Two Thirds of Mobile Marketers Now Use AI to Generate Ad Creative, Survey Finds
Friday, June 20th, 2025
Faced with higher user‑acquisition costs and increased competition, US mobile‑app marketers are overhauling their creative processes, according to The 2025 State of Mobile App Growth Survey from Bidease. The survey, which gathered responses from 400 practicing mobile growth marketers, found that 76% of marketers refresh their ad creatives at least every two weeks, and two‑thirds already rely on AI tools to generate and test new variants.
Key Findings:
- AI accelerates creative cycles. 76% of marketers update ad creatives at least bi‑weekly; 66% already run AI tools for creative optimization, and 61% are raising creative‑testing budgets.
- Video dominates budgets. 77% of marketers rank video ads as one of their top-performing formats. That's translating to more ad spend on short-form video channels. YouTube, Meta, and TikTok are seeing the biggest increases in investment.
- Marketers now balance acquisition and retention. 43% of marketers now allocate over a quarter of their spend to retargeting or lifecycle marketing, signaling increased investment in keeping existing users engaged.
- Privacy hurdles intensify. Privacy and tracking limitations outstrip worries about rising CPAs two-to-one. 73% say Google's Privacy Sandbox is having a "major" impact—more than twice the figure citing Apple's IDFA/SKAN changes.
"These responses paint a clear picture of how marketers are squaring up to the privacy challenges reshaping the industry," said Dennis Mink, Chief Marketing Officer of Bidease. "By leveraging AI to increase creative volume and improve personalization, marketers are finding innovative ways to keep budgets manageable."
As ad costs climb and measurement gets murky, marketers are pivoting toward efficiency: Recycling successful creative faster, leveraging AI for audience modeling, and investing in channels that offer richer engagement signals. Yet challenges persist with creative fatigue, attribution gaps, and scarce first‑party data threatening growth.
The full report can be downloaded at info.bidease.com/2025-mobile-growth-survey.