Q4 brings peak holiday ad spend, followed by an inevitable Q1 budget cooldown. However, our data from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 shows this wasn’t a predictable, across-the-board decline. While iOS took the expected hit, with European markets dropping up to 20%, Android revealed growth in the US and Japan. In our latest eCPM report, we break down the numbers behind the Q1 reset. To review the preceding trends, we recommend revisiting our Q3 vs Q4 2025 report.
Mobile apps eCPM performance Q4 2025 vs Q1 2026
Our ongoing analysis of eCPM (Effective Cost Per Mille) fluctuations within the Bidlogic network across different platforms, ad formats, and regions now focuses on the Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 transition. This period is historically defined by a strategic reset in the advertising ecosystem, visible in our data maps presented below:
The overall data for this period indicates a prevalent downward trend across most formats and regions. The sharpest declines were concentrated in the United Kingdom, specifically within the Android Banner category, which fell by -29.79%. Overall, declines across the study ranged from single digits to nearly -30%.
Conversely, growth instances were far less frequent, appearing in only 6 of the 30 data points studied. These increases were primarily concentrated in the USA and Japan, with the highest growth recorded in the USA, Rewarded Video on Android at +9.93%.
When it comes to iOS Interstitials, the post-holiday slump is evident, with uniform declines across all analyzed regions. iOS Rewarded Video formats saw a similar decline across almost all countries, ranging from -2.84% in the USA to -9.01% in Japan, though India stopped the trend with a 3.53% growth. Among all studied ad formats, Banners showed a steep downward trend on iOS, dropping sharply in the UK (-20.54%) and India (-16.86%), while Japan was the sole region to see slight growth of 1.78%.
Meanwhile, Android showed a more mixed picture despite the overarching Q1 budget cool-down. While many regions faced expected declines, there were notable gains, suggesting advertiser spend hasn’t halted entirely. The results for Android Rewarded Video were diverse, with the USA leading at a solid growth rate of 9.93% and Japan seeing an increase of 2.88%. In contrast, regions like India and the UK experienced declines of 9.51% and 7.29%, respectively. In the case of Interstitials, the USA achieved a slight growth of 2.25%, whereas other regions, including Germany and the UK, experienced double-digit declines. As for Banners, the drop in post-holiday ad spend was most pronounced, with the UK (-29.79%), Germany (-27.32%), and the USA (-17.74%) seeing steep declines, leaving Japan as the only country to experience a slight growth (3.62%).
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