• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 12, 2018

App marketing startup AppLovin just launched a media division to help mobile developers to publish and promote their apps. 

The publishing studio, Lion Studios, unofficially launched this part March.

Since then, AppLovin credits the division with driving hundreds of millions of app downloads for gaming apps, such as Love Balls, Weave the Line, Draw In, and Cash, Inc. In particular, Love Balls, a puzzle game, has so far been downloaded over 100 million times.

The startup has appointed Rafael Vivas to serve as president of Lion Studios, and Kyler Murlas to head of up operations.

Founded in 2012, AppLovin caters to both small and large developers with services to help them scale their offerings.

With the help of larger customers, like Amazon, Machine Zone and Zynga, AppLovin is on track to hit a $1 billion run rate in the next year, according to a company spokesperson. 

Apps are now big business. By 2021, total consumer app spending will reach $139 billion, according to an App Annie forecast.

Partly driving spending is the rate at which new apps are flooding the market.