March 2026 Gaming and Adtech News Recap
March 2026 highlights a rapidly evolving gaming and adtech landscape, defined by major industry consolidation, deeper IP integrations, and a decisive shift toward AI-led growth strategies. From multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and creator-driven ecosystems to the rise of narrative marketing and AI-powered ad platforms, companies are restructuring and innovating to capture scale, engagement, and long-term monetization..
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GAMING
Industry:
Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group has acquired Mobile Legends developer Moonton from ByteDance for over $6 billion, one of the largest deals in gaming history, marking a major step in its global expansion while signaling ByteDance’s full exit from the games industry.
Epic Games is expanding Fortnite’s branded content ecosystem by giving creators access to official Star Wars assets, including characters, vehicles, and music, alongside a dedicated Discover section, while requiring a 20% revenue share with Disney, marking one of the platform’s largest IP integrations to date.
Supercell has teamed up with filmmaker Taika Waititi to introduce Brawl Stars’ 101st character, Najia, using a story-driven animated trailer—highlighting a shift toward narrative-led marketing as the hit title surpasses 1.4 billion downloads.
ADTECH
Unity is shutting down its IronSource ad network and planning to divest its Supersonic publishing arm to streamline operations, doubling down on its fast-growing AI-driven Vector platform, which now accounts for over half of its ad revenue and is positioned as its core growth engine.
Adjust released their gaming app insights report: 2026 edition. The key takeaways are: Global gaming app sessions increased by 1% YoY in 2025, Paid-to-organic ratio jumped 61% globally (from 2.07 to 3.33), Strategy games saw the biggest growth in 57 sessions growth, up 57% YoY, Hyper casual accounted for 29.1% of all gaming installs, and 15.3% of sessions, The day 1 retention rate for all gaming apps was 27% in 2025, Average partners per app declined from 6 to 5.3.
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