AppLovin: Domain Explained and Why It's Blocked
AppLovin is a major mobile ad company. Learn what it does with your data and why privacy tools block applovin.com.
Drafted by automation from the sources listed at the end of this page, and reviewed before publishing. The sources are the part that matters: check them.
What is AppLovin?
AppLovin Corporation is an American mobile technology company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It operates one of the largest mobile advertising and monetization platforms. Its key products include the SSP MAX (a mediation platform), the DSP AppDiscovery, and the creative studio SparkLabs. The company also invested in mobile game publishers, but in 2025 sold its games division to focus solely on advertising.
Who controls AppLovin?
AppLovin is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker APP since April 2021. Its largest shareholders are CEO Adam Foroughi and investor Hao Tang. The company has received investments from KKR and Hontai Capital. In 2025, its market value reached $123 billion, and it was added to the S&P 500 index.
What does AppLovin do with your browsing data?
AppLovin provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) that app developers integrate into their apps. This SDK collects a wide range of user data, including:
- Device identifiers (IDFA, Google Advertising ID)
- Approximate location
- App usage information (session time, clicks, screens viewed)
- In-app browsing behavior, such as purchase activity
- IP address
- Data from partner companies, like Adjust (acquired by AppLovin) for attribution
This data is used to build user profiles and serve highly targeted ads, as well as to measure campaign effectiveness. AppLovin also participates in real-time bidding auctions, where user profiles are shared with ad buyers.
Why do privacy tools block applovin.com?
The domain applovin.com is the primary endpoint for network traffic from AppLovin’s SDKs. Ad blockers and privacy lists (such as EasyList and hosts-based lists) include this domain for several reasons:
- Invasive tracking: The extensive data collection for behavioral advertising is considered a privacy violation by many users and organizations.
- Unwanted ads: The domain serves ads and mediation scripts, so blocking it prevents those ads from loading.
- Potential malicious content: Although not confirmed, there have been allegations of ad fraud and serving inappropriate ads to children (investigations are ongoing).
Blocking applovin.com prevents apps that use AppLovin’s SDK from communicating with its servers. This can reduce tracking, but it has limitations.
Limitations of DNS blocking
DNS-based blocking (as used by privacy apps and some blocking solutions) is not a complete solution:
- Does not remove ads served from the same domain as content: If an app loads ads directly from the same address as the content (e.g., if the app uses its own domain for ads), blocking applovin.com may not prevent the ad because it comes from another domain.
- Does not hide your IP address: Domain blocking only prevents DNS resolution; traffic to other domains remains visible to your ISP or the app.
- Can break apps: Some apps rely entirely on AppLovin for monetization and may error, crash, or fail to function if the domain is blocked, as they attempt to load ads and receive no response.
Final thoughts
AppLovin is one of the largest mobile ad companies in the world, and its domain is a primary target for privacy blocking lists. If you use tools like Pi-hole, AdGuard, or similar, applovin.com is likely already on the list. If you want to reduce tracking, also consider reviewing app permissions and using more advanced tools like hado99, but remember: no solution is magical, and it’s important to understand the limitations of each.