Digital advertising was built on the promise of precision at scale — or, as AdExchanger once put it, “incredibly precise, hypertargeted, zero-waste campaigns with massive reach.” Nearly 30 years in, we’ve certainly mastered the scale and hypertargeting. Billions of impressions fire every day across millions of sites, apps, and screens, delivered in milliseconds by algorithms operating at speeds and volumes far beyond human capacity. Zero waste, however, remains a pipe dream.

AppLovin is an AdTech anomaly: a company that started in Silicon Valley as a mobile-app monetization shop, grew up in relative obscurity in the shady underworld of mobile gaming, and then — almost overnight — become the most valuable pure-play AdTech company on the planet. The company’s fifteen-year climb from obscure growth-tool provider to industry titan reads like a parable of reinvention. Like any company whose stock ticker resembles a hockey stick, AppLovin has attracted