Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the Q2 2023 Delisted Mobile Apps Report, analyzing Q2 2023 DEFASED apps (DElisted From the App StorE) – apps that are no longer available for download from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, including apps that have programmatic advertising.
Apps can be delisted from the app stores yet may remain on a user’s mobile device, leaving users unaware of potential privacy and security risks. While some apps are delisted for benign reasons, others are removed as a result of more nefarious behaviors or risks to platforms’ corporate liability, including non-compliance with app store policies – such as not having a privacy policy. Advertisers can continue to serve ads on these apps even after they have been delisted, potentially exposing themselves to compliance risks as a result. Pixalate’s report analyzes app profile information and various insights observed in the programmatic advertising bid stream, including:
- Developer country of registry
- Existence of a privacy policy
- Transmission of personal information in the advertising bid stream, including geolocation data
Key Findings:
- Since the start of 2021, 3.8M apps have been delisted from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store combined
- These apps had accumulated 71B downloads in the Google Play Store and 112M user ratings in the Apple App Store
- 2.6M apps were delisted on the Google Play Store as compared to 1.2M removed from the Apple Store
- 11.9K apps delisted between Q1 2022 – Q1 2023 were found passing user location data in the ad bid stream in June 2023
- 1.6k of which were passing U.S.-based location data in the ad bid stream
- 21.7K delisted apps attributed to APAC-based developers – the highest of any region in Q2 2023 – with EMEA a close second (21.2K)
- Nearly 68,000 apps delisted in Q2 2023 had an app-ads.txt file (i.e., programmatic advertising)
Top Delisted Apps and App Developers
Rovio Entertainment’s “Angry Bird Seasons” – which had over 100 million Google Play Store downloads – was delisted from both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, as was Zynga’s “Wheel Smash” (over 1 million downloads from the Google Play Store).
Below are the top three delisted developers with the most open programmatic advertising in Q2 2023, as measured by Pixalate.
- Tax exempt bond fund of america llc (“Help the Stickman”, among others)
- Giovane Sebastião Duarte Filho (“Earths Destruction”)
- Mowgli Dhillon (“My virtual girlfriend shinob”)
The full report contains the list of the top 10 delisted developers with the most open programmatic ad traffic, according to Pixalate’s data.
Download the full report
Download a free copy of the report, including a list of the top 200 delisted apps by store with programmatic advertising (based on the presence of an app-ads.txt file), here: Q2 2023 Delisted Mobile Apps Report.
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