Parents Wrapped 2025

Apps: Little Gamers

It’s no secret that parents need a few minutes for themselves, and you only have to walk into a family restaurant to see how 21st century quiet time is captured, with tablets and phones offering a temporary reprieve. 

We analyzed the top apps for the Parent persona (people who have children) in Audience Insights, and found that gaming apps dominated the charts. Fluvsies - A Fluff to Luv ranked #1 in 2025 with the parent’s audience over-indexing almost 32x vs. the general population of smartphone users. Coming in second - Sago Mini World: Kids Games, with 2.1% share of audience. Whether it was role playing, simulation, casual, adventure, or educational, games won for parents this year.

Similarly, games front-loaded the top app categories with six gaming categories in the top 10, ceding only to the Lifestyle, Graphics & Design, Shopping, and Education categories. 

In a break from games, parents seem to be utilizing AI more and more with the top growing apps for this audience leaning into LLMs. Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity took three of the top ten rankings, growing +17.6%, 12.2%, and +.8%, respectively in 2025. As anyone with a child can tell you, the manual on how to raise them is missing key instructions. With the growing adoption of AI, parents can now get immediate answers to important questions on health, education, product recommendations, and child development.

Digital Advertising: Future Shoppers

One of the most sought after demographics for advertisers - you guessed it - parents. Parents need things - small things, big things, things that make noise, warm things, cold things, things to carry other things - and advertisers know it.

Within the Family and Parenting Shopping category, toys made up 7 of the top 10 individual advertisers in 2025 with The Lego Group accounting for 28% of total spend. The large shopping brands, Target, Walmart, and Amazon combined for 27% of ad spend for the year.

Breaking the category down further, the Toys and Games sub-category accounted for a staggering 61.2% of ad spend in 2025, while the Maternity & Nursing and Baby Products subcategories combined for 12.1% of total ad spend.

And where did these advertisers spend? Publisher spend share favored Meta platforms with Facebook and Instagram accounting for 71.4% of category ad spend, with YouTube coming in 3rd at 8.5% spend share. 

“Stay Where I Can See You” - Where are Parents seeing Ads?

With the amount of ad spend being targeted at parents, knowing which channels the audience is frequenting most is key to ROAS, and ROI. In 2025 the Parents audience viewed 34.2% of ad impressions on Facebook, and a combined 51.8% on Meta platforms, when you add Instagram. YouTube accounted for the second largest impression share with 21.2%, with Pinterest and TikTok each earning just over 9%. 

Accounting for the previous chart, showing YouTube as the 3rd. ranked channel for publisher spend, advertisers might consider changing their strategy to shift spend away from instagram in favor of YouTube. 

That’s a Wrap on 2025

The days are long and the years are short - or so the saying goes for parents. 2025 was clearly defined by game apps and toys advertising, possibly providing much needed diversion for parents trying to keep their young ones occupied and entertained. And, as AI continues to evolve, apps like ChatGPT and Gemini could very well jump into the top spots in 2026 and beyond. 

So, to all the parents out there, our unsolicited parental advice - no notes. You’re doing great! And, to all the advertisers hoping to gain impression and market share within the Parents persona, Sensor Tower’s audience and mobile app insights might just give you a leg up on your competitors ad strategies, and what channels will put your brand top of mind.

Click below for a demo.