After researching about 400 of its direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce customers, Bank of America is convinced that AppLovin is “likely to become a required channel in calendar year 2026.”
Analyst Omar Dessouky upped his price target on the ad tech company to $860 — the highest on Wall Street, per analysts polled by Bloomberg — from $580.
During AppLovin’s most recent earnings call, CEO Adam Foroughi said the real “fun” starts in Q4 (today!), as the company opens its self-service ad portal on a referral basis to onboard new advertisers in a bid to boost its footprint in areas outside of gaming. A full-scale launch of this portal is planned for the first half of 2026.
Dessouky thinks the company will get 4,000 large advertisers, primarily in the apparel, beauty & fitness, home & garden, and health & wellness industries, through this new endeavor.
“Once launched, we expect eCommerce ad targeting models to improve rapidly because (1) of the high degree of intent captured via 30-60 second ads, (2) the high differentiation within categories leads to high signal capture,” he wrote.
