed in physical locations where multiple people may view the same message at the same time. As a result, advertisers use audience and mobility data to understand who is likely to have been exposed to a campaign and to estimate reach and impressions. Creative can also be updated dynamically based on factors such as weather, time of day, location, or live events. For example, a coffee brand might serve a warm drink creative on cold mornings and an iced drink creative on hot afternoons.

Native

Programmatic native advertising delivers paid placements designed to match the visual style and tone of the editorial content surrounding them. Native ads appear as recommended content units at the bottom of articles, in social-style feeds, and in-stream on news sites.

Native campaigns are commonly transacted through publisher networks, content recommendation platforms, and programmatic marketplaces, allowing advertisers to reach audiences across a wide range of digital environments. Because native ads are designed to align with surrounding content, creative messaging, imagery, and contextual relevance often play an important role in campaign performance.

How programmatic works in mobile games: the underexplored channel

Mobile gaming is one of the largest programmatic channels in the world yet it remains underrepresented in most programmatic guides and is often misunderstood by brand buyers. This section explains how in-app programmatic works and why many advertisers are expanding their programmatic campaigns to include mobile gaming. Unity Programmatic Solutions collectively see more than 710 billion daily bid requests across mobile games and apps⁵ — one of the largest programmatic supply pools in the digital advertising ecosystem.

How In-App Programmatic Differs from Browser-Based Advertising

Browser-based advertising relies on infrastructure such as ad tags, third-party cookies, and browser-based ad requests. In-app advertising runs on a fundamentally different stack:

• SDK integration: Publishers (game developers) integrate an ad SDK into their app at build time. The SDK manages ad serving, auction logic, and creative rendering. There are no browser ad tags. SDK-level integration enables formats, particularly rewarded video and playable ads that are impossible in a browser environment.
• Supply verification: Rather than using ads.txt, in-app inventory is verified through app-ads.txt and sellers.json, which help buyers confirm authorized sellers and improve supply chain transparency. Buyers should verify that any mobile supply they purchase is app-ads.txt compliant to reduce fraud exposure.
• Attribution: Browser-based advertising has historically relied on cookies and other web identifiers to measure campaign performance. In-app advertising uses a different approach. Mobile operating systems provide privacy-focused attribution frameworks, while mobile measurement partners (MMPs) such as AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Singular help advertisers measure installs, conversions, and campaign performance across devices and platforms.
• Inventory concentration: Mobile gaming inventory is commonly accessed through a set of mobile-focused advertising platforms and exchanges that maintain direct integrations with app developers. As a result, buyers often work with a more specialized supply ecosystem than they would encounter in browser-based environments.

The Mobile Gaming Audience

Gaming is not a niche. The mobile gaming audience spans all age groups, income levels, and genders making in-game programmatic a reach vehicle, not a specialty channel. In December 2025, we estimated that Made with Unity mobile apps reached approximately 256M unique monthly active devices in the US⁶, and over 3B unique monthly active devices⁷ unlocking an opportunity to reach consumers in a state of play.

Benefits of programmatic advertising

Efficiency

Programmatic advertising streamlines campaign management by automating many tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention. Advertisers can manage campaigns across thousands of websites, apps, and media environments from a single platform, while automated pacing, optimization, and reporting help improve operational efficiency. Today, AI-powered tools are also helping buyers analyze performance data, optimize bidding strategies, and accelerate campaign management workflows.

Audience Precision

Programmatic targeting operates on a granular level unavailable in traditional media: demographics, behavioural interests, geographic location, device type, operating system, contextual page signals, purchase intent, and first-party CRM audience segments. Advertisers can reach a very specific audience at scale across thousands of publishers simultaneously. One important caveat: audience precision is evolving as third-party cookies decline in some environments and privacy regulations continue to evolve. Today, many advertisers use a combination of first-party data, contextual signals, and modeled audiences to balance precision, scale, and privacy considerations.

Real-Time Optimization

Unlike traditional media buys, where performance data arrives after the campaign has run, programmatic campaigns generate live performance data that feeds back into the buying algorithms in real time. Bids, creative weights, audience exclusions, and frequency caps can all be adjusted mid-campaign based on what is and what is not working.

Reach and Inventory Access

A single DSP seat can access ad inventory across the open web, mobile apps, CTV, audio, DOOH, and in-game environments through exchange integrations i.e., inventory that would require dozens of individual direct publisher relationships to access manually. The breadth of programmatic reach makes it possible to deliver a single coordinated campaign across every major digital surface.

Transparency

Modern programmatic platforms provide detailed visibility into campaign delivery and performance. Buyers can analyze inventory sources, audience segments, supply paths, pricing, and media quality metrics to better understand how budgets are being spent.As supply chain transparency has become a growing focus across the industry, many advertisers also use tools such as supply path optimization (SPO), sellers.json, and ads.txt to evaluate inventory sources and improve buying efficiency.

Measurement

Programmatic campaigns generate rich in-flight measurement data; impressions, clicks, conversions, viewability, video completion rates, attention metrics, and post-install events that feed directly into bid optimization models within the same auction loop. Attribution can be connected to downstream outcomes: app installs, web conversions, store visits, and even offline sales. This closed-loop measurement architecture makes programmatic one of the most measurable media channels available to advertisers.

Programmatic advertising in 2026 and beyond: AI, privacy, and what is changing

Programmatic advertising continues to evolve alongside changes in technology, consumer behavior, and regulation. Three trends in particular are reshaping how advertisers plan, activate, and measure their programmatic campaigns in 2026. These are not incremental product updates, they are changes to the fundamental mechanics of how programmatic works.

AI and Agentic Buying

Machine learning has been embedded in programmatic bid optimization for over a decade. The algorithms that adjust bids in real time based on conversion signals are trained ML models. What is new in 2026 is the application of generative AI and agentic workflows further up the advertising stack.

Today, advertisers use generative AI to work more efficiently, while programmatic platforms increasingly use AI to automate workflows, generate insights, and support decision-making.Common Applications of AI and Agentic Buying in Programmatic Advertising

• Creative development: Generating ad copy, images, video variations, and creative concepts.
• Audience insights: Summarizing audience data and identifying patterns, trends, and opportunities.
• Reporting and analysis: Synthesizing campaign results and highlighting key performance drivers.
• Research: Accelerating market, competitor, and audience research.
• Workflow automation: Assisting with documentation, campaign setup, QA processes, and other operational tasks.

Programmatic advertising has long relied on machines to execute billions of decisions across auctions, bids, and budgets. Generative AI is helping humans engage more effectively with those systems- accelerating analysis, surfacing opportunities, and reducing operational workload. The result is not human replacement, but a workflow that combines human judgment with machine-scale execution.

Identity, Addressability, and Measurement

For years, discussions about the future of programmatic advertising centered on third-party cookies and what a cookieless future might look like. Today, the conversation has evolved. While cookies remain available in some environments, advertisers increasingly rely on a broader mix of signals to identify, reach, and measure audiences across channels.

Modern programmatic strategies often combine multiple approaches, including:

• First-party data activation: Using customer and CRM data to build and activate audiences segments
• Contextual targeting: Reaching audiences based on the content and environment in which an ad appears
• Identity solutions: Using privacy-conscious identity frameworks and authenticated identifiers (such as RampID and ID5) to support audience activation across participating platforms and publishers.
• Media mix modelling (MMM): Measuring marketing effectiveness using aggregated data rather than individual-level tracking..

As a result, addressability has become less about any single identifier and more about the quality and diversity of available signals. Advertisers increasingly evaluate audience solutions based on their ability to provide scalable, privacy-conscious insights that can be activated across channels and measured against business outcomes.This has also contributed to the rise of curated media and audience solutions, where publishers, platforms, and technology providers package inventory, data, and targeting signals into more accessible and actionable buying opportunities.

At the same time, privacy has become a core design principle across the advertising ecosystem. Clean rooms, consent management platforms, privacy-enhancing technologies, and platform-specific measurement frameworks are helping advertisers collaborate on data, activate audiences, and measure performance while supporting evolving regulatory changes and consumer expectations.

As these trends converge, platforms are increasingly investing in audience intelligence solutions built on first-party and behavioral signals rather than third-party tracking alone. Solutions such as Unity Audience Hub reflect this broader shift, helping advertisers identify and activate relevant audiences by blending federated, privacy-first insights from Unity's ads ecosystem with trusted third-party data sources to help advertisers reach curated, high-intent audiences across mobile and CTV, without relying on any single identifier. In an increasingly multi-signal ecosystem, these types of audience solutions are making it possible for advertisers to balance addressability, measurement, and privacy without relying on any single identifier.

Channel Expansion and Cross-Screen Strategy

While display remains a foundational part of the programmatic ecosystem, advertisers are allocating growing portions of their budgets to newer channels and environments:

• Connected TV: capturing television budgets as streaming replaces linear TV
• Digital out-of-home: programmatic infrastructure is being applied to physical screen networks
• In-game advertising: driven by the scale of mobile gaming audiences and the maturation of in-game ad formats
• Retail media: retailers (Amazon, Walmart, Target) are operating their own programmatic advertising platforms against first-party purchase data.

While these channels are often discussed separately, they each play a different role in the media mix. CTV offers premium, large-screen reach. Retail media provides valuable purchase and shopping signals. DOOH extends campaigns into physical environments. Gaming offers highly engaged audiences and interactive ad formats.

Consumers, however, do not experience these channels separately. The same person may stream content on a connected TV while playing a mobile game during the day, encounter a DOOH screen while commuting, and shop through a retail media network—all within a single customer journey.

As a result, advertisers are increasingly planning around audiences rather than channels alone. The opportunity is not simply to invest in more channels, but to connect audience insights, creative messaging, and measurement across the full consumer journey.

Gaming Audiences Spotlight : In many ways, mobile gaming sits at the intersection of the industry's biggest growth channels. It combines scaled reach, consumer attention, audience intelligence, and interactive ad experiences in a single environment, making it an increasingly valuable component of modern omnichannel media plans.

How to launch your first programmatic campaign

Programmatic advertising can feel complex to start. The number of platforms, deal types, channels, and data considerations is significant. The following eight-step framework provides a practical starting sequence for new programmatic buyers.

Define the campaign goal and objective. Every programmatic campaign begins with a goal. Are you trying to build awareness, drive consideration, acquire customers, increase sales, or improve ROAS? Goals and objectives will determine every subsequent decision, from channel selection to deal type to measurement approach.

Identify the target audience. Once the objective is clear, define who the campaign needs to reach. This may include existing customers, prospective buyers, high-intent shoppers, category consumers, gaming audiences, or custom segments built from first-party data.

Determine what data and signals can identify that audience Identify which signals can help find and activate the audience programmatically. This may include first-party customer data, contextual signals, retail media audiences, identity solutions, modeled audiences, or platform-specific audience intelligence.

Choose channels based on goal and audience. After the audience and signals are defined, choose the environments most likely to reach them. Depending on the campaign, this may include display, CTV, gaming, retail media, audio, DOOH, or a combination of channels.

Decide how inventory will be accessed Once the channels are selected, determine the buying approach. Inventory may be purchased through the open marketplace, private marketplaces (PMPs), preferred deals, curated inventory solutions, or programmatic guaranteed agreements..

Establish measurement Set up tracking and attribution before launching. Integrate your mobile measurement partner (MMP) or web analytics platform, configure conversion events, and test attribution tracking end-to-end before the first dollar is spent. Post-launch attribution setup is one of the most expensive mistakes in programmatic.

Build creative for each format and channel. Creative should be developed for the formats and contexts where it will appear. A CTV spot, display banner, rewarded video ad, native placement, and DOOH unit each require different creative considerations.

Launch, monitor in real time, and optimize. Review pacing, delivery, and performance KPIs daily in the first week. Adjust bids, creative weights, and audience exclusions based on what the data shows. Budget optimization and frequency management require ongoing attention, not a set-and-forget approach.

Ready to access mobile and gaming audiences? Unity Programmatic Solutions connects brand and performance buyers to one of the world's largest mobile gaming audiences and supply pools.

Explore Unity Programmatic Solutions

Sources:

1 - Source: EMARKETER, Programmatic Advertising Forecast and Trends H1 2026: AI Disruptions Replace Cookie Deprecation as the Main Focus, Link, Jan 2026.

2 - Source: Unity, internally available data, February 2026. Based on U.S. rewarded video data completion data across Unity's programmatic exchanges as of February 2026. Figures represent an average across participating supply and titles; actual completion rates vary by campaign, app, and format.

3 - Source: Unity, internally available data, February 2026. Based on U.S. rewarded video data click-through data across Unity's programmatic exchanges as of February 2026. Figures represent an average across participating supply and titles; actual click-through rates vary by campaign, creative, app, and format.

4 - Source: Unity, Integral Ad Science (IAS), February 2026. Viewability measured by IAS across Unity banner, interstitial, and rewarded video inventory as of February 2026. Represents an average across measured impressions; actual viewability varies by format, placement, and campaign.

5 - Source: Unity, Pivot, Imply, May 2024. This figure is an estimate of average daily bid requests across Unity Programmatic Solutions' mobile game and app supply, based on internally available data as of May 2024.

6 - Source: Unity, Apptopia, UAds, December 2025. Disclaimer: This estimate is based on Apptopia data from December 2025, and unique device and installation level identifiers from internally available data (mobile and desktop devices only).

7 - Source: Unity, Unity Ads, Apptopia, Steam, December 2025. Disclaimer: This estimate is based on a combination of Apptopia and Steam data from Dec 1 2025, and unique identifiers from internally available Unity data for mobile and desktop devices only.