How Much Can an App Make from Ads in 2026?

Ad revenue is a volume game. A free app with a banner and a few thousand users makes almost nothing. Put the same banner in front of a big daily audience and it can pay your rent. This page covers ads only: eCPM, ARPDAU, video ads, and Android versus iOS. For the full picture across subscriptions, IAP and paid apps, read How Much Money Do Apps Make?.

How much can an app make from ads?

At typical 2026 mobile rates, an ad-supported app needs roughly 100,000 daily active users to reach about $50,000/month. Treat that as a rule of thumb. Revenue is DAU × impressions per user per day × fill rate × eCPM / 1000, multiplied by the days in the month. If any one of those four inputs is weak, the total falls apart.

Most ad-supported apps never get close to 100K DAU.

Under a few thousand daily users, banners barely cover your costs. High-end casual games earn more per user than that. Utility apps with a single banner earn less. The rest of this article walks through those ranges so you can plug in your DAU instead of someone else's headline number.

How ad revenue is calculated

Ad revenue is what ad networks pay you to show ads. It usually settles outside the app store, so the store's cut doesn't apply to it. Three numbers drive it.

eCPM (effective cost per mille) is what you earn per 1,000 filled impressions. It isn't the bid you see in your mediation dashboard. It's revenue ÷ impressions × 1,000, after unsold requests are counted. A $4 eCPM on 500,000 filled impressions is $2,000.

Fill rate is filled impressions ÷ ad requests. At a 70% fill rate, 30% of your requests earn nothing. Country, format and network mix move fill rate more than most indies expect.

ARPDAU here means ad revenue per daily active user per day: monthly ad revenue ÷ DAU ÷ days. When we say "per DAU per month," we mean monthly ad revenue ÷ DAU. We use the monthly version for utilities because it's easier to reason about dollars per user per month than fractions of a cent per day.

Put together: monthly ad revenue ≈ DAU × impressions/user/day × 30 × fill rate × eCPM / 1000. If any input is a guess, read the result as a range.

Ad revenue by category in 2026

These ranges apply to ad-supported apps that already have an audience. They aren't averages across the whole store.

The $5–$20 ARPDAU figure you see quoted for games comes from well-monetized titles with long sessions and rewarded video. Your weekend puzzle game won't be in that range. If players spend a few minutes a day with a banner on screen, use the utility range until you have your own data.

At indie scale, hybrid apps often beat pure ads. Pair ads with a cheap subscription that removes them: the paywall converts the users who are annoyed enough to pay, and ads earn from everyone else. That mix is how many low-competition niches actually make money.

How much do apps make per video ad?

A video ad has no fixed price. You earn eCPM, and eCPM depends on format, country and user quality.

• Rewarded video usually earns the highest eCPM of the three formats, because the user chose to watch it for a continue, an extra life or an unlock. Expect dollars per thousand impressions in strong countries and cents in weak ones.
• Interstitials are full-screen ads between sessions. They pay more than banners and annoy people more than rewarded video. Cap their frequency. Unlimited interstitials wreck retention, and with it your future impressions.
• Banners pay the least per impression, often well under a dollar eCPM. They only add up when DAU is large.

One rewarded view in a top-tier country can be worth several cents. The same placement in a low-bid country can be worth a fraction of a cent. Fill rate and country mix routinely swing the result 5–10×. So don't model "per video ad" as a fixed price. Model eCPM × filled impressions, then check it against your real mediation report after a week of traffic.

Android vs iOS ad monetization in 2026

Android app monetization trends 2026 still lean on ads more than iOS does. Play users convert to IAP and subscriptions less often on average, so ads make up a bigger share of free-app revenue there. iOS users spend more per paying user, and ads are an extra on top of that.

That doesn't mean Android pays more per impression. US and Western European iOS inventory often earns higher eCPM. Android wins on volume. More of the world uses Play, sessions can be frequent, and a banner plus rewarded video setup is normal in many Play categories.

If you're going ads-only, launch on Android first in the markets where your users already are, and add iOS once you have real DAU. If you're going subscription-first, iOS is usually the better first store, and ads can come later.

When ads lose to subscriptions and IAP

Ads lose when the audience is small and has a serious need.

A contractor paying $20/month for a form tool will never generate $20/month from banners. Ads also lose when the experience can't take them. In health, finance and kids' apps, one interstitial on a serious screen costs you trust.

Ads win when people use the app often for something light: games, wallpapers, radio, simple utilities opened many times a day. They also work as a floor. For many indie apps, a remove-ads purchase next to a banner is the first dollar they ever earn.

For how all these models compare across the catalog (the power law, category ceilings, stages), see How Much Money Do Apps Make?. We won't repeat that distribution here.

How to estimate your app's ad revenue

1. Pick a DAU number you can defend. That means daily actives, not installs.
2. Take impressions per user per day from a similar live app, not from a blog's best case.
3. Use a fill rate below 100%. Starting at 70% is safer than 95%.
4. Pick an eCPM range for your format and countries instead of a global average.
5. Calculate DAU × impressions × 30 × fill × eCPM / 1000.

Our in-app ad revenue calculator does this math with ARPDAU and eCPM benchmarks by app type and platform. To check whether competing apps in your niche have enough users for ads to matter, look at their live rankings and estimates in Trend Apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can an app make from ads?

Enough to matter only once DAU is large. The working 2026 rule of thumb is about $50K/month at ~100K DAU at typical mobile rates. Below a few thousand DAU, expect pocket change. Put your own DAU into the formula above instead of copying a top-grossing game's press numbers.

How much can an app make from advertising?

Same math, different words. Advertising revenue is still DAU × impressions × fill × eCPM. In app-store talk, "advertising" usually means in-app ads (banners, interstitials, rewarded video). Apple Search Ads spending is user acquisition, a cost rather than income.

How much does an app make from ads?

Whatever its mediation dashboard says. Public estimates for small apps vary widely and tend to run low. Use a category range (utilities earn $0.5–$3 per DAU per month; high-end casual ARPDAU is an outlier) together with your own DAU. Point estimates for apps under 100K MAU aren't worth much.

How much money do apps make per video ad?

Apps get paid per impression, not per ad. Rewarded video pays the most, then interstitials, then banners. One view can be worth several cents in a strong country or almost nothing in a weak one. Fill rate and country mix swing the result 5–10×, so your network's blended eCPM is the only honest number to use.

What is typical app ad revenue per user?

For utilities with banners, $0.5–$3 per DAU per month. For games, quote ARPDAU, and remember that $5–$20 a day is the high end for well-monetized titles. Revenue per install is the wrong measure, because ads pay for activity, not downloads.

What are Android app monetization trends in 2026?

Ads still do more of the work on Play than on the App Store, because IAP conversion is lower and the global Play audience is bigger. eCPM is often lower than on US iOS, and volume makes up the difference. If you're an indie going ads-only, start with Android unless your niche is naturally iOS-heavy, like health or premium productivity.

Sources & Further Reading

• How Much Money Do Apps Make? (2026 Data): full distribution by category, model and stage
• In-App Ad Revenue Calculator
• Trend Apps methodology: how we estimate revenue and the error bands by app size
• Apple Newsroom, January 2025, $1.3 trillion in App Store billings and sales in 2024
• Indie Hackers Revenue Pages

Related research from TrendApps data

• App Revenue per Download: the median, the spread, the platform gap, and what 10,000 downloads translate to.
• Free vs Paid Apps: Which Model Actually Makes Money?: free with IAP, paid, or both, and which model clears $1,000 a month.
• How Much Do Mobile Apps Make?: what share of tracked apps earns anything, what earners make, and how much the top 1% takes.