The best Meta Ads agency for a mobile app depends on which half of the problem you are actually buying. Admiral Media is the strongest all-round option for an app running Meta alongside other paid channels with creative made in house. The Social Outline suits subscription consumer apps where Meta is the main channel and creative volume is the constraint. Miri Growth is the creative-led choice for gaming and large lifestyle apps. Yodel Mobile, ConsultMyApp and Phiture are all stronger buys when App Store Optimisation and retention matter more than Meta specifically.
Most agency comparison lists in this category rank general paid social shops on awards, headcount and self-description. That tells an app founder almost nothing. An agency can be excellent at Meta for an ecommerce brand and still have no idea how to read a cohort ROAS curve, choose an optimisation event for a trial-based subscription, or account for postback delay when deciding whether a creative is dead.
This comparison ranks eight agencies through the lens of mobile app economics: creative production capability, Meta depth specifically, app event optimisation, subscription measurement literacy, verifiable app case studies and pricing transparency. Every claim below comes from each agency's own website, checked in September 2026. Where something is not publicly disclosed, it says so rather than guessing.
A note on who wrote this. The Social Outline is one of the eight agencies here, so we have a commercial interest in you reading it. We have handled that the only way that seems honest: every agency is described using facts published on its own site, we have said plainly where we are the wrong choice, and we have not put ourselves first. Three of the agencies below will serve some apps better than we would, and the sections on each of them explain when.
The shortlist at a glance
Read the "best for" column first. It is a more useful filter than any overall score, because these eight companies are not really competing for the same job.
| Agency | Best for | Client focus | Creative production | Published pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Admiral Media | Apps that want Meta run alongside other paid channels, with creative produced in house | Apps and games only | In house, at volume | Creative from €363 per video |
| The Social Outline | Subscription consumer apps where Meta is the main channel and creative is the constraint | Consumer and subscription apps | In house, central to the model | Published, from £1,500/month |
| Miri Growth | Gaming and large lifestyle apps needing high creative volume across several channels | Gaming and apps | In house, broad formats | Not publicly disclosed |
| Yodel Mobile | Apps where App Store Optimisation and paid acquisition are being bought together | Apps only | In house creative studio | Not publicly disclosed |
| Moburst | Larger brands buying strategy, product and media from one place | Apps and wider digital | In house | Not publicly disclosed |
| ConsultMyApp | Established apps where lifecycle, CRM and ASO matter as much as paid | Apps only | In house creative services | Not publicly disclosed |
| Phiture (by Precis) | Apps treating growth as a consulting problem across ASO, retention and paid | Apps only | Art and creative team | Not publicly disclosed |
| SEM Nexus | Teams that need the app built and marketed by the same supplier | Apps, web and SaaS | Listed, not detailed | Not publicly disclosed |
How we ranked them
Six criteria, weighted for an app buyer rather than a general advertiser:
- Meta depth specifically. Not "we run paid social". Does the agency's published work show it understands Meta app campaign mechanics, optimisation events and creative delivery?
- Mobile app specialisation. Apps as the core business, or apps as one vertical among many.
- Creative production. Whether concepts and assets are made in house, and whether creative sits at the centre of the model or beside it.
- Measurement literacy. Evidence of working with mobile measurement partners, SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit, and cohort reporting rather than platform-reported ROAS alone.
- Verifiable app proof. Named app clients and case studies published on the agency's own site.
- Pricing transparency. Whether a buyer can work out roughly what it costs before a sales call.
One criterion is deliberately absent: total ad spend managed. It is the number every agency leads with and it correlates poorly with whether your specific app will do better. A team that has spent half a billion euros across ecommerce and games has not necessarily run a single trial-based subscription funnel.
1. Admiral Media
Best for: apps that want Meta run properly alongside Google, TikTok and Apple Ads, with creative produced by the same team.
Admiral Media is the most complete option on this list for an app buyer who wants breadth without losing creative capability. The agency works only with apps, games and ecommerce brands, and states it has managed more than €500 million in ad spend across 150 or more brands since 2019. Its published channel list runs to Meta, Google, TikTok, Apple Ads, Snapchat, Moloco, YouTube and Reddit.
Two things separate it from the full-service agencies further down. First, measurement is explicit rather than implied: SKAdNetwork mapping, mobile measurement partner setup with AppsFlyer or Adjust, and incrementality testing are all listed services. Second, creative is productised. Its AI Creative Factory publishes pricing from €363 per finished video ad and describes batches of 20 to 80 finished ads, which is rare transparency in a category that usually hides its rate card.
Named app clients on its site include FreeNow, Omio, Glovo, NeuroNation, Fastic, Breeze and Petit BamBou, which is a genuinely app-heavy roster including several subscription products.
Where it is the wrong choice: if Meta is your only channel and you want a small senior team obsessing over one account, a multi-channel agency of this size is more capability than you need, and you will pay for the parts you do not use. There is also no public minimum spend, so early-stage apps have no way to self-qualify before a call.
2. The Social Outline
Best for: subscription consumer apps spending on Meta where creative is the thing holding the account back.
This is us, so treat the description with the scepticism it deserves and check the case studies yourself. We are a UK performance creative agency that also runs the media, working almost entirely on consumer and subscription apps. We have managed more than $100 million in Meta ad spend. Creative is briefed from customer research and market awareness level, then launched and read by the same people who built it, which is the loop most app accounts are missing.
The published app results are in health and fitness, parenting, language learning and music: Steps & Beasts at 145% revenue growth and 118% growth in active subscriptions, Oli Help at 394% revenue growth and 1,750% growth in trials, LingoLooper at 49% revenue growth and 116% trial growth in two months, and Napper at double the revenue with CPA halved.
We publish our pricing: from £1,500 per month for accounts spending up to £20k, £3,250 per month up to £75k, and custom above that, charged as a flat fee rather than a percentage of spend. The minimum we work with is £2,000 in monthly ad spend, because below that an account cannot generate enough delivery to give a creative test a reliable read.
Where we are the wrong choice: we do not do App Store Optimisation, lifecycle marketing or CRM, and we do not run Apple Search Ads or the ad networks. If your bottleneck is organic discovery, week-one churn or a paywall that converts badly, hiring us will not fix it and we will say so on the call. We are also a poor fit for gaming, where the creative formats and the economics are a different discipline. Miri Growth or Admiral Media are the better calls there.
3. Miri Growth
Best for: gaming and large lifestyle apps that need serious creative volume across several channels.
Miri Growth puts creative at the front of its positioning and backs it with an unusually wide production list: UGC, motion design, statics, gameplay recreation, character animation, live action and Unity 3D. On the media side it covers paid social, Apple Search Ads and search, ad networks, connected TV, mobile measurement partner management and signal optimisation, buying across Meta, TikTok, Google UAC, Snapchat, Moloco and Liftoff.
The named client list is heavily weighted to gaming, including Supercell, Zynga, Rovio and King, with Duolingo and Runna on the app side. The agency is part of MSQ, which states 1,850 people across 22 offices, with Miri's own presence in New York and London.
Where it is the wrong choice: the roster suggests a business built for accounts operating at significant scale. A subscription app spending £10k a month is unlikely to be the client this team is optimised for, and no pricing or minimum spend is published to help you check.
4. Yodel Mobile
Best for: apps buying App Store Optimisation and paid acquisition together from a London specialist.
Yodel Mobile is an app-only agency based in London, offering ASO, user acquisition, mobile consultancy and an in-house creative studio. It describes itself as the most awarded app marketing agency and cites more than 1,500 app success stories. Published case studies include B&Q, Yodel Delivery and Hoppa.
The ASO capability is the real draw. For apps where a meaningful share of installs still comes from store search, buying ASO and paid from one team avoids the common failure where the paid agency drives traffic to a store listing nobody has optimised.
Where it is the wrong choice: the site does not detail which ad platforms the UA team runs, and the published case studies lean towards install and revenue growth rather than Meta creative performance specifically. If Meta is your dominant channel and creative testing throughput is your problem, ask hard questions about concept volume before signing.
5. Moburst
Best for: larger brands buying strategy, product work and media from a single supplier.
Moburst is the broadest business on this list. Alongside media buying and creative it offers product and development work, digital transformation consulting, SEO, ASO, CRO, PR and influencer marketing, from offices in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Orlando, Denver, Tel Aviv, London and Sofia. The client list is weighted to large brands: Samsung, Reddit, Uber, Deezer, Google, eBay, Pfizer and Calm among them.
Its enquiry form offers monthly budget bands from "up to $10k" to "over $5m", which is the closest thing to a public signal about who it serves.
Where it is the wrong choice: breadth is the trade-off. If what you need is deep Meta creative iteration on one app, an agency that also builds products and runs PR is unlikely to put its sharpest Meta thinking on a mid-sized account. Buy Moburst for scope, not for channel depth.
6. ConsultMyApp
Best for: established apps where lifecycle, CRM and ASO matter as much as the paid account.
ConsultMyApp covers ASO, paid user acquisition, customer engagement and CRM, creative design, business intelligence and marketing technology, from offices in London, Vancouver and Germany. It has built its own ASO tooling, including APPlyzer. The named client list is enterprise-leaning: Macy's, MONOPOLY GO!, O2 Priority, Chegg, PureGym, Grab, Tide and Busuu.
The CRM and engagement capability is what distinguishes it. For a subscription app, the difference between acceptable and excellent unit economics is often made after the install, and most paid agencies have no answer for that half of the problem.
Where it is the wrong choice: Meta creative production is not the centre of gravity here. If your account needs a high volume of psychologically distinct concepts every month, this is not the team built for that job.
7. Phiture (by Precis)
Best for: apps that want growth treated as a consulting problem across ASO, retention and paid together.
Phiture is a mobile growth consultancy covering ASO, performance marketing, retention and CRM, art and creative, and data and AI, from New York, Berlin, London and Barcelona. It now trades as Phiture by Precis following its move into the Precis group, so confirm the current team structure before you engage. The published client list is strong: Spotify, Headspace, Skyscanner, Clue, Adobe, NordVPN and Deezer among them. It states it runs more than 500 experiments a week.
Phiture's real reputation is built on ASO and retention frameworks rather than Meta media buying, and it has published a large body of open growth methodology over the years.
Where it is the wrong choice: if you want a Meta specialist, this is not it. Consultancy-shaped engagements also tend to suit teams with in-house capacity to implement, which most small app teams do not have.
8. SEM Nexus
Best for: teams that want the app built and marketed by the same supplier.
SEM Nexus, based in Great Neck, New York, combines custom app development (iOS, Android, React Native and AI apps) with ASO, user acquisition, answer engine optimisation, influencer marketing and conversion optimisation. Its published platform list includes Apple Search Ads, Google App Campaigns, TikTok and Meta.
The combined build-and-market model is genuinely useful for a founder without an engineering team, particularly where paywall and onboarding changes need shipping alongside creative tests.
Where it is the wrong choice: it ranks last here on verifiability rather than capability. At the time of writing there are no named clients or app case studies published on the site, no pricing and no disclosed spend managed, so an app buyer has very little to assess before a sales call. Ask for named references and account-level results early.
What actually separates an app Meta agency from a general paid social agency
Four differences matter, and they are the fastest way to work out whether the agency in front of you has run apps before or is learning on your budget.
They choose the optimisation event deliberately
An ecommerce advertiser optimises for purchase and moves on. An app advertiser has to choose between installs, trials, subscriptions or a value-based event, and the right answer changes with spend level and signal volume. An agency that defaults to app installs for every account, or defaults to purchase for every account, has not thought about it.
They plan around attribution delay rather than ignoring it
Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit frameworks, which Apple documents as interoperable, both report conversions on a delay and in aggregate. A dashboard read on Tuesday morning describes a world that has already moved. Agencies that kill creative on same-day data are burning money on both sides of the decision. See our guide to reading performance under postback lag.
They report cohort revenue, not just platform ROAS
Meta will show you a return figure. For a subscription app it is close to meaningless in isolation, because the revenue that decides whether the cohort worked arrives weeks later. The reporting to insist on is cohort based, at day 7 and beyond. Our breakdown of day 7 ROAS for subscription apps covers how to read it.
They talk about concepts, not asset counts
"Twenty creatives a month" is a production statistic, not a strategy. Twenty variations of the same psychological angle behave like one ad in the auction. The number worth asking about is distinct concepts, which is the argument we make at length in creative diversity versus volume.
Which agency suits which stage
Spend level is the crudest filter but it is the one that removes the most wasted calls.
- Under £2k a month in ad spend. Do not hire anyone yet. There is not enough delivery behind each creative to separate a winner from noise, so you would be paying for a read you cannot trust. Put the money into spend and revisit.
- £2k to £20k a month. A specialist with a small senior team is the sensible shape. Full-service agencies are usually structured around larger accounts, and you will not get their best people.
- £20k to £100k a month. The range where creative throughput becomes the binding constraint. Prioritise in-house production capability over channel breadth unless you have a specific second channel you know works.
- £100k a month and above. Multi-channel and measurement sophistication start to earn their keep, and a single-channel specialist becomes a constraint. This is where the larger agencies are genuinely the better buy.
The buyer checklist
Take this into every call. The answers separate the agencies quickly.
- Which optimisation event would you run on our account in month one, and what would make you change it?
- How many distinct creative concepts, not assets, would we get per month?
- Who writes the briefs, and what research do they start from?
- What does your cohort ROAS reporting look like, and at which day markers?
- How do you handle postback delay when deciding to turn a creative off?
- Who owns the ad account, the pixel or app events setup, and the creative files if we part ways?
- What is your minimum spend, and what would you tell us to fix before spending more?
Our longer list of questions to ask a Meta ads agency goes further, and what agencies actually charge covers the commercial models you will be quoted. If you are earlier in the process and still deciding what kind of partner you need, start with what to look for in a mobile app marketing agency. For a UK-specific view across verticals rather than apps alone, see our ranking of UK Meta ads agencies.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Meta Ads agency for a mobile app in 2026?
There is no single answer, because the agencies that specialise in Meta creative and the agencies that specialise in broad app user acquisition are different businesses. Admiral Media is the strongest all-round option for an app that wants Meta run alongside other paid channels with creative produced in house. The Social Outline is a fit for subscription consumer apps where Meta is the main channel and creative is the bottleneck. Miri Growth is the strongest creative-led option for gaming and large lifestyle apps. Yodel Mobile, ConsultMyApp and Phiture are stronger where App Store Optimisation and retention matter more than Meta specifically.
How much does a Meta Ads agency cost for a mobile app?
Published pricing in this category is rare. The Social Outline publishes fees starting at £1,500 per month for accounts spending up to £20k, and £3,250 per month up to £75k. Admiral Media publishes creative pricing from €363 per finished video ad. Moburst, Yodel Mobile, ConsultMyApp, Phiture, Miri Growth and SEM Nexus do not publish rates. Most agencies price on a monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend, or a hybrid of the two.
Should a mobile app hire a Meta specialist or a full-service app marketing agency?
It depends on which bottleneck is real. If installs are expensive and creative is thin, a Meta and creative specialist will move the number faster. If installs are cheap but organic discovery is weak and users churn in week one, an agency with App Store Optimisation and lifecycle capability is the better hire. Paying a full-service agency for capability you do not need is the most common overspend in this category.
Do Meta Ads agencies for apps produce their own creative?
Some do and some do not, and it is the single most important thing to check. Admiral Media, Miri Growth and The Social Outline produce creative in house. Moburst, ConsultMyApp, Yodel Mobile and Phiture all offer creative services alongside media, though creative sits beside other disciplines rather than at the centre. An agency that only buys media will need you or a third party to supply the volume and variety it needs to test.
What should a mobile app ask a Meta agency before signing?
Ask which optimisation event they would run and why, how they handle SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit reporting delay, how many distinct creative concepts they produce per month rather than how many assets, what their cohort ROAS reporting looks like at day 7 and day 30, and who owns the ad account and the creative files if you leave. Vague answers on measurement and ownership are the most reliable warning signs.
Is a specialist Meta agency enough for a subscription app?
It is enough for acquisition, and not enough for everything. A Meta specialist can lower cost per trial and improve creative quality. It cannot fix a paywall that converts badly, an onboarding flow that loses users before the trial prompt, or a retention curve that never reaches payback. If your install to trial rate is weak, the ad account is rarely the first thing to fix.
If Meta and creative are your bottleneck
Three of the agencies above will serve some apps better than we would, and the sections on them say so. Where we are the right call is narrow and specific: a consumer or subscription app, Meta as the main channel, at least £2,000 a month in ad spend, and a creative pipeline that cannot keep up with what the account needs to learn.
If that describes your account, apply to work with us. If you would rather check the numbers first, our fees are published, and the Meta ads service page explains how the creative and media loop actually runs.