Author: John Koetsier

John Koetsier is a journalist and analyst. He's a senior contributor at Forbes and hosts our Growth Masterminds podcast as well as the TechFirst podcast. At Singular, he serves as VP, Insights.

AI marketing: 99% of marketers are using AI … here’s what they’re doing

A study on AI and marketing commissioned by Iterable says that almost every single marketer uses AI every single day. As in literally 99% using AI in some way every day for at least something, while a still-staggering 91% are using AI for their jobs daily. And three quarters of marketers are optimistic that AI marketing tools will create new jobs as well as unlock new opportunities for growth.

Iterable talked to 1,200 marketers in the U.S., UK, Netherlands, and Germany.

Marketers and AI: what are they using?

Interestingly, according to the study of 1,200 marketers, generative AI, the noisiest and most-hyped application of artificial intelligence at the moment, has some work to do. 57% say that AI marketing tools enhance optimization, 53% say automation is the best use, and 50% look to AI marketing tools for predictive analytics. 

(Maybe these marketers have tried to get text into generative AI images and failed.)

But, 49% say that generative AI tools enhance their working lives.

creative potential of AI tools

However, half of marketers find AI intimidating, and 54% say the existence of AI marketing tools is heightening expectations from managers. And most feel they don’t have all the skills and knowledge they need to use AI effectively.

  • 49%: AI is intimidating
  • 54%: AI increases expectations
  • 89%: AI requires new skills, which is somewhat concerning
  • 29%: AI requires new skills, which is extremely concerning

Not surprisingly, less than half of marketers have been trained on AI marketing skills. 

That fully accords with my personal experience, which is based on personal dabbling with OpenAI, Creative Diffusion, MidJourney, Dall-E, and multiple other tools, but no formal training. (Of course, so many of the new AI tools have become available so recently that it’s almost impossible for training developers and programs to keep pace.)

AI marketing: what we’re seeing at Singular

Singular now has a lot of first-party data on how marketers use AI, because we’re incorporating artificial intelligence throughout our product suite.

What we’re seeing in both tools is that marketers want better insight, faster, and easier, with AI. Marketers have gigabytes of data: they are not low on data. What they need is for that data to make sense, and AI can help there.

In our recent State of User Acquisition webinar, we asked marketers: what is your top priority with AI?

Here’s what they said:

  • 37%: Improving creative performance
  • 34%: Automation
  • 17%: Optimizing re-engagement
  • 11%: Expanding into new regions
  • 6%: Leveraging first-party data
marketers AI priorities

 

We also asked marketers about their top AI use cases for user acquisition specifically. Here’s what they said (they could select any or all answers that applied to their particular circumstances):

  • 86%: Creative production or optimization
  • 57%: Bidding or budget automation
  • 31%: Predictive LTV or segmentation
  • 20%: Not using AI yet
AI in user acquision

 

So what we’re seeing is that creative is king. A massive 86% of marketers using AI say they apply it to creative production or optimization. In other words, AI is now a core tool for accelerating creative production and testing. But predictive analytics is still not mainstream, and only about half of marketers are using AI in bidding and budgeting optimization.

AI marketing: what’s happening?

There’s obviously a lot going on in generative AI and marketing. Here’s just a few of the recent developments that we’ve talked about on the Singular blog:

Back to the study: AI marketing and ROI

One place where there isn’t clarity among marketers, however, is whether AI marketing tools are generating a positive return on investment. Or how they will do so in the future.

I’d assume that increased efficiency in what you’re already doing and increased capacity to do more things than you previously could are both indicative of positive ROI, but the survey focused on where AI will most likely benefit marketing organizations.

The ROI of AI
Image credit: Iterable

50% say ROI will come from better customer service — think users or players in a mobile app — while 47% say more effective analytics will be where AI marketing tools generate ROI. Slightly lower numbers see other areas of analytics as top priorities as well: predictive analytics for revenue and forecasting.

What marketers want from AI

According to the 1,200 marketers surveyed, 39% of marketers want AI marketing tools to enhance their creativity. 37% want AI to do part of their jobs so they have “more free time for fulfilling tasks,” and 37% want to feel tech savvy.

Almost a third are looking for AI to reduce their stress levels as well.

What pretty much everyone agrees is that we haven’t tapped AI’s full potential yet.

“While many marketers have embraced AI, they haven’t yet tapped its full potential. AI offers an incredible opportunity to liberate marketers from operational minutiae and tasks like data analysis and content creation,” said Adriana Gil Miner, Chief Marketing Officer of Iterable. “This frees them up to focus on creativity and crafting unique experiences that bring joy to customers. AI isn’t just about automation; it’s about elevation, unleashing creativity, and amplifying brand voices. 

I buy some of that, but not all of it.

Muddling in the data sometimes feels like drudgery (ok, almost always) but often brings eureka! moments when you find something unexpected. AI marketing tools can do that too, but not always. And you do have to double-check AI’s answers in data as well as text, since AI hallucinations are not yet a thing of the past.

Also, for writing — yeah, that thing I’m doing right now — AI-created content can be pretty basic, a bit meh, and fairly surface. That said, it can be a great starting point for the addition of human insights, creativity, and tone.

Miner agrees:

“The future of marketing lies not in replacing human ingenuity, but in using AI to empower it.”

At least, that’s what I’m telling the Terminator. And any AI marketing tools I use. 

And myself, of course.

Zero hallucination AI-generated marketing insight

You want marketing data. You want it fast. So you get a little help from your silicon friends. But is it right? Will AI tell you that you have 5 million app installs on Venus? Will your favorite LLM report -3,000 conversions in your top-performing Match-3 game? In other words, will using AI result in bad data thanks to a hallucination?

Hallucinations are a fact of life with modern LLM-based AI systems. 

It’s smart to be worried about them. 

That’s something that we’ve taken a great deal of care to avoid with our new MCP integration with Anthropic’s Claude. 

  • You don’t want to be that lawyer who used ChatGPT to draft a brief that referenced non-existent case law
  • You won’t want to be that airline whose chatbot invented a compassionate refund policy that didn’t exist
  • You won’t want to be that real estate company that advertised ocean views in Kansas, thanks to an LLM that confused 2 similar-looking city names

(Yeah, all true stories, by the way. I know because ChatGPT told me about them.)

You want to be the marketing hero who gets the right information and makes the right decision and delivers measurable growth. But you need that data. You need it quick. And a couple sexy charts wouldn’t hurt, too.

But it needs to be correct. Accurate. True. Actionable.

Plus, not something you’ll get fired for.

Zero hallucination AI-generated marketing insight

So how do we avoid hallucinations with our AI-generated marketing insight? 

There’s probably no completely perfect, 1000% safe solution here, but we’re seeing amazing results with really high-end accuracy with a multi-pronged 7-step approach:

  1. We eat the elephant 1 bite at a time
    We break every user question into tiny, fully tested tasks. Each task handles just one piece … dates, metrics, dimensions, filters, breakdowns, you name it, and then runs in parallel. Breaking down tasks this way lets the model focus on 1 thing at a time, lets us validate each step, and cuts response time while also boosting accuracy.
  2. Strict schemas
    We enforce strict schemas for every task. If a start date comes after an end date or a metric name is unknown, the flow stops immediately and returns a clear error instead of inventing data.
  3. No guessing allowed
    Like a highly-secure competent person, we allow the model to admit uncertainty. When the required information is missing, the LLM can answer “I don’t have enough information,” preventing creative guesses.
  4. KISS: keep it simple, stupid
    We keep every prompt lean. We skip tasks your desired answer doesn’t need, like filtering when the user didn’t ask for it. That reduces noise, latency, and token use.
  5. Small is beautiful
    We design each model call to do just 1 small job: nothing more. Clear, single-purpose calls prevent prompt injection, keeping outputs predictable.
  6. Observability, logging, daily evaluation
    We ship with full observability and daily evaluation loops. Every run is logged and replayable, and a mix of unit tests, integration tests, and an automated LLM-as-a-judge checks the model against key metrics, so quality improves over time.
  7. Friendly failures
    We handle failure gracefully. If something goes wrong, users see a plain-language suggestion like “Try a shorter date range” instead of some cryptic stack trace.

Add it all up, and you get trustworthy dashboards that match what you’d see if you pulled all the data the old-fashioned way in Singular manually.

It also speeds up your responses, because small tasks executed in parallel via smaller prompts deliver answers in seconds.

Extra bonuses:

  • Future-proofing
    More LLMs are delivering MCP integration capabilities. With all these steps, the guardrails remain as we onboard additional partners.
  • Peace of mind
    The lawyers who argued their case on non-existent precedents got sanctioned and fined. With all these checks and balances, you can be confident that the data you’re getting from your AI helper is secure, validated, and keeps surprises to a minimum.

Sum it all up, and our MCP integration plus our data integrity best practices helps us provide accurate, grounded data that is continuously validated.

That means your plain English questions transform into reliable performance insights. No hallucinations, just numbers you can count on.

Usage is off the charts

Now’s a good time to mention, by the way, that we had no idea how many of you were just waiting for this kind of solution.

Usage is completely off the charts. Here’s what it looks like in a demo account:

There’s literally a CTO of a major mobile gaming company who is using this daily. (I mean, we expected the non-technical people to jump on this quickly, but it turns out that the nerds among us also like quick and easy data.) The charts that Claude is almost instantly creating for him are very cool too: total installs, total cost, total revenue, LTV, ROI, average DAU, ARPU, ARPDAU … you name it.

And it’s not just the data.

Thanks to the magic of today’s super-smart LLMs, people are getting insights, not hallucinations:

  • Recent change: lower volume but higher quality
  • New: massive improvement in profitability
  • Higher UA cost in the last month
  • Better monetization in the last month

If you haven’t tried it yet, check it out.

Any questions, talk to your Singular rep. And, if you’re not yet using the best MMP in the world as rated by marketers, there’s no time like the present.

We’d be happy to chat.

Good news in post-truth ad measurement with Hannah Parvaz, Sara el Bachri, David Vargas, Eran Friedman

Can you trust your ad measurement data?

Yeah. Sure. Absolutely.

And no. Totally not. LOL. Are you even serious right now?

Post-truth ad measurement megapanel

I just convened a megapanel on ad measurement. The question burning in the depths of my soul: can you trust your marketing data? When Meta says you got 20,000 installs, is that true? Can you take it to the bank? When TikTok says your campaign was awesome, is that accurate?

On the megapanel we had some of the best of the best in adtech insight:

  • Hannah Parvaz
    • App marketer of the year
    • Former Curio, Uptime, Drinki marketer/head of growth
    • Leads Aperture agency
  • Sara el Bachri
    • Gaming growth consultant
    • Former Gameloft UA manager
    • Leads SHAMSCO, her agency
  • David Vargas
    • UA consultant
    • UA manager for Splitmetrics
    • Partnership manager for Acorns
  • Eran Friedman
    • Cofounder and CTO at Singular
    • Serial entrepreneur 

Hit play and keep scrolling …

The question of whether you can trust your ad measurement data is a tough 1 right now because almost all measurement is now modeled.

We’re talking AEM on Meta. ADC on TikTok. The new Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM) on Google. All kinds of probabilistic measurement in pretty much all the networks. And, for mobile marketers, data in App Store Connect and the Google Play Console. Plus, of course, all your first-party data: what you 100% know actually happened in reality because you’re measuring it yourself on your own owned apps, sites, and platforms.

Singular CTO Eran Friedman and I chatted about it a few weeks ago: all the data points that are now available are a bit of a gamechanger. They’re actually really really good.

But there is a problem.

They’re not exactly an easy button. In fact, quite the opposite. 

Because, sadly, none of them agree.

Here’s how I summed up what I heard from the panelists:

“All measurements are invalid. All measurements are valid. There is no truth. Everything is true. You can’t trust anything. You have to trust everything.”

What does that mean?

Digging in: the problem with post-truth ad measurement

David Vargas kicked off the ad measurement megapanel without even realizing it by posting this to LinkedIn a few weeks ago:

David Vargas ad measurement LinkedIn

 

Here’s just 1 campaign. It’s measured 4 ways. And each measurement is different.

  • SKAN: 463 installs
  • CPPs in App Store Connect data: 552 installs
  • App Referrer: 2,054 installs
  • MMP: 1,329 installs

I mean if you got 4 different measuring tapes from the local hardware store for a home reno project and got this kind of variance, you’d write a strongly-worded letter to the manufacturer, wouldn’t you?

This is the current state of ad measurement.

And there’s not really anyone to write a strongly-worded letter to.

But it does and can make sense, if you trust everything and trust nothing. (So post-modern, I know.) Keep reading …

Make it make sense (please, pretty please)

The solution is found in 1 single quote from the marketing measurement megapanel, thanks to Hannah Pavaz:

“There is no truth anymore. It’s not about truth now, it’s about triangulation.”

Not enough? Need more?

OK, here’s another quote, this 1 from David Vargas:

“You have to stitch all the breadcrumbs together to see what’s really going on.”

And yet another, from Eran Friedman:

“The discrepancies themselves can give you insight into user behavior.”

Let’s let Sara el Bachri have her turn too. 

“ Basically we must corroborate and check different sources for data, and crosscheck different sources of data.”

That’s the easy answer, she says. (Easy, right?) The more difficult answer, she adds, is knowing which of the many sources of data to use in cross-checking others, and how to use all the different sources. To add to the degree of difficulty, the right mix can vary between apps, games, verticals, scale, and monetization methodology. 

In other words, you need a solution for the solution.

How can you find that? 

Scroll down a bit …

First, there is some good news about ad measurement

There is some good news I’ll get to first, before the solution to the solution.

Here it is: platforms under-report.

Like massively.

“ I’ve seen in every single case across many, many different accounts, and we’ve checked this significantly,” says Parvaz. “The platforms are underreporting and it’s a worst case scenario.”

The worst-case scenario for platforms is pretty good for you, though. In her testing, she’s seen up to 4.4X actual results of ad campaigns versus platform-reported numbers. This is massive. This is getting 4,400 installs but Meta only says it sent you 1,000. This is literally huge.

You can test this for yourself, Parvaz says.

Set up a Custom Product Page so you can track exactly the results on just that page via App Store Connect. App Store Connect should know exactly, precisely, completely, and totally accurately how many app installs happen via this CPP. Now funnel traffic to it from Meta, Google, TikTok, Snap, and other ad networks. (Maybe try 1 at a time per CPP so your data is super clean.)

Finally, compare the numbers from the ad network side versus the App Store Connect side.

“ I’ve never seen it not have the custom product page data be higher than it is inside the platform,” Parvaz says.

But that’s not all. In a lot of cases, that’s only capturing direct click through attribution, she adds. There’s view-through that adds to the numbers … even if they aren’t captured directly by a very specific Custom Product Page.

So the good news about ad network based ad measurement is that they’re under-reporting and giving you more than they’re claiming. Which, I think we can all agree, is nicer than the alternative.

There’s some even better news in our post-truth marketing measurement world

But there’s even better news to come. 

While you can do this kind of work for each ad network to first verify that you’re getting what it’s saying you’re getting, and secondly, check for any kind of organic or view-through uplift on those claimed numbers, you can get Singular to do it for you.

Because … Unified Measurement.

Singular does it for you. It’s not red, but it still is kind of a big easy button.

Because Singular tosses marketing spend data, ad delivery data, ad network claim data, SKAN & IDFA data on iOS, GAID data, IDFV data, Google referrer data, your own first-party in-app activations and engagement data, your own first-party revenue data, and quite a bit more into a big fat blender and comes up with Unified Measurement.

OK, it’s not a blender.

It’s a little more sophisticated than that.

But it’s a fact that I’ve seen multiple occasions recently where Singular customers see exactly the kinds of discrepancies we’re talking about. That causes them to dig into each of the datasets. And they invariably discover that the Singular modeled result in Unified Measurement is actually the most accurate available.

“ If you’re looking for the dataset that is the most real-time, the most granular, the most actionable on the day-to-day operational side, that’s typically that user level modeled kind of information coming from your MMPs dashboard,” says Friedman.

Adding AMM from the Meta side, the also new ICM from the Google side, there’s actually a good outlook for the future of mobile measurement.

Which is why, in spite of the broken tape measures and the resulting massive confusion, it’s kinda almost a measurement golden age.

As long as you remember David Vargas’ words:

“I always say: trust nothing and everything at the same time.”

And … use the differences to your advantage.

Much more in the full megapanel

There’s so much more if you watch or listen to the whole thing.

Subscribe to our podcast, and follow us on YouTube. 

In the full megapanel you’ll hear about which segments and demographics are more “clicky” than others, and which you need to use view-through to measure because they just don’t tend to click. (Which also impacts platforms and ad networks, by the way.) You’ll also hear about MMM, incrementality, probabilistic, and a ton of other smart cool stuff that will make your job easier, and you better at it.

Here’s some more of what you’ll find:

  • 00:00 Introduction to Growth Masterminds
  • 00:30 Meet the megapanel
  • 03:11 David’s LinkedIn Post: The Catalyst
  • 04:54 Panelists Share Personal Insights
  • 08:06 Diving into Measurement Challenges
  • 12:12 Hannah on Underreporting Issues
  • 15:08 Eran’s Perspective on Measurement
  • 18:29 Platform Differences in Accuracy
  • 19:53 Trust in Data: A Paradoxical Approach
  • 20:32 Navigating Paid Campaigns with Probabilistic Methodologies
  • 21:49 Real-Time Data Optimization
  • 24:06 Inconsistencies in Attribution and Their Impact
  • 27:40 The Return of Meta’s AMM
  • 33:18 The Competitive Landscape of iOS Advertising
  • 35:14 Final Thoughts and Best Practices

AI is eating marketing. Here’s how marketers can stay relevant

AI is eating marketing. 

I’m not talking about the Mark Zuckerberg style of AI adpocalypse where AI makes all the ads. I’m talking about all the various tasks that marketing teams and marketing pros do all the time.

Like … all the stuff:

  • Analysis
  • Creative
  • Messaging
  • Content
  • Budgets
  • Targeting

I recently had a great chat with Lior Eldan, COO of Moburst on the Growth Masterminds Podcast. All of this, literally almost everything marketers do and work, is getting massively transferred by AI.

Hit play, then keep scrolling:

 

AI is eating marketing

There are over 15,000 tools in the 2025 Martech Landscape that Chief Martech, Scott Brinker, started in 2011 with just 150 solutions. AI integration in those martech tools is now almost universal: brands, platforms, analytics, personalization systems, and content tools nearly all incorporate AI in some shape or form.

What spurred the change?

LLMs. Especially ChatGPT.

There was a “massive explosion of AI-native products that surged after the release of ChatGPT,” says Mike Pastore at Martech. “AI is rapidly redefining and replacing the stack architecture,” says Frans Riemersma, who works with Brinker on the landscape.

And the fastest-growing parts, including SEO tools, content tools, and video creation tools, are AI-centric. It’s everywhere: AI is eating marketing.

  • Campaign analysis
    We just released an AI-powered talk-to-your data tool and Creative IQ, an AI-powered tool for optimizing creative.
  • Creative development
    Generative AI is helping ideate, storyboard, and visualize content for production. In some cases, it goes farther.
  • Messaging
    Today it’s being pre-generated in the cloud; in the future it’ll be LLMs running on-device for real-time, individualized communications.
  • Personalization
    Mass personalization of messages down to micro-cohorts? Becoming possible.
  • Budget allocation & optimization
    AI is analyzing cross-channel spend and incremental ROAS to guide your next-dollar investments.
  • Measurement & attribution
    Post-ATT, AI is helping us unify fragmented signals from networks, SANs, SKAN, and remaining identifiers, plus and first-party data, all for smarter attribution.
  • Targeting
    Zuck doesn’t think you need to do your own targeting. AI’s already doing a ton of the work inside major platforms.

This growth is following a progression to more, better, more native, and more capable:

  1. AI assistants
    External aids
  2. Co-pilots
    Embedded aids
  3. AI workflows
    AI automation
  4. AI agents
    Autonomous or semi-autonomous automation
  5. Model Content Protocols
    Persistent memory and coordination between tools, agents, and data

Most of us are still at stage 1, but some of our tools are at stage 2 or 3.

So what are you going to do?

If AI is eating marketing, what do marketers do? I mean, AI is getting better every day. The things it sucks at now, it’ll be better at tomorrow, and even better the day after.

So is it the end of the line for marketers, or is there still a role to play?

I’m a big believer in there still being a role for marketers, and a big role at that. And it’s not just because the generative AI solution that we played with to help write blog posts for Singular literally hallucinated an entire case study, fabricating stats, details, and proof points out of thin air.

(Which will become less and less of a problem over time, by the way.)

There are tons of details in a post I recently wrote about how marketers including creative pros, writers, UA managers, and performance marketers can stay relevant. To boil it down into a phrase, marketers need to adopt and use the tools, but not abuse them. The goal is to have a virtual team that extends your own inherent capabilities.

Need creative ideas?

Great, ask an LLM. But pick yourself. And use what you get back as a starting point. Make it better. Make it unique. Adapt it to your company, your brand voice, your audience.

Need help getting stuff done?

Make an agent and get AI to work for you to increase your capability. Our CMO made an agent called Tone Ranger to help people ensure that what they’re writing or saying aligns with Singular’s brand voice. Agents can schedule meetings, detect anomalies, track OKRs, prepare pre-meeting briefings, and much more.

Need to be more than you are?

Everything’s busier lately, it seems. The tasks pile up, the work increases, but the number of people don’t. That’s where AI helps. Automate what you can, and what it does well. Make the machine do the grunt work. Make the machine do what it can.

AI isn’t just changing our work. It’s also changing the teams we set up to get our work done.

As AI is eating marketing, teams are changing

You’ve probably seen it yourself. Maybe even been a part of it. As AI is eating marketing, teams are becoming flatter. There are fewer low-level jobs.

The new marketer is an expert in at least 1 thing, but ideally much more. And the new marketer has staff, even if she or he is not a manager. These staff, however, don’t have heartbeats. They eat electricity. They live in the cloud.

Essentially, they are force multipliers.

That’s the new role, and that’s the new team: top-notch people putting out high-quality work while being massively assisted by AI. 

The trick, of course, is not to just use what AI gives you. We’ve all seen that: someone has a task, they report that it’s done, and you see that the result is basically ChatGPT spitting out something in response to a prompt. That might work, occasionally. 

But more likely, there needs to be a human touch: customization, adjustment, selective deletion, selective addition. This is important: the latest research basically shows that extensive use of AI assistants makes you dumber: less able to remember, less able to reason, less able to communicate.

That’s not the picture of the successful marketing exec of the future.

Staying engaged, and using but not abusing AI will help avoid that.

Much more in the full podcast

There’s of course much more in the full conversation on Growth Masterminds. Check it all out on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Here’s what to expect:

  • 00:00 Introduction: The Impact of AI on Mobile Marketing
  • 00:31 The Shift in Search Behavior Due to AI
  • 01:23 Optimizing Marketing Strategies with AI
  • 02:20 AI in Campaign Analysis and Data Democratization
  • 09:21 Creative Uses of AI in Marketing
  • 13:00 AI-Driven Messaging and Content Creation
  • 18:19 Budget Optimization with AI
  • 21:26 Targeting and Audience Segmentation with AI
  • 25:09 The Future of AI in Marketing Teams
  • 27:44 Conclusion: Getting Started with AI in Marketing

Where to find the best value in mobile ad networks with the Singular ROI Quadrant

How do you find the best value in mobile ad networks?

As usual, it depends.

As a user acquisition manager, what you want from a mobile ad network depends a lot on what you need to achieve now. It might be quality users. It might be quick profitability. It might be scale: you need a lot of new users, stat. And let’s be honest … sometimes it’s just good numbers you can report upstairs and check a box, even if you kinda sorta really know that it’s just an illusion.

So how do you get what you want?

And how do you know which mobile ad networks will deliver the best value for your unique goals?

One way is the Singular ROI Quadrant:

Singular ROI Quadrant mobile ad networks

 

The Singular ROI Quadrant for mobile ad networks

In our recent Singular ROI Index, we introduced the concept of the Singular ROI Quadrant. It’s a simple 2 x 2 chart that tracks ad campaign cost versus ad campaign revenue. 

  1. Quadrant 1: Quadrant of waste
    Initially impressive numbers: high cost, low revenue, no lasting value
  2. Quadrant 2: Quadrant of distraction
    A big nothing-burger: low cost, but also low revenue … waste of time
  3. Quadrant 3: Quadrant of scale
    Fair value: high cost, but also high revenue … here’s where you scale
  4. Quadrant 4: Quadrant of growth
    Best value thanks to low cost and low revenue … take it when you can get it

Note that “high” and “low” are relative terms here … high cost is when return is low. You spent $1 and got $0.25 back. 

The same cost could feel low if the returning revenue is high: you spent $1 but got $5 back.

Quick wins?

If you’re looking for quick wins that make it look like you’re doing a great job, but you don’t care about the revenue side, choose mobile ad networks in Quadrant 1. Most of your installs will be low-quality if not downright fake, but you can sure report some impressive top-funnel metrics. (And let’s be honest, sometimes your boss wants this to show traction, or to try to juice organics from app stores.)

Viral sensation?

Obviously, everyone wants high revenue at low cost, but it’s rare, and it often doesn’t scale. That said, we see some publishers who consistently hit the Quadrant of Growth, getting high-quality users or players for minimal investment. 

When you can get this, it’s clearly the best value possible from mobile ad networks.

Lasting growth curves?

Most of the time, you’re spending a fair amount: reasonably high CPIs for quality players, customers, or app users. This is fair market value: you are getting what you paid for.

Scale: what does the ROI Index reveal about mobile ad networks that scale?

Let’s look at scale first … Quadrant 3 type mobile ad networks.

To scale, you pick large ad networks that have higher costs, but generally return good quality users. And they consistently do this at high volume. You know the names of the networks involved here, because they are massive and in most cases basically global:

We’re talking the kinds of networks that top the list of our Singular ROI Index leaderboards:

  • Google
  • Meta
  • TikTok
  • Apple Search Ads on iOS

Those are the biggest names, but those aren’t the only ad networks that scale. We also saw players like these hit the leaderboard:

  • Moloco
  • AppLovin
  • ironSource
  • Liftoff
  • Unity
  • Moloco

Viral, cheap, or unexpected growth: which networks over-deliver?

What about growth? Viral growth, or more-than-you-bargained-for kind of growth? 

Typically, you’re looking at smaller ad networks here. And often, you’re looking for regional players. They have focus and often fill specific niches, giving them opportunities to stand out.

For 2025, those niches include:

  • Fintech
  • Games
  • On Demand
  • Shopping
mobile ad networks niches

 

And the mobile ad networks that we found to be in the Quadrant of Growth include these players …

APAC

  • Digital Turbine
  • Motive Interactive
  • Reddit
  • Snap Ads

EMEA

  • AdAction
  • Adikteev
  • Motive Interactive
  • Snap Ads

North America

  • Liftoff
  • Rokt
  • Reddit
  • Snap

South America

  • MAF
  • Moloco
  • Persona.ly
  • TyrAds
  • Unity Ads

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that every campaign with these mobile ad networks is perfect, amazing, and delivers vastly outsized results. It does mean that on average, we saw impressive user acquisition campaigns with these players.

Dollars for value: so now what?

So how can you use insight like this to craft a user acquisition strategy, or growth campaign? Here’s 5 steps you can take to make it useful:

  1. Don’t chase scale blindly
    Big networks are tempting, but ROI can erode if you’re not optimizing. Always compare cost vs. return.
  2. Hunt for hidden value
    Smaller networks in Quadrant 3 often deliver surprising results—especially for niche apps or geos.
  3. Test and iterate
    It’s not like you haven’t heard this 1 before, but yeah … testing matters. The Growth Quadrant is where innovation happens. Test new partners, formats, and creatives regularly.
  4. Use data, not hunches
    I mean, I like my gut too, but data is generally better. Leverage the Singular ROI Index and your own analytics to make decisions. Gut feel is good, but data wins.
  5. Localize your approach
    Returns shift by region and vertical. What works in APAC may not work in North America.

Get all the insight in our most recent Singular ROI Index, and use it to inform your plan.

Some of the best campaigns blend scale and experimentation. Maybe you’ll go 80/20 Quadrant of Scale vs Quadrant of Growth: most of your investment is where you know you’ll get a consistent return, but some of it is for exploration of potentially super-lucractive campaigns.

Maybe you’re more adventurous, and can manage greater numbers of smaller mobile ad networks thanks to your Singular integrations. Then you might try 50/50, or even higher on Quadrant 4 networks.

Follow the data!

Advanced Mobile Measurement is re-enabled: Singular now supports Meta’s AMM for both iOS and Android

Singular now supports Meta’s Advanced Mobile Measurement, offering increased attribution accuracy and speed on Meta properties including Facebook and Instagram.

Performance marketing OGs will remember Meta’s Advanced Mobile Measurement (AMM), which offers row-level data that makes app install attribution measurement fast and accurate. After a multi-year hiatus Meta’s AMM is back and now at parity with the app ads ecosystem, and that’s great news for user acquisition professionals. 

Any advertisers can accept Meta’s AMM terms, to enable row-level data via an MMP integration. AMM data will include clicks and views, and will be available for both installs and re-engagements. It will also include insights from Advanced AEM, but the datapoints that we have previously reported for Advanced AEM will now be available at a row level.

Advanced Mobile Measurement is going to help you build better:

  • ROAS modeling
  • Cohort analysis
  • Incrementality tests
  • Creative optimization
  • Multi-touch attribution models

As you’d expect, there are restrictions around who can access it and what you can do with it. You’ll have to opt in and accept Meta’s AMM terms for each app you want to use it with.

Data that Meta shares via Advanced Mobile Measurement is intended for internal performance measurement, attribution, and campaign optimization. 

That means you can’t use AMM data for:

  • Audience creation
  • Retargeting elsewhere
  • Cross-platform user profiling
  • Sharing with third parties

That said, this is a big day for mobile marketers. 

Now you can build much more precise ROAS curves per campaign and ad creative than with the previous aggregated data. You can track LTV curves per device type, geo, OS version, or campaign, and use that insight to inform where you allocate more resources. You can run controlled experiments including holdouts for incrementality testing, and you can see whether multiple ad touches and interactions result in higher levels of engagement and/or monetization.

Practically speaking, you’re going to get much faster data, and it’ll be much deeper signal which will enable very fine-grained bid adjustments and scaling decisions.

This is super-valuable particularly for high LTV apps like RPG games, fitness or health subscription apps, or fintech apps where D1 ROAS often isn’t super helpful as a predictor of true value.

Need more information?

Talk to your Singular customer success rep about your next steps, and whether this is right for you.

Top finance apps globally by region: budgeting, payments, wallets, banking, investments, and more

What are the top finance apps on the planet?

It’s pretty clear by now that fintech is the future of finance. New banks, new finance, loan, insurance, and banking apps are growing super fast, and most of the innovation in the personal financial world is being driven by top finance apps. That means a huge number of banking, budgeting, loan, investment, and finance apps are now available. Many of them are following in the footsteps of the biggest Chinese apps and becoming super-apps with many fintech features but also shopping, mini-apps, and much more.

But which are the best?

It’s hard to say, because this is not a small space:

The entire world is rapidly shifting toward digital, mobile-first financial solutions. New technology including instant payments, embedded finance, AI-driven personalized budgeting insights, and cryptocurrency are fueling this seismic shift.

There’s also not a single answer here, or a single set of best fintech apps. Finance is a heavily regulated space, so fintech apps are regional or even country-specific. We’ve looked at the top 100 fintech apps previously, but now I want to look at fintech regionally: what’s hot and happening in fintech, finance, budgeting, and banking apps all around the world.

So here we’re going to review the top finance apps by 7 key regions:

Top finance apps in Africa

The fintech scene in Africa is huge and busy.

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the world’s most active mobile money region, with 1.1 billion registered mobile money accounts and 286 million active users at the beginning of 2025. 

M-Pesa has been around for years now and has transformed everyday finance, enabling millions of unbanked people to send, save, and receive money on basic phones. The number of mobile money transactions in Africa is enormous, with M-Pesa alone handling 30 billion transactions worth $309 billion in 2024. 

Key growth drivers include a young mobile-first population, high demand for remittances and payments, and supportive policies targeting financial inclusion. Telcos and fintech startups are expanding beyond payments into lending, savings, and insurance, creating fintech super-apps.

Top finance apps in Africa right now

  • M-Pesa (Kenya, East Africa)
    M-Pesa is a pioneering mobile money app that lets users deposit, withdraw, and transfer money via their phones. M-Pesa has over 50 million users in Kenya alone and processes up to 61 million transactions daily. It is hugely popular for peer-to-peer transfers, merchant payments, and utility bill pay. Core features include a mobile wallet, bill payments, airtime purchase, savings (M-Shwari), and small loans, so it’s an all-in-one financial tool for many, including those who were previously unbanked.
  • MTN MoMo (Pan-African)
    The MTN Mobile Money service (“MoMo”) operates in multiple African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda via the MTN telecom network. Momo offers a wallet for transfers, airtime, bill payments, and retail purchases. As of mid-2024, MoMo had close to 70 million active users across Africa. It drives inclusion by enabling basic phone users to send money and pay bills, works via USSD menus (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data on GSM networks) or a simple app, and offers a network for cash in/out.
  • Orange Money (West/Central Africa)
    Orange Money is, not shockingly, a mobile money service by Orange, a telecom with a strong presence in French-speaking Africa such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Mali. It provides wallet services similar to M-Pesa with instant money transfers, merchant payments, and bank integration, and has 10s of millions of users regionally. It’s known for cross-border remittances and is a key driver of cashless transactions.
  • OPay (Nigeria)
    OPay is a fast-growing super-app and mobile wallet in Nigeria that offers payments, banking, and on-demand services. OPay’s platform enables peer transfers, utility and merchant payments, and even ride-hailing and food delivery as it too approaches “super app” territory. Opay has over 40 million active users in Nigeria and processes millions of daily transactions. Core financial capabilities include savings accounts, debit cards, and micro-loans, which means OPay is working to be a full-service digital bank alternative.
  • PalmPay (Nigeria)
    PalmPay is another popular mobile wallet and payment app. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and financial inclusion focus, and supports P2P transfers, airtime and bill payments, and merchant QR payments. PalmPay has achieved over 30 million customers by 2024, and users praise its smooth transfers and cashback rewards. PalmPay also offers savings services (fixed deposits)..
  • Chipper Cash (Pan-African)
    Chipper Cash offers cross-border payments for free or at very low-cost across 21 African countries and further international destinations such as the US and the UK. Chipper Cash is popular among young professionals and freelancers for sending money between Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and other countries, and has a user base of several million. Chipper Cash also supports crypto trading and investments in-app, along with free no-fee P2P payments, international remittances, bill paying, and a recently launched Visa card linked to the Chipper Cash digital wallet.
  • Kuda (Nigeria)
    Kuda is a leading Nigerian neobank app that offers a mobile-only bank account with no fees. Kuda provides digital checking accounts, free transfers, savings tools, and low-cost loans to around 5 million users, mostly in Nigeria. It has a high app rating due to its clean UI and reliable services. Kuda’s differentiation is in budgeting insights and spending notifications, helping users manage finances. It also issues virtual and physical debit cards and supports bill payments.
  • TymeBank (South Africa, entering other markets)
    TymeBank is South Africa’s fastest-growing digital bank and combines a low-fee bank account accessible via mobile app with an extensive kiosk network for cash deposits. The app offers no-monthly-fee accounts, and a high-interest savings tool, along with SendMoney vouchers to send money to any phone number.
  • Paga (Nigeria)
    One of Nigeria’s earliest mobile money platforms, Paga is now an app with millions of users. Paga allows users to transfer money to any phone number or bank, pay bills, and buy mobile airtime. In-app, Paga offers a multi-wallet experience (for personal or business funds), savings options, and merchant payments via QR codes.
  • Fawry (Egypt)
    Fawry is Egypt’s leading digital payments platform, used by over 35 million Egyptians via its app and agent network. Fawry started as a bill payment kiosk network and evolved into a mobile app for utility bill pay, mobile recharge, government fees, and e-commerce payments . It supports card-on-file and wallet functionality. Fawry’s app is top-rated in Egypt for its convenience – users can scan bill barcodes or select services in-app to pay instantly. The platform has also expanded into banking services, offering micro-loans and savings in partnership with banks.

Top finance apps in Asia

I’m not including China and India in this list: they are massive, ginormous countries that are almost universes to themselves, so even though some include them (especially China of course) in Asia, I think they deserve their own spotlight.

Across Asia fintech adoption has skyrocketed with the rise of super-apps and e-wallets. 

Why? 

In Southeast Asia in particular, a young population coupled with high smartphone penetration have fueled a cashless payments boom.

Some are calling it a golden age, largely because we’re seeing almost 20% growth annually in digital payments that should reach $1.7 trillion by 2029 in Southeast Asia alone. Countries like Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam have jumped straight from cash-heavy economies to mobile-first finance thanks to government support like Indonesia’s BI-Fast and Thailand’s PromptPay.

We’re seeing a huge proliferation of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, plus increasing integration of crypto and remittances features into wallets. Importantly, Southeast Asia’s super-apps like Grab and GoTo integrate payments with ride-hailing, delivery, and more, providing everyday apps for (almost) everything.

Top finance apps in Asia right now

  • GCash (Philippines)
    GCash is a dominant finance super-app in the Philippines with mobile wallet payments, banking, and more. It has almost 100 million users and covers about 70% of Filipino adults, providing bill payments, bank transfers, QR retail payments, savings accounts, loans, investments, insurance, and even a credit score.
  • Maya (formerly PayMaya, Philippines)
    Another leading Filipino fintech app is Maya, which combines a digital wallet with a digital bank. Maya has tens of millions of users well over 5 million banking customers. It enables P2P transfers, bills, and QR payments like GCash, and also offers a fully licensed digital bank with savings, loans, crypto trading, and a credit card.
  • Grab (GrabPay) – Southeast Asia
    Grab is Southeast Asia’s ubiquitous super-app and its GrabPay e-wallet is among the top payment apps in the region. GrabPay is integrated into the Grab app for ride-hailing and food delivery, but also used at merchants online and offline, sometimes via QR code. It supports P2P transfers, mobile recharge, bill payment, and Buy Now Pay Later (PayLater by Grab). Grab also launched a digital bank (GXS Bank) in Singapore and Malaysia, so the app now includes bank accounts and savings features. With tens of millions of users, GrabPay’s popularity is tied to Grab’s everyday services, loyalty rewards, and tie-ins like insurance and investments accessible from the app.
  • GoPay (Indonesia)
    The integrated wallet in the Gojek super-app GoPay is one of Indonesia’s most popular mobile finance apps, having processed over 100 million payments. It began as a way to pay for Gojek rides and deliveries, and now is used for everything from paying bills and merchants (via QRIS national QR code) to investing in mutual funds (GoInvestasi). GoPay has around 38 million monthly average users and is known for its cashback promotions and extensive offline merchant network. Through its GoPayLater service, it also offers BNPL lending. Security is solid with PIN and biometric features, and the app’s integration with Gojek’s services drives daily engagement.
  • OVO (Indonesia)
    Another top Indonesian digital wallet, OVO is accepted widely for retail payments and was one of Indonesia’s first unicorn fintechs. It has over 60 million users and was the #3 e-wallet by awareness in 2023. OVO’s core is an e-wallet for P2P transfers, QR payments, and loyalty rewards. OVO also offers access to investments (OVO Invest for mutual funds) and insurance in-app.
  • DANA (Indonesia)
    DANA is a rapidly growing Indonesian wallet platform, reportedly reaching 170 million users last year, which would make it one of Southeast Asia’s largest e-wallets. DANA enables fund transfers, bill and e-commerce payments, and has features like escrow for marketplace payments. The company recently introduced a DANA Visa card and offers an installment BNPL service.
  • ShopeePay (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.)
    Shopee is massive in Southeast Asia, and so is its payment functionality, ShopeePay. ShopeePay is used for online shopping checkouts, P2P transfers, and QR payments offline. It often offers generous cashback rewards for use, driving adoption. Key features include free bank transfers in some markets, contactless QR payments, and a seamless link to Shopee’s shopping app. With Shopee expanding into food delivery and travel, ShopeePay is evolving into a general-purpose wallet beyond e-commerce.
  • MoMo (Vietnam)
    Vietnam’s leading finance app, MoMo, has surpassed 40 million active users as of 2025. MoMo started as a mobile wallet and expanded into a more comprehensive super-app with functionality like instant P2P transfers, utility and bill payments, mobile top-up, and offline QR payments at over 100,000 locations. Recently, MoMo has added a marketplace for loans, investments, and insurance where users can invest spare change, buy insurance packages, or get small loans right in the app. It also offers lifestyle services like movie and travel bookings, like other superapps.
  • bKash (Bangladesh)
    bKash is Bangladesh’s leading mobile financial service, with 330,000 agents, 550,000 merchants, and a customer base of nearly 80 million. Initially an SMS-based mobile money service, bKash now offers a full app for sending money, mobile recharges, utility payments, and merchant QR payments, connecting millions of unbanked Bangladeshis to financial services. bKash has also integrated with banks and provides savings schemes and digital loans through partnerships. The app has added new features like an education fee payment portal and in-app remittance receiving options.
  • Easypaisa (Pakistan)
    The first and most popular mobile wallet in Pakistan, Easypaisa has over 10 million monthly active app users. The app enables a full suite of services: money transfers (to any phone or bank), utility bill payments, mobile top-ups, QR payments, and an array of financial products including savings accounts, micro-loans, insurance, and a Visa debit card linked to the wallet.

Top finance apps in China

As 1 of the 2 largest countries in the world by population, China deserves to be broken out. 

China’s fintech environment in 2025 is highly developed and at scale. It’s also more regulated and consolidated than it was just a few years ago. In other words, it’s no longer the wild wild East: this is a mature market now.

Digital payments are utterly mainstream: 9 in 10 Chinese smartphone users make mobile payments, and cash is rare in cities. As most people know, the market is dominated by two super-app ecosystems: Alipay and WeChat Pay, each with over a billion users … which means most people have both. These platforms grew from payments apps into full financial ecosystems offering loans, investments, insurance, and beyond. 

(Plus, of course, since they’re super-apps, they also do much more, offering mini-apps for games, shopping, ordering food … pretty much anything you can imagine.)

Since late 2020, regulators have tightened oversight on the fintech giants to reduce risk in the finance and banking spaces. That hasn’t changed how Chinese people use fintech apps, however: fintech services remain deeply embedded in Chinese life.

One major factor is the launch of the digital renminbi (e-CNY) … a potentially significant development for the future. Undergoing testing as early as 2021, the e-CNY began to be in limited use in 2023.  The goal here is to at least partially replace cash.

Top finance apps in China right now

  • Alipay (Zhifubao)
    The largest mobile finance app in China, Alipay has over 1 billion active users and is, of course, an omnipurpose super-app. Alipay is now used for basically everything: scan-and-go payments at stores, P2P transfers, ride-hailing, food delivery orders, hotel bookings, utility bill payments, and much more with huge numbers of mini-apps from brands that can be used to access thousands of services. Alipay’s core is its wallet linked to bank cards, but it also offers savings, investments, a credit card and BNPL functionality, micro-loans, insurance products, and even credit scoring via Zhima Credit. As a payments platform, Alipay processed an estimated 200+ trillion CNY ($30+ trillion) in transactions in 2024 (including bank transfers and QR payments). It’s hard to overstate Alipay’s ubiquity: “Alipay or WeChat?” is the default question instead of cash or card, which you might have in the West.
  • WeChat (WeChat Pay)
    WeChat is China’s other “everything app. While it started as primarily a social/chat app, it also features WeChat Pay, the second-largest mobile payment system. Called Weixin in Chinese, WeChat has 1.3 billion monthly active users, and most of them use WeChat Pay. Any user can link their bank card to WeChat and start paying friends or merchants, and WeChat Pay is accepted nearly everywhere in China, often via the same QR codes as Alipay. WeChat’s mini-app ecosystem allows for in-app purchases, ride hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, etc., all paid by WeChat Pay. Financial services via WeChat are delivered through WeBank or partners, and people can get micro-loans, wealth management products, and insurance through WeChat’s Wallet section.
  • UnionPay (Cloud QuickPass)
    The official mobile app by China’s UnionPay card network, known as Yunshanfu, UnionPay This app recently had a surge in downloads and is a top global app by virtue of its adoption in China. UnionPay can connect multiple bank cards from different banks and supports UnionPay QR code payments, NFC tap-to-pay, and P2P transfers. Heavily promoted by state banks, it’s essentially a more bank-centric counterpart to Alipay/WeChat. The app also aggregates offers/coupons, bill payments, and transit card features.
  • ICBC Mobile
    ICBC Mobile is the mobile banking app from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest bank. ICBC’s mobile app user base is enormous: as of 2024, ICBC had 588 million mobile banking customers, with 260 million monthly active users on its mobile app. (The crazy part: in China, this is almost small compared to the leaders above.) ICBC Mobile allows customers to do all banking transactions (transfers, deposits, credit card management, loan applications) from their phone. In addition, it offers lifestyle services like utility bill payments, investments (ICBC Wealth management products), insurance purchase, and even concert ticket bookings. It’s all part of Chinese banks’ strategy to stay relevant. The ICBC app is consistently ranked first among bank apps in China for its functionality and user experience.
  • Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) Mobile
    ABC is another “Big Four” bank app serving a vast client base, including rural customers. Like ICBC Mobile, ABC has about 500+ million mobile users and is known for a user-friendly interface. The app provides comprehensive banking (transfers, account opening, and loans) and supports payment scans just like the big fintech apps. ABC leverages its network to encourage rural users onto the app, including integrating with the national rural payment network.
  • WeBank (WeBank App)
    WeBank is China’s first online-only bank, launched by one of China’s biggest tech companies, Tencent. Many WeChat users access WeBank’s services via WeChat, but WeBank also has its own standalone app. WeBank provides digital deposit accounts, consumer loans, business loans, and wealth management, serving over 300 million consumers.
  • MyBank (Ant Group)
    Similar to WeBank, MyBank is Ant Group’s internet bank focusing on small and medium-sized businesses, and microloans to people. Its consumer-facing app isn’t super-prominent because MyBank primarily issues loans via partners (like Alipay). However, it has a sizable user base among Taobao merchants and small entrepreneurs, and is piloting innovative services like lending based on commerce data and allowing rural users to open accounts via face recognition on the app.
  • Ping An Pocket Bank
    Ping An Bank’s mobile app is another bank app in China. It provides the usual banking features plus a wealth management supermarket and unique personal finance tools like budgeting and expense analysis. While not exactly a super-app, it also integrates health services from Ping An Good Doctor, blurring lines between finance and healthcare.
  • Ant Fortune
    A specialized investment and wealth management app by Ant Group, Ant Fortune aggregates hundreds of mutual funds, fixed-income products, and insurance from various providers. For users who want more than the basics found in Alipay, Ant Fortune provides advanced tools like fund screeners, community discussions, and robo-advisory portfolios. It has attracted almost 200 million users.
  • JD Finance (JD Digits/JD Pay)
    JD is one of China’s e-commerce giants. It has a fintech arm with an app that combines payments like JD Pay, consumer credit, and wealth management. JD has branched into offline retail and salaries and its finance app has grown significantly.

Top finance apps in Europe

As you’d expect, the European fintech scene in 2025 is fairly mature, though still evolving in southern and eastern Europe, and heavily influenced by regulation. 

It’s increasingly integrated with traditional banking, but digital payments that are ubiquitous in China and other countries are much more rare in Europe, and usage numbers are nothing like China’s or India’s. Traditional financial tools like credit cards are much more common, and of course the population in European countries is much lower.

Key drivers in Europe for fintech include open banking initiatives, with apps like Revolut, Monese, and Emma using bank data to offer holistic money management. Crypto has cooled in the European fintech space, but payments and digital wallets, along with wealth management apps, are on the rise. 

Personal budgeting and financial planning apps are also growing. 

Top finance apps in Europe right now

  • Revolut (UK, EU-wide)
    Revolut is a bit of a European fintech super-app with banking, payments, investing, crypto, travel insurance, budgeting. It has somewhere around 40 million users, most of whom are in Europe, and is well regarded. Revolut offers P2P payments and bill splitting, stock trading, and offers some BNPL services in the UK.
  • PayPal (EU-wide)
    PayPal, while originally American, also operates in Europe as a digital wallet for online payments, P2P transfers, merchant payments. It’s one of the most-used wallets, with perhaps 75 million users in Europe, and a good reputation. It also has P2P payments (pretty much the original use case for PayPal!), and has merchant check-out features, savings in some countries, crypto currency in some as well, and BNPL.
  • Wise (UK, EU-wide)
    Formerly TransferWise, Wise focuses on international money transfers, plus multi-currency accounts, plus a credit card card: the Wise Card. Wise has about 16 million users globally, the majority of whom are in Europe. Wise also offers budgeting tools and peer-to-peer transfers, as well as foreign exchange transfers.
  • N26 (Germany, rest of EU)
    N26 is a digital bank — a neobank if you will — that primarily operates in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and a few other countries. It offers free accounts, credit cards, budgeting tools, savings, and investing options, and has perhaps 8 million users. It also offers crypto trading in some countries.
  • Bunq (Netherlands, rest of EU)
    Bunq is a digital bank with focus on sustainability, multi-currency accounts, and travel. It has perhaps 10 million users, focusing on the Netherlands, is well rated, and offers functionality for banking, P2P payments, savings, joint accounts, a travel card, budgeting, and investments in ETFs. It also offers “Green Goals” and plants trees in return for usage.
  • Lydia (France)
    Lydia is a popular app in France for P2P payments, mobile banking, and credit cards, especially among younger people. It has about 7 million users, handles P2P payments, offers banking accounts, allows users to trade crypto, brokers loans, and offers BNPL services.
  • Satispay (Italy, France, Germany)
    Satispay is an independent mobile payments network competing with PayPal and credit cards. It has about 4 million users, mostly in Italy, and focuses on offline merchants. Capabilities include P2P payments, merchant payments, bill paying, budgeting, donations, and savings.
  • Twint (Switzerland)
    Twint is the dominant mobile payments app in Switzerland, with about 5 million users. It offers P2P payments, QR merchant payments, bill splitting, ticket purchases, loyalty integrations, and transit payments
  • Other payment apps of interest include
    • Trade Republic  is mostly in Germany and does investments, crypto, and savings
    • Bitpanda is in Austria and elsewhere, and focuses on crypto and stocks
    • Emma is mostly in the UK and is a budgeting and financial aggregation app offering bank aggregation, budgeting, subscription tracking, savings insights, plus net worth tracking

Top finance apps in India

India’s fintech ecosystem in 2025 is super dynamic and, along with China, arguably the most advanced on the planet in terms of digital payments and fintech adoption.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a real-time mobile payments network that has become a way of life, processing billions of transactions every month. In 2024 alone, India saw 208.5 billion digital payment transactions, largely driven by UPI. Fintech apps in India benefit from this interoperable infrastructure: any UPI app can pay any other, meaning there’s a somewhat level playing field for competition and innovation. 

Over 75% of urban adults and a growing share of rural users now use mobile payment apps. Thanks to India’s massive population and open APIs for KYC, payments, and data sharing, the big apps have hundreds of millions of users. 

These apps are generally shifting towards super apps with many varied offerings. 

India has several homegrown fintech giants, and global players tailor their offerings for India, with Google Pay being a prime example (it’s a very different app in India versus the United States, for instance). India’s consumers benefit from intense competition: almost all fintech apps offer zero fees, instant service, and an expanding suite of capabilities.

Like China, India is piloting a central bank digital currency, and has been experimenting with it since 2023.

Top finance apps in India right now

  • PhonePe
    PhonePe is India’s top digital payments app by volume and reach, having surpassed 500 million users in 2023. PhonePe offers a UPI-based mobile wallet for instant bank transfers, QR code payments in shops, bill payments, and more. Initially focused on simple UPI transfers, PhonePe has evolved into a full fintech platform: people can buy gold (!!!), invest in mutual funds, purchase insurance, pay taxes, and even shop within the app via mini-apps. It’s supported by a huge network of over 35 million merchants.
  • Google Pay (GPay)
    A close competitor to PhonePe, Google Pay in India is very different than Google Pay elsewhere. Leveraging UPI for seamless payments, Google Pay has about 36% of India’s mobile payments market with a chat-like interface, making sending money as easy as texting. Google Pay users can pay anyone via UPI, tap & pay via NFC, pay bills, and recharge phones. Google Pay has also added personal finance features to track spending and bills, and integrated wealth products like stocks. Interestingly, Google Pay has far more success in India than in any other country.
  • Paytm
    Paytm was once synonymous with digital wallets in India. Now Paytm is a broad fintech app with payments, banking, and commerce with over 96 million monthly average users as of 2024. Paytm offers UPI transfers, its own wallet payments, bill payments, movie and travel bookings, and merchant QR payments. Paytm is essentially a bank: users can hold savings and earn interest. It also offers mutual fund investments, stock trading, insurance, BNPL, and Fastag toll payments, making it a financial super-app. 
  • YONO SBI
    YONO (You Only Need One) is the mobile banking and lifestyle app by State Bank of India, India’s largest bank. With SBI’s vast customer base, YONO has a huge user count, with goals to hit 100 million as of last year. The YONO app is differentiated in blending banking with a marketplace, allowing SBI customers to check accounts, transfer funds, open deposits, apply for loans or credit cards, and also check shopping deals and travel bookings. YONO features “YONO Cash,” a cardless ATM withdrawal using the app. As a banking app, it has strong security and now even incorporates budgeting and personal finance management tools.
  • Bajaj Finserv
    Bajaj is an app by Bajaj Finance, which is India’s leading non-bank lender. It has become a top fintech platform for loans, payments, and investments. The Bajaj Finserv app has massive adoption: as we noted, it was among the top 20 fintech apps by downloads globally in 2025. Bajaj users can apply for personal loans, get consumer durable loans, manage their Bajaj EMI card, pay bills via UPI, and buy insurance or invest in fixed deposits.
  • Airtel Thanks
    Airtel Thanks is an app by telecom operator Bharti Airtel that evolved into a combined telco self-care and fintech app. It’s used by a large portion of Airtel’s 360 million subscribers in India for mobile recharges and plan management, and it doubles as the app for Airtel Payments Bank, which offers UPI payments, a savings account, and a digital wallet.
  • CRED
    CRED is a niche but influential fintech app focusing on credit card management and rewards. CRED targets high-net-worth Indians. It has about 13 million monthly active users and allows members to manage and pay all their credit card bills in one place. In return for on-time payments, users get points that can be redeemed for products, discounts, or lottery-style jackpots. CRED has expanded into lending, investment products, and e-commerce with a members-only store.
  • MobiKwik
    One of India’s original mobile wallets, MobiKwik has reinvented itself in the UPI era and still has over 40 million users. The app supports wallet payments, UPI transfers, bill and recharge payments, and it has a large biller catalog. MobiKwik also offers a BNPL product, giving eligible users a short-term credit line for purchases. Additionally, MobiKwik offers mutual fund investments and digital gold.
  • Groww
    Groww makes stock market and mutual fund investing easy for India’s millennials. With over 40 million users, Groww is highly popular for commission-free stock trading, direct mutual fund investments, fixed deposits, and US stock investing, all in one app.
  • Kotak 811
    Kotak 811 is the digital banking app/initiative of Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of India’s prominent private banks. The Kotak 811 app allows anyone to open a zero-fee digital savings account. Users get a full-fledged bank account with a virtual debit card, which they can use for UPI payments, transfers, and online shopping.

Top finance apps in South America, Latin America, Central America

South America, Central America, and Latin America is one of the fastest-growing fintech markets in the world. There’s massive growth in digital payments and transfers, super-app and ecosystem plays that offer multiple fintech solutions in a single app, crypto and alt-currencies, and more. 

Millions of people are getting their first financial account ever via a smartphone app rather than a bank branch, as large populations of unbanked people are gaining access to multiple digital financial tools. Supportive regulations, like Mexico’s fintech law, Brazil’s open banking and Pix instant payment, have helped. 

The result is people increasingly using mobile apps for everyday finance, from paying bills to buying groceries. Some countries in the region also embrace crypto relatively more, driven by inflation and currency instability in countries like Argentina and Venezuela.

Top finance apps in South/Latin/Central America right now

  • Nubank
    Nubank is the poster child of Latin American fintech. Originally a Brazilian digital bank, Nubank has become one of the world’s largest neobanks with over 118 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The Nubank app offers a no-fee digital bank account, a credit card, personal loans, investments, insurance, and more. Customers can do instant Pix transfers, earn interest on deposits, and invest in mutual funds or crypto. In Mexico, Nubank has gained millions of users via its credit card under the Nu brand.
  • Mercado Pago
    Mercado Pago is the fintech arm of the e-commerce giant MercadoLibre in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and other countries. Mercado Pago started as an online payment method for MercadoLibre but is now a comprehensive wallet and digital bank with at least 64 million monthly active users. The Mercado Pago app lets users save money, pay at stores via QR code, pay bills, top-up phone plans, and send P2P transfers. It’s widely used by small merchants and offers loans, investments, and insurance products.
  • PicPay
    PicPay is a Brazilian mobile payments and digital wallet app that has become extremely popular with youth, with over 60 million registered users and around 35 million active users. PicPay enables transfers to friends and to merchants, but also offers a digital account with Mastercard, bill payments, an in-app marketplace to buy gift cards and transit tickets, and a lending platform. It also has some crypto trading and an investments hub.
  • PagBank (PagSeguro)
    PagSeguro is a Brazilian fintech known originally for its mobile point-of-sale devices for merchants. The PagBank app has become a full consumer digital bank with over 30 million customers, offering digital checking accounts, a Visa card, Pix transfers, bill payments, mobile top-ups, and other financial services like personal loans and investments.
  • Banco Inter
    Banco Inter is yet another Brazilian digital bank success. Originally an offshoot of a small bank, Inter exploded by offering a free app for banking, investing, and shopping cashback, reaching 35 million clients in 2024. Inter also offers no-fee checking and savings, credit cards, loans, investments, insurance, and — of course — shopping. There’s also an AI-powered financial assistant, and Inter’s strategy of combining finance and e-commerce has increased user engagement: customers can scroll looking for deals and then pay with their Inter card or account.
  • C6 Bank
    C6 Bank is a relatively new but rapidly growing Brazilian digital bank with about 35 million customers by the end of 2024. Similar to Nubank and Inter, C6 Bank’s app offers a range of financial products: accounts, debit/credit cards, a loyalty program, investments, and lending. C6 also offers a toll tag for cars, business accounts, and a marketplace for telecom top-ups and gift cards.
  • Nequi
    Nequi is a leading digital wallet in Colombia with around 22 million users. The Nequi app offers a digital savings account and a chat-based interface for banking. Users can send money, pay bills, get virtual cards for online purchases, save in subaccounts or “pockets,” and get short-term loans. Nequi recently added a marketplace for third-party services and deeper integration with Colombia’s QR payment network..
  • Ualá
    Ualá is an Argentine fintech unicorn offering a personal finance app and prepaid Mastercard. It has over 9 million users across Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, and allows users to open an account, top up via cash deposits, send bank transfers, and pay with the Ualá card or app. The app has a personal lending product, and Ualá has begun offering investments and BNPL products. Ualá expanded to Mexico in 2020 and more recently Colombia, often targeting youth and unbanked populations. It also offers crypto trading in counties with less stable national currencies..
  • Bitso
    Bitso is the most prominent cryptocurrency platform in Latin America, originating in Mexico and also operating in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. Bitso’s user base passed 9 million in 2024, allowing people to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a variety of local stablecoins (for example, MXN or ARS-pegged tokens). Bitso focuses on real use cases like remittances in crypto, and converting salaries to stablecoins to escape high inflation. The app integrates with local banking systems so users can deposit and withdraw in local currency.
  • Daviplata
    Daviplata is a Colombian mobile wallet launched by Banco Davivienda with about 15 million users. Daviplata allows anyone to open a basic electronic account using their ID, receive and send money, pay bills, and withdraw cash at ATMs or partner stores. It gained massive usage when the government used Daviplata to distribute emergency subsidies to millions during COVID-19. It also offers services for international remittances, contactless payments, and micro-loans.

Top finance apps in North America (US & Canada)

In North America, especially the US, fintech is about innovation but also integration into mainstream finance, which is large, dominant, and mature. Unlike fast-growing regions where fintech apps replace traditional banking or enable banking for those who are previously unbanked, in North America fintech apps augment what the traditional financial marketplace has usually offered, or specialize in something that it has missed. 

That often means apps that focus on budgeting, credit scores, investing, or peer-to-peer payments.

But it also means neobanks, commission-free stock trading apps, and crypto apps. There’s also a large BNPL or “buy now, pay later” ecosystem of providers like Affirm or Klarna, and robo-advisors like Wealthfront or Betterment for managing investments. 

Canada’s fintech scene is smaller, with strong incumbent banks, but apps like Wealthsimple (investing) and Koho (spending and savings with prepaid cards) have gained traction among millennials. 

North American consumers expect convenience coupled with capability, so fintechs tend to partner with banks or get bank charters so they can offer everything digitally. North America’s fintech apps have typically tended to be more siloed or specialized, but the trend now is aggregation … so we may start to see financial super-apps in North America as well as other parts of the world.

Top finance apps in North America right now

  • PayPal
    A pioneer of digital payments, PayPal remains one of the top finance apps in North America with over 400 million global active accounts, including around 80 million in the U.S. The PayPal app lets users send and request money domestically and internationally, pay online merchants, and manage a PayPal balance or linked bank accounts/cards. It also offers PayPal Credit and a Buy Now Pay Later installment option at checkout. The PayPal app is adding more personal finance features like a savings account and crypto trading for Bitcoin/Ethereum.
  • Venmo
    Owned by PayPal, Venmo is the app for peer-to-peer payments among young Americans with about 85 million users. It has a social feed for payments, links to bank accounts or cards to send money instantly, and has a Venmo Mastercard debit card, the ability to pay at online merchants, and check cashing. In 2025, Venmo added teen accounts for young users with parental oversight and Venmo crypto. Venmo processes a huge volume: over $240 billion in 2024. It continues to grow, but it faces competition from Zelle and Cash App, as well as products from Apple and Google.
  • Cash App
    Cash App is a popular finance app with 57 million monthly active users. Users can send or receive money instantly, and they get a unique “$cashtag” ID to share for payments. Cash App also offers a Cash Card, or free Visa debit card, and has expanded into commission-free stock investing, Bitcoin trading, and tax filing. Some people use Cash App as an alternative bank. They can do direct deposit of paychecks into Cash App and receive tax refunds there as well.
  • Zelle
    Zelle is the banking industry’s answer to Venmo … it’s an instant bank-to-bank payment network embedded in most major US banking apps. But it also has a standalone app that allows free instant transfers directly between bank accounts using an email or phone number. Zelle is massive, handling hundreds of billions of dollars of transfers. 
  • Chime
    Chime is the leading U.S. neobank. It’s a fintech company that offers banking services via app without its own banking license by partnering with banks. Users can open a deposit account in minutes with no credit check, get a Visa debit card, and manage money with a focus on low fees (no monthly/overdraft fees). Chime has over 15 million customers and is particularly popular among those fed up with traditional bank fees or who don’t qualify easily for big bank accounts. The app also offers direct deposit for paychecks, automated savings by percentages or round-ups on purchases, and more.
  • Robinhood
    Robinhood remains a top finance app in the US (it’s not available in Canada) due to its role in democratizing stock trading. It has over 22 million funded accounts and provides commission-free trading of stocks, ETFs, options, and crypto, with a slick, gamified user experience. Robinhood also offers a cash account, a retirement product, and social features like seeing what others are trading.
  • Coinbase
    Coinbase is the leading cryptocurrency exchange app in North America. During the crypto peaks it topped download charts, and as of 2025 it still has a strong user base of around 100 million verified users globally. As you’d expect, the Coinbase app enables buying, selling, and holding of dozens of cryptocurrencies. It also supports features like recurring buys, crypto staking, and a Coinbase Card to spend crypto.
  • Mint
    Mint is a long-standing budgeting and personal finance management app. It’s an OG in the budgeting and finance sectors, having launched way back in 2007. Mint remains highly popular for aggregating all of a user’s finances in one place. It connects to bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments, and updates balances and transactions automatically. Mint also provides budgeting tools and credit score monitoring, bill reminders, and tips on saving.
  • Credit Karma
    Both Mint and Credit Karma are owned by Intuit, and Credit Karma is an app focused on credit score monitoring and credit product recommendations. It gives users weekly updates of their TransUnion and Equifax credit scores, along with the full credit report details. With over 110 million members in the U.S. and Canada, Credit Karma is very popular. Credit Karma essentially acts as a personalized financial marketplace, showing users offers for all kinds of financial tools, products, and services. The app also features a high-yield savings account and tax filing.
  • SoFi
    SoFi (short for social finance) is a U.S. fintech that started in student loan refinancing and has become a broad-based financial app … essentially a modern bank + brokerage + lender, all in one. SoFi offers checking and savings accounts, stock and ETF trading, robo-advisory investing, crypto trading, credit cards, personal and student loans, mortgages, and even insurance, making it something of a financial super-app. It has a member base of over 5 million users. 

Finance planet: so much innovation

So we’ve looked at finance app trends globally, divided in 7 key regions:

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • China (broken out from broader Asia)
  • Europe
  • India (also broken out from broader Asia)
  • North America (US & Canada)
  • South America/Central America/Latin America (with Mexico)

What can we say about the big picture?

1. Mobile finance is the new default

Apps are the primary channel for financial services, even in traditional and cash-heavy countries. Whether it’s digital wallets like M-Pesa in Africa, Paytm in India, or Cash App in the U.S., of just e-transfers from any bank app, consumers now expect 24/7 financial access from their phones.

2. Super apps are pretty super (and growing)

Super-apps that combine banking, payments, investing, and more are dominant in many markets. We see Revolut and Paytm in Europe and India, WeChat and Alipay in China, Nubank in Latin America, even SoFi in the United States.

But how they’re built varies.

In China, super apps are part of mega-ecosystems from huge tech companies. In Europe and North America, they’re built through modular features or integrations with multiple companies. And in Africa and parts of Asia, super apps often combine digital features with physical, human agent networks for cash-in/cash-out.

3. P2P payments are foundational

Peer-to-peer payments are the key building block for fintech apps. Globally, we expect instant, free, social money transfer as a core function, whether it’s Venmoor Zelle in the U.S., Lydia in France, bKash in Bangladesh, or Twint in Switzerland.

Or, of course, red envelopes in China.

4. Savings, credit, and budgeting tools are everywhere

Inflation, high interest rates, and economic uncertainty have pushed many of us toward savings automation, loan access, and budget visibility. That might mean saving pots, or pockets, in India, LATAM, or Africa. It could mean microloans. It could also mean credit scores in North America.

5. Wealth and investing features are going mainstream

Everyone can be banked. Everyone can invest. Everyone can save. Everyone can buy crypto. Everyone can budget.

Basically, everyone can access almost every kind of financial tool they want, all via mobile.

6. Crypto is stabilizing

Crypto functionality hasn’t disappeared, but it’s less hyped. And it’s more carefully integrated with other financial tools.

We see that in Revolut, PayPal, N26, Bitpanda, Coinbase, and Lydia. It’s less speculative, more regulated, with limited asset classes: crypto is now a checkbox in app portfolios, not a growth rocket.

Or a get-rich-quick-scheme.

7. Agent networks remain critical for inclusion in some markets

In regions like Africa, South Asia, and parts of LATAM, digital finance still relies on agent-assisted infrastructure.

We see M-Pesa, Fawry, Easypaisa, Paga, and other top fintech apps real-world agents for onboarding, cash handling, and trust along with their digital tools.

8. Open Banking and API connectivity fuel smarter apps

Especially in Europe, India, parts of Asia, and parts of LATAM, Open Banking standards like PSD2, UPI, and Open Credit Enablement are powering account aggregation, credit scoring, and smart lending and personalized recommendations.

9. Localization matters

Almost everywhere, the top fintech apps are deeply localized to cultural, regulatory, and infrastructure realities. It’s hard — though possible in Europe, Southeast Asia, and LATAM in particular — to build 1 app that serves multiple countries, languages, and regulatory environments.

10. Trust, security, and regulation shape everything

This is finance. It involves money.

Trust is essential for everything.

Globally, users are concerned about fraud, privacy, and misuse of financial data. And regulators are tightening up regulations. We see that in the EU with PSD3, the AI Act, and the Digital Markets Act. In India, we’re seeing stricter KYC and data localization. And in LATAM we’re seeing new central bank mandates for fintech licenses.

This is still a massively growing space.

There is still tons of opportunity.

To turn these global trends into scalable success, it’s crucial to have a unified view of your marketing data. See the analytics platform built for the world’s leading finance apps

Talk to your data: Singular launches instant AI-powered insights with top LLMs, starting with Claude

Palo Alto, CA, June 13 — For the first time ever, marketers can use the full power of the world’s best LLM AI engines to query every detail of their live marketing campaigns. Singular is announcing a first-to-market integration with Claude, Anthropic’s LLM, with other major AI platforms like ChatGPT to follow. The result is that marketers can simply talk to their massive multi-gigabyte databases with detailed information on campaigns, creative, and conversions, and get all the answers they need.

  • Which creatives are showing signs of fatigue?
  • Which ad partners are driving the most ROI?
  • Which adsets are working best on Meta?
  • What campaigns are most effective?
  • Which ad partners should I consider dropping?
  • Where is my cost per install increasing fastest?
  • What ads are most profitable?

Take a look:

Claude first, thanks to Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP)

This new first-to-market integration is made possible by Anthropic’s just-released Model Context Protocol (MCP), which provides a secure, fast connection between all the AI power in Claude and all the rich data in Singular. MCP is a secure interface protocol: think “USB-C port for AI.” OpenAI is building MCP as well, as are other major LLMs like Microsoft’s Gemini, and Singular will support each as it becomes available.

“Speed wins in marketing,” said Gadi Eliashiv, CEO and co-founder at Singular. “By connecting our analysis-ready data to world-class LLMs, we’re giving marketers a new level of intelligence and agility.”

Ease of use is just as critical as speed.

Most organizations suffer from a “data divide.” They have data that can inform decision-making, but it’s only in a few hands. Or, getting it requires technical skill and specific tools that only a few have. Democratizing access to data by allowing everyone with data privileges to simply ask natural language questions is a game-changer to ensure the entire organization makes smarter decisions and better investments.

No code. No dashboards. No complex queries.

Just plain spoken or typed language.

Thanks to Singular’s Model Context Protocol integration, all Singular clients have access to a secure, scalable method for enabling LLMs to interact with enterprise-grade datasets.

Claude can now:

  • Access fully unified marketing data across platforms and channels
  • Analyze creative-level performance tagged by AI
  • Reflect live campaign changes within hours, not days
  • Deliver accurate insights using normalized, governance-ready pipelines

It’s incredibly easy to use and marketers can get started in minutes by adding Singular MCP as a data source in Claude’s integrations screen. Once they authenticate, they can simply talk to Claude to access their data. Claude will build charts, comparisons, suggest actions, all based on Singular’s standardized, normalized, and enriched datasets.

The integration is available today, and it’s a first of its kind in the measurement and analytics space.

True ROI, powered by Singular (and now Claude)

Singular unifies cost, attribution, creative, and engagement data to deliver what modern marketing teams need: true ROI. The platform supports over 1,200 data connectors and includes advanced features for SKAN modeling, cross-platform attribution, fraud prevention, and creative performance tracking.

This latest integration builds on Singular’s track record of delivering smarter tools for faster growth.

About Singular

Singular is the only end-to-end marketing analytics platform that uncovers True ROI by unifying cost, performance, and engagement data across every marketing channel. Trusted by growth leaders at LinkedIn, Rovio, EA, and Nike, Singular helps teams optimize smarter, scale faster, and eliminate wasted spend.

Now you’re a data genius too: get instant AI-powered marketing insights from top LLMs, starting with Claude

Today Singular is announcing global availability for a first-ever deep integration with Anthropic’s Claude, soon to be followed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and more. For the first time ever, you can get instant AI-powered marketing insights using the full power of the world’s best AI engines. 

Your data shouldn’t be locked away in spreadsheets or trapped in dashboards. Getting the insight you need should be as simple as asking the right questions.

Like Kramer and MoviePhone:

Claude LLM marketing data

 

Now it’s just that simple. And you’re automatically a data genius.

Bonus: you don’t even have to learn SQL or Python.

You and your team have a huge amount of rich marketing data in Singular. Now you can have it in your head, simply by talking or typing a super-simple natural-language question.

AI-powered marketing insights for the asking, straight from Claude and other LLMs

What do you want to know about your marketing campaigns? Now you just need to ask:

  • Which creatives are showing signs of fatigue?
  • Which ad partners are driving the most ROI?
  • Which adsets are working best on Google?
  • What campaigns are most effective?
  • Which ad partners should I consider dropping?
  • Where is my cost per install increasing fastest?
  • What ads are most profitable?

Don’t use Claude? You’re a ChatGPT subscriber? 

No worries: more integrations are coming soon.

This is the first shipping solution from an MMP that uses Anthropic’s just-released Model Context Protocol (MCP), a secure, fast interface between your own rich data in Singular and the superintelligence of the world’s smartest AI engines. But MCP is an open standard for connecting data sources to LLMs, and both OpenAI and Google have committed to releasing their own MCP interfaces as well. 

As soon as they’re available, Singular will support them.

Speed AND ease of use

This new AI integration with your Singular data is a game-changer for at least 2 reasons. The first is speed, and the second is ease of use.

“Speed wins in marketing,” said Gadi Eliashiv, CEO and co-founder at Singular. “By connecting our analysis-ready data to world-class LLMs, we’re giving marketers a new level of intelligence and agility.”

Ease of use is just as important.

Maybe you’re not deep into SQL. Maybe you aren’t a Tableau expert. Maybe you’ve used Singular’s dashboard 10,000 times, but there’s still more functionality that you keep finding. Or maybe you’re just busy, and you’d like the machine to do some work while you take care of other tasks.

The solution is simply to ask.

AI-powered marketing insights deliver.

Connect Claude and Singular, get AI-powered marketing insights

Anyone with approved data privileges can securely connect Claude to their Singular account and start getting answers. What campaigns are working: done. What creative is generating the highest CTRs: easy. Which ads need to be freshened up: no problem. 

Claude won’t just answer your questions. If you wish, Claude will also chart, graph, and diagram the answers so you can visually see what’s going on in near real time, and share the results with your team for their input.

Here’s an example on (very) dummy data:

Claude AI-powered marketing insights

 

Anything Singular measures for you, Claude can access.

That includes complex tasks as well as simple ones:

  • Access fully unified marketing data across platforms and channels
  • Analyze creative-level performance tagged by AI, when you’re using Creative IQ
  • Reflect live campaign changes within hours, not days
  • Deliver accurate insights using normalized, governance-ready pipelines

It’s incredibly easy to use and marketers can get started in minutes by adding Singular MCP as a data source in Claude’s integrations screen. Once they authenticate, they can simply talk to Claude to access their data. Claude will build charts, comparisons, suggest actions, all based on Singular’s standardized, normalized, and enriched datasets.

The integration is available today, and it’s a first of its kind in the measurement and analytics space.

On LLMs and privacy

Note that by default, most LLM prompts and answers can be used by an LLM to improve its own AI model. 

However, you can turn off training on your conversations and data. Go to Settings >> Data Controls and turn off training contributions to ensure your valuable marketing data stays secure. If you have Claude Team, you can turn off data use for training at the organization level, and if you have Claude Enterprise, it’s off by default.

The good news: 

Singular’s MCP integration with Claude uses the Claude API, and Anthropic does not use API data to train models. This is the safest, most secure, and most enterprise-friendly route.

Get started today …

Chat with your Singular customer success representative if you have any questions. But we also suggest that you chat with your BI and security teams just to ensure they’re A-OK with connecting an LLM to your data that Singular holds in trust for you.

Once they’re good with it: go to town.

The days of waiting for reports, wrestling with complex dashboards, or learning SQL just to answer simple marketing questions are over. The days of everyone having the data they need to do their job are here.

Step 1: talk to your data.

Step 2: grow faster!

iOS 26: Everything privacy-related Apple announced at WWDC 2025

We already know about the 5 big AAK updates at WWDC 2025, but there’s definitely more to talk about. Some privacy updates were prominently featured in Apple’s WWDC keynotes and sessions. Others arrived quietly in the developer documentation released alongside iOS 26.

(Yeah, Apple operating systems are now being labeled by year: the year after they’re actually released. So the next iOS is iOS 26.)

Here’s everything privacy-related that Apple announced at WWDC … and 1 thing they didn’t exactly announce.

Advanced fingerprinting protections in Safari for iOS 26

Safari 26 now includes default-on protections against browser fingerprinting in both normal and Private Browsing modes.

Yep.

Good for people, tough for marketers.

Safari will block website access to common fingerprinting APIs, including:

  • Screen dimensions
  • CPU cores
  • Speech synthesis voices
  • Apple Pay capability
  • Web Audio readback
  • 2D Canvas rendering details

Safari will also prevent suspicious scripts from using localStorage and cookies to store and check identifiers, and it will strip tracking-related query parameters from the document.referrer.

Browser-based fingerprinting is going to get a lot harder.

I’m not sure this impacts mobile-specific and UA marketers that much. Sure, we’re using web2app a lot more these days, and web landing pages, but I’m not sure many are using fingerprinting extensively in these types of campaigns or journeys.

Apple is still serious about making tracking people across websites and apps hard if not impossible. In Safari 26, Apple will expand Link Tracking Protection.

For Private Browsing, Safari will strip out known tracking parameters from URLs (think utm_source or gclid from Google). That will also happen for links clicked inside Mail and Messages, regardless of whether someone is in Private Browsing mode or not.

Common tracking and measurement parameters that Safari will likely strip:

  • Utm_source: Campaign source (Google Analytics)
  • Utm_medium: Marketing medium (Google Analytics)
  • Utm_campaig:n Campaign name (Google Analytics)
  • Utm_term: Paid search keywords (Google Analytics)
  • Utm_content: Ad content identifier (Google Analytics)
  • Gclid: Google Ads click identifier
  • Fbclid: Facebook click identifier
  • Mc_cid: Mailchimp campaign ID
  • Mc_eid: Mailchimp encrypted email ID (user identifier)
  • Msclkid: Microsoft Ads click identifier
  • Dclid: Google Display Network click identifier
  • Igshid: Instagram link sharing ID
  • Vero_conv: Vero (email marketing platform) conversion ID
  • Wickedid: Wicked Reports tracking ID (attribution platform)
  • trk_*: Various generic tracking parameters (common in B2B marketing platforms)

And, as you saw above, document.referrer will also be scrubbed of these parameters.

If you rely on UTM parameters or click IDs in email campaigns, Safari’s new protections will disrupt how much you can track. Your open rates won’t change, but your measurement of click-to-conversion funnels and your attribution in Google Analytics and ad platforms will degrade when users click email links on Apple devices.

  • Campaign source may not be attributed correctly
  • Clickthrough rate (CTR) tracking in email platforms like Mailchimp, Hubspot, Klaviyo will degrade
  • Personalized funnel analysis won’t work
  • Cross-channel and multi-touch attribution chains break
  • Post-click segmentation becomes incomplete or inaccurate
  • Retargeting performance drops

This isn’t a death sentence: not everyone uses Apple’s own Mail app. Many use Gmail or other email apps, which won’t strip parameters like this. But perhaps a third of iOS users do use Mail, meaning there will be measurement degradation.

Of course, email is not a major mobile user acquisition channel, though it has become more interesting in recent years.

An important note:

Just because you can’t measure something doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Remember after iOS 14.5? People didn’t stop watching and clicking on ads on iOS … it just became harder to measure. While performance marketers need measurable datapoints to optimize, assuming nothing is happening just because you can’t measure it in 1 particular way is self-defeating.

Believe it or not, some top-notch technical and modern marketers still swear by “where did you hear about us” type surveys for new users or customers.

My point: there are options.

Phone and messages privacy features

This isn’t as relevant for marketers, but it’s something privacy-related that Apple announced at WWDC 2025.

Apple introduced several new privacy-preserving intelligence features in iOS 26 for communications:

  • Live Translation for Phone calls, FaceTime, and Messages runs entirely on-device using Apple Intelligence models, so audio and content stay private
  • Call Screening provides real-time transcripts of unknown calls locally … so again, no cloud processing required
  • Hold Assist allows users to mute hold music and get alerted when an agent joins … yep, all processed on device

On-device AI, including visual intelligence in iOS 26

In a similar vein, not super-relevant for marketers. But, indicative of Apple’s overall direction and focus.

Apple’s new Foundation Models API in iOS 26 will let developers use Apple Intelligence models for text and image processing on-device, so that app interactions stay private.

  • Apps can process content locally without sending data to Apple servers
  • This enables AI-driven features like summarization, visual intelligence, and more while keeping user data safe

Additionally, Visual Intelligence will let users interact with on-screen content privately, without sending screenshots or visual data to the cloud. That includes things that could be relevant for marketers, including the ability to copy text, shop, or create calendar events based on what’s visible on-screen.

AdAttributionKit updates

While I covered them in detail here, these are the big AAK privacy updates from WWDC:

  • Overlapping re-engagement windows
  • Configurable attribution windows
  • Configurable attribution cooldown
  • Country codes in postbacks
  • Easier testing for AAK integrations

Overall, this makes AAK much better and easier to use, but … as I mentioned in my blog post, none of that matters if there’s no industry adoption of AAK.

Note: these are being released with iOS 26 but aren’t tied to a specific mobile operating system.

Declare age range API

Finally, something that Apple didn’t explicitly mention at WWDC 2025 but did share to the developer documentation repository for iOS 26 is Age Range API. 

This is probably in response to existing and pending legislation in Australia and US states like Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Nebraska, and New York that will require app stores to verify users’ ages and require parental consent for minors for certain kinds of content. There’s also the new federal App Store Accountability Act in the US. Reintroduced in Congress on May 1, 2025, this act would mandate that app stores verify age and get parental consent for minors. It has bipartisan support and is backed by many advocacy groups.

Here’s how the Age Range API in iOS 26 would work:

  • Apps can request a parent-verified age range for a user (e.g. 13–15, 16–17, 18+)
  • Parents must confirm the child’s age range via system-level controls
  • Apps receive only the age range, not a birthdate or exact age, which complies with child protection laws and preserves privacy

If the device was set up in Family Sharing as a child’s device, the parent or guardian configures the child’s Apple ID and birthdate. Apple then knows the child’s true age and can automatically provide an age range (e.g. “12 or under”) to apps that request it via the API.

Note: parents can also choose whether to allow this age range to be shared with apps.

Of course, like all things technical, there’s a massive truck-sized loophole.

When anyone sets up their own device, they will be able to declare an age range in some way. They will not need to give a birthdate, only the range. But but but …  this is self-declared, so an adult pretending to be 13 would technically be possible unless platform-level enforcement is added. 

And, of course, a kid pretending to be an adult is just as possible.

For app marketers, expect to be required to support some technology around this in multiple jurisdictions around the world, especially if your app is in a sensitive category like dating, gambling, or adult content.

Summing it all up: privacy at WWDC 2025

As expected, there were a bunch of new privacy features at WWDC 2025, mostly for iOS 26. Some of them will likely require some extra work on your part, such as the Declare Age Range API, and possibly some of the fingerprinting and tracking protections.

Others, like AAK updates, will only matter if the wider ecosystem of ad networks decides they are important enough to support.