• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, December 1, 2015

Developers drive the mobile ad experience. After all, without apps to unlock their potential, mobile devices wouldn’t do much of anything, and we’d all still be talking about mobile Web banner ads.

ironSource, a specialist in mobile app distribution and promotion services, launched a new tool today called Fastest Growing Apps. Omer Kaplan, CMO of ironSource, stated that the tool is intended to help app developers track growth in the app market and identify what kinds of app categories and sub-categories are trending.

The data tool measures the growth of downloads in apps above 500,000 downloads in the Google PlayStore. As per a company statement, the algorithm that measures the growth rate of apps takes into account and excludes outliers that may skew results.

Based on data from the past quarter, games are the fastest-growing category in the app store.

Certain games have seen explosive growth, like Agar.io — which started out the quarter in the tool’s “5-10 million downloads range” group and grew to the “10-50M download range” group in August. Other games have been tied to highly anticipated releases, like Fallout Shelter, and Kabam’s Star Wars: Uprising.

Photography apps have managed to remain in the top five fastest-growing categories, mainly due to the release of several photo apps like B612, Facebook’s ‘Moments’ app, and Instagram’s Layout companion app.

ironSource recently merged with Supersonic, an in-game/in-app mobile ad company, and extended their offering to 1 billion devices.