AppLovin Sues Unity Over Mediation Data, With A Broken Cipher At The Centre

AppLovin is asking the Superior Court of California in San Francisco for a temporary restraining order against Unity, alleging Unity's Ad Quality SDK improperly collected data on ads AppLovin served - creatives, users, devices, impression revenue and engagement - and, "on information and belief," fed that data into models to compete against AppLovin in mobile ad auctions. "AppLovin's legal filings against us are a classic case of a dominant incumbent resorting to litigation and intimidation to address increased competition and slowing growth," a Unity spokesperson said. Unity calls Ad Quality "a small, free product" that prevents harmful ads, and argues AppLovin's own Ad Review product is "far more intrusive." AdExchanger's roundup adds a technical wrinkle that sharpens the stakes: the mediation request packet AppLovin describes as "Protected Data" is cryptographically obscured rather than encrypted, and that cipher can be broken, exposing AppLovin's device fingerprint. The dispute is also heading to JAMS arbitration on breach of contract and trade-secret misappropriation claims.

The crux

Two of mobile advertising's biggest platforms are fighting over whether one can collect and model the other's auction and mediation data, and the answer will define what "protected" means across the entire mobile supply chain.

Sell-side read

For a mobile app publisher running mediation, this is a supply-path question disguised as a legal one. Whichever platform wins, the takeaway is the same: your mediation data is valuable, it is being used to model against you, and you should know what every SDK in your stack collects.

Watch

The outcome of the 29 September hearing and any arbitration ruling on whether Unity must disable Ad Quality collection within five business days.