Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

In a mobile economy where app discovery is everything, how exactly does a company like Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) manage to be the critical connector between carriers, advertisers, and billions of devices? As a seasoned financial analyst, I see a business model that, despite a GAAP net loss of $92.1 million in fiscal year 2025, still generated a substantial $490.5 million in total revenue, proving its platform is defintely essential to the mobile ecosystem. You have to understand that this firm's mission is to provide frictionless user acquisition and monetization solutions, and its core value proposition-getting apps pre-installed and discovered-is what drives the $341.6 million in revenue from its On Device Solutions segment. So, are you positioning your portfolio or strategy to capitalize on the shift from traditional ad-tech to this kind of on-device distribution power?

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) History

You're looking for the foundational story of Digital Turbine, Inc., and honestly, it's less a straight line and more a series of strategic pivots. The company you see today, a mobile growth platform, is the result of a deliberate, decade-long transformation built on key acquisitions and a shift in leadership. It's a classic public market evolution story.

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Founding Timeline

Year established

The corporate lineage traces back to 1998 with the founding of Mandalay Media, Inc. The pivotal shift toward the current mobile strategy, however, began in 2014.

Original location

While the company's roots are spread due to its complex history of mergers, its current corporate headquarters is established in Austin, Texas.

Founding team members

The founders of the original entity, Mandalay Media, Inc., are less relevant to the modern business model. The key figure who drove the company's pivot and subsequent growth is Bill Stone, who became Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2014.

Initial capital/funding

The funding history is complex, involving reverse mergers and operating as a publicly traded company (APPS). One of the later, significant funding events was a Post-IPO round in September 2016, raising $16 million.

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Evolution Milestones

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory was fundamentally reshaped by three major phases, moving it from a small mobile software provider to a global mobile growth platform.

• The 2014 Leadership and Strategy Shift: Bill Stone taking the helm and the immediate acquisition of Appia was the first major step. This focused the entire business on the mobile ecosystem and device-level integration, which is the core differentiator today.
• The 2021 Ad Tech Consolidation: The bold, simultaneous acquisitions of AdColony, Fyber, and Appreciate for over $1 billion was a massive bet. It instantly added programmatic advertising, monetization, and user acquisition capabilities, creating a complete App Growth Platform.
• The 2024/2025 Efficiency and Expansion Drive: Facing market headwinds, the company initiated a transformation program in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, targeting more than $25 million in annual cash expense savings. This focus on disciplined execution and efficiency is defintely a new phase. Plus, the late 2024 acquisition of ONE Store International shows a clear commitment to globalizing alternative app distribution.

To understand what drives the business now, you should look at the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS).

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Ownership Structure

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s governance is dominated by institutional money, which holds a clear majority stake, meaning the company's strategic direction is heavily influenced by large fund managers like BlackRock and Vanguard. This structure is typical for a growth-oriented, publicly traded technology company, but it also makes the stock price highly sensitive to institutional trading actions.

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Current Status

Digital Turbine, Inc. trades publicly on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol APPS, confirming its status as a publicly-held entity. As of November 2025, the company has a market capitalization of roughly $633.64 million, placing it in the small-cap technology space. This size means it often flies under the radar of the largest-cap-focused mutual funds, but it's a core holding for many specialized growth and small-cap funds. The stock's high institutional ownership suggests professional investors have validated the business model, but it also creates a risk: if a few major holders decide to sell, the stock can drop fast.

You need to pay attention to those 13F filings.

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Ownership Breakdown

The ownership breakdown is heavily skewed toward institutional investors, which is the group that ultimately holds the most power over board decisions and strategic votes. This collective control by major funds is a critical factor in understanding the stock's volatility and long-term stability.

Digital Turbine, Inc.'s Leadership

The company is steered by a management team with a blend of long-standing leadership and recent, strategic financial appointments. CEO Bill Stone has been at the helm since October 2014, providing over a decade of consistent, long-term vision. That kind of tenure is defintely a stabilizing force in the fast-moving ad-tech world.

The leadership team is actively engaging the investment community, with CEO Bill Stone and CFO Steve Lasher scheduled to host investor meetings throughout November 2025. This suggests a clear focus on communicating strategy and financial health to the market following the recent Fiscal 2026 Second Quarter Financial Results. For a deeper look at the company's core values, check out Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS).

Key executives shaping the organization's strategy include:

• Bill Stone: Chief Executive Officer (CEO), appointed in 2014.
• Stephen Lasher: Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), who joined the team to oversee worldwide financial operations.
• Senthil Kumaran: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), responsible for product, technology, and operations.
• Angeline Tucker: Chief People Officer, leading all global HR functions.
• Michael Akkerman: Leads global go-to-market efforts, including sales and partnerships.

The next action for you is simple: Finance should monitor the next 13F filings to see if any top institutional holder shifts their position by more than 10%.

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Mission and Values

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) exists to simplify the mobile advertising ecosystem, empowering its partners to supercharge user acquisition and monetization, which is a clear reflection of the company's core values of hustle and accountability.

Digital Turbine's Core Purpose

The company's purpose extends beyond simply selling ads; it is about creating a more efficient, independent mobile growth and monetization platform that benefits telcos, advertisers, and publishers equally. This focus on providing a better alternative for distribution and monetization is what drove the full fiscal year 2025 revenue to a substantial $490.5 million.

Official Mission Statement

While a single, formal mission statement is not always publicly declared in the same way for every tech company, Digital Turbine's stated purpose is to empower superior mobile consumer experiences and results for the world's leading telcos, advertisers, and publishers. Their end-to-end platform uniquely simplifies its partners' abilities to achieve three key goals:

• Supercharge awareness and acquisition.
• Optimize monetization across devices.
• Connect partners with more consumers, in more ways.

This mission is defintely action-oriented, focusing on tangible results for their global partners.

Vision Statement

Digital Turbine's vision is to change the mobile advertising landscape by building the leading independent growth and monetization platform that levels the playing field for all participants-advertisers, publishers, operators, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). They aim to use on-device data to catalyze ad experiences that deliver superior economics. This commitment to innovation and global scale is what allows them to maintain an on-device footprint of over 800 million devices.

Digital Turbine Slogan/Tagline

The company's most prominent tagline is a succinct summary of their market impact:

• Igniting the App Economy.

This slogan is backed by a culture defined by six core values, which act as the operational DNA for the Austin, Texas-headquartered company and its global teams. For example, the value of 'Accountable' means taking ownership of responsibilities, which is essential when delivering on a Q4 fiscal 2025 Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $20.5 million.

• Hustle: Find a Way, seeking creative solutions to get the job done.
• Global: Open to New Ways, embracing diverse perspectives.
• Authenticity: Be Your Way, bringing your true self to work.
• Accountable: Own Your Way, taking ownership of responsibilities.
• Freedom: Work Your Way, supporting a flexible environment.
• Laugh: Enjoy Your Way, making sure to celebrate wins.

These values show a startup mindset within a fast-growing public company. If you want to see who is buying into this vision, check out Exploring Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) How It Works

Digital Turbine operates a mobile growth platform that acts as a critical intermediary, embedding itself directly onto mobile devices to facilitate app discovery and monetization for its partners.

The company essentially creates a two-sided marketplace: it helps mobile carriers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) monetize their devices, and it helps advertisers and app developers acquire users and generate revenue through highly targeted placements.

Digital Turbine's Product/Service Portfolio

Digital Turbine's Operational Framework

The company's operational framework centers on leveraging its unique on-device presence to drive a high-value data loop, which is then monetized across its two main segments. For fiscal year 2025, the ODS segment generated $341.6 million in revenue, while the AGP segment contributed $153.2 million.

Here's the quick math: ODS represents roughly 70% of the total fiscal 2025 revenue of $490.5 million, making it the primary revenue engine. The focus is on operational efficiency, which led to a non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $72.3 million for the full fiscal year 2025.

• Device Integration: Secure pre-installation agreements with carriers and OEMs like T-Mobile US and Motorola to embed the platform directly onto new devices, giving Digital Turbine access to users from the moment they power on their phone.
• Data and Targeting: Collect anonymized first-party data from device usage and carrier signals-like usage patterns-to power its machine learning platform, DTiQ, for superior ad targeting and predictive ad placements.
• Value Creation: The platform delivers targeted app recommendations (Dynamic Installs) to consumers, which drives high-quality user acquisition for advertisers, and in turn, generates revenue for the carriers/OEMs and Digital Turbine.
• Global Expansion: Continuously expanding its device footprint, with international ODS revenue increasing by 80% year-over-year in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, showing a defintely strong push outside the US.

You can read more about the company's core principles here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS).

Digital Turbine's Strategic Advantages

Digital Turbine's primary advantage is its direct, non-skippable access to the consumer via the device, which bypasses many of the privacy and discovery hurdles faced by competitors operating solely in-app or on the mobile web.

• On-Device Moat: Exclusive, deep-level integration with major mobile carriers and OEMs provides a unique distribution channel that competitors cannot easily replicate.
• AI-Driven Precision: Proprietary use of carrier and device data, enhanced by AI/ML, allows for hyper-targeted campaigns with engagement rates estimated to be 20-30% higher than generic ad networks.
• First-Party Data Edge: The platform's ability to utilize first-party data (DT Ignite graph) is a significant advantage in a market increasingly restricted by new privacy regulations and the deprecation of third-party cookies.
• End-to-End Platform: The combination of ODS (distribution) and AGP (monetization) creates a closed loop that controls both user acquisition and in-app advertising, offering a full-funnel solution to advertisers.

What this estimate hides is the ongoing competition from major tech ecosystems, still a central risk, but the company's strategic focus on AI and ML is a clear action to mitigate this.

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) How It Makes Money

Digital Turbine generates its revenue primarily by acting as a crucial intermediary between mobile advertisers and the world's largest mobile carriers and device manufacturers, monetizing the mobile experience from the moment a user powers on a new device.

The company essentially has two core revenue engines: pre-installing apps and content directly onto smartphones (On Device Solutions) and running a massive advertising marketplace for app developers and brands (App Growth Platform).

Digital Turbine's Revenue Breakdown

In the fiscal year 2025 (FY2025), which ended March 31, 2025, Digital Turbine generated total revenue of $490.5 million, a decrease of approximately 10% from the prior year, reflecting industry headwinds and a strategic shift toward profit optimization.

The revenue streams are segmented, with On Device Solutions (ODS) being the clear majority contributor, while the App Growth Platform (AGP) faced significant market pressures throughout the year.

Here's the quick math: ODS contributed $341.6 million in revenue, and AGP contributed $153.2 million for the full fiscal year 2025.

Business Economics

The core economic engine for Digital Turbine is the high-margin, sticky nature of its On Device Solutions (ODS) business, which involves revenue-sharing agreements with mobile carriers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like Samsung and T-Mobile.

• ODS Pricing Model: This is primarily a revenue-share model on a per-device basis, often referred to as Revenue Per Device (RPD). The company gets paid when a user engages with a pre-loaded app, a dynamic folder, or a recommendation widget (Ignite). International RPD saw increases of over 100% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of FY2025, a great sign.
• App Growth Platform (AGP) Model: This side operates as a traditional advertising technology (ad-tech) platform, utilizing real-time bidding (RTB) and Cost Per Install (CPI) models to connect advertisers with app inventory across its network. Headwinds in the broader ad-tech market, particularly in the legacy exchange businesses, led to a revenue decline in this segment during the fiscal year.
• Profitability Focus: The push for operational efficiency is defintely paying off. Non-GAAP Gross Margin expanded to 48% in the fourth quarter of FY2025, up from 46% in the prior year period, driven by product mix changes in the ODS segment. That margin expansion is the key to their turnaround story.

The company is actively integrating first-party data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance its machine learning platforms, which directly improves conversion rates for advertisers and thus increases the value of its ad inventory. This is a necessary move to counter the industry-wide privacy changes.

Digital Turbine's Financial Performance

While the top-line revenue was down for the full fiscal year 2025, the focus on cost control and margin improvement drove significant gains in adjusted profitability, which is what you should be watching.

• Adjusted EBITDA: Non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA for the full fiscal year 2025 was $72.3 million, compared to $92.4 million in FY2024. While lower year-over-year, the fourth quarter saw a strong 66% year-over-year increase to $20.5 million, signaling momentum toward the end of the fiscal year.
• Net Loss: The GAAP Net Loss for FY2025 was $92.1 million, a substantial improvement from the $420.4 million loss in FY2024, which included a large non-cash goodwill impairment charge.
• Adjusted Net Income: Non-GAAP Adjusted Net Income for the year was $36.8 million, or $0.35 per share. This metric, which strips out non-cash expenses like stock-based compensation, shows the underlying business is profitable.
• Cash Flow: The company generated positive Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow of $5.5 million in the fourth quarter of FY2025, a critical sign of financial health and operational discipline.

The most recent guidance for fiscal year 2026 anticipates continued momentum, with revenue expected to be between $515 million and $525 million and Non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA between $85 million and $90 million. You can dive deeper into the ownership dynamics driving this turnaround by Exploring Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Market Position & Future Outlook

Digital Turbine, Inc. is currently navigating a pivotal turnaround, shifting from a challenging period to a story of rebounding growth, largely driven by international expansion and a focus on proprietary AI tools. After reporting full fiscal year 2025 revenue of $490.5 million, the company has issued raised guidance for fiscal year 2026, projecting revenue between $540 million and $550 million, signaling management's confidence in their strategic pivot.

The core of the strategy is leveraging its unique On Device Solutions (ODS) channel-pre-installing apps and ads directly on smartphones-while simultaneously stabilizing and enhancing its App Growth Platform (AGP) business with machine learning. You can defintely see the operational leverage kicking in, with Q2 FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA surging 78% year-over-year to $27.2 million.

Competitive Landscape

In the vast, fragmented mobile advertising world, Digital Turbine's market share appears small, but that figure hides its strategic control over the on-device distribution channel. The company's primary competitors are the massive, diversified tech platforms, the so-called 'walled gardens,' which command the bulk of the market. Here's how the company stacks up in the broader mobile-advertising market as of 2025.

Opportunities & Challenges

The near-term trajectory for Digital Turbine is a clear map of high-potential growth drivers balanced against persistent structural risks inherent in the ad-tech sector. The company's unique position with carriers is a huge asset, but it also means constant negotiation with powerful partners. Exploring Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Industry Position

Digital Turbine holds a specialized, defensible niche, not a broad market share. Its value proposition is its direct, pre-installed access to the mobile user base via its deep partnerships with mobile network operators (MNOs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This is a channel that the larger ad-tech players simply cannot replicate easily.

The company is positioned as an essential middle-layer for mobile app discovery and monetization, particularly in emerging international markets where its ODS business is seeing significant tailwinds.

• ODS Moat: The On Device Solutions segment, which generated $341.6 million in FY2025 revenue, remains the core competitive moat.
• Margin Rebound: The focus on cost discipline and AI-driven optimization is translating to margin expansion, with adjusted EBITDA for Q2 FY2026 hitting a 19.4% margin.
• Valuation Signal: With a forward Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio around 18x as of November 2025, the stock trades at a discount to the broader software industry average of 28x, suggesting the market sees potential in the turnaround story but still discounts the execution risk.

The immediate action for you is to monitor the Q3 FY2026 results for sustained international growth and margin improvement-that's the real proof point.