TapSense Research: Public vs. Private Mobile Ad Exchange Comparison. By Gregory Kennedy and Ash Kumar

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1 TapSense Research: Public vs. Private Mobile Ad Exchange Comparison By Gregory Kennedy and Ash Kumar

2 Introduction There is still much confusion when it comes to the differences between public real-time bidding (RTB) and private RTB in mobile. Historically, RTB exchanges such as Google AdX have been viewed as a sub-optimal monetization solution for publishers. On the web, poor public RTB implementations, combined with a massive volume of undifferentiated inventory, resulted in downward pricing pressure on publishers CPMs. The private model used by large publishers such as ebay, News Corp, and others, has emerged as a solution to help mitigate these problems for premium publishers. We conducted this research to provide an in-depth analysis of how private and public RTB platforms perform, and to show the benefits of private RTB in mobile.

3 Research Findings TapSense private RTB monetizes significantly better than public RTB across all markets. TapSense ecpms are nearly five times public RTB in some markets. TapSense private RTB users tend to be more engaged, with CTRs nearly triple that of public RTB in some markets, and higher CTRs across all markets. In the U.S., which is a highly competitive market, TapSense private RTB ecpms was 213% greater than public RTB. TapSense private RTB monetization was extremely strong in Australia and Canada, with private RTB ecpms exceeding public RTB ecpms by 513% and 325%, respectively. Why TapSense Private Mobile RTB Monetizes Better than Public RTB Advertising performance is driven by two major factors: technology and inventory quality. Technology Mobile technology landscape is highly fragmented as the network speeds can vary a lot, mobile users might be distributed across 100s of countries and in-app SDKs need to be very reliable. Platforms that can perform core ad serving functions faster and better at large scale in this fragmented landscape than other platforms have a distinct advantage over competitors. Additionally, private RTB enables a premium 3

4 publisher to use first-party data in a controlled environment to increase monetization and competition from the buyers.. Inventory Quality High quality inventory simply performs better, and can be defined in many different ways. The definition of high quality varies for each advertiser. There are some fundamentals, however, that help determine inventory quality. Important factors include: a wide variety of highly engaged users at scale, ad placement to optimize the end user experience and a well implemented, low latency SDK to ensure highspeed delivery of ad creative. It is our conclusion that the private mobile RTB set-up drives significantly better performance because it is able to accelerate advantages from both technology and inventory to maximum capacity. This is because the private RTB technology provider works closely with publishers to put parameters in place that help maximize advantages in both areas. Methodology All data referring to private RTB is sourced from the TapSense platform, which provides private mobile RTB software to a variety of first-tier apps. Public RTB data was collected through TapSense research sourced from publicly available data. All data has been indexed to obfuscate the absolute numbers. This was done to ensure that third-party sources were not singled out, and to protect their customers from data leakage 4

5 that might violate a given platform s terms of service. TapSense platform data from April 2014 has been included in this document to help provide more insight into how the TapSense RTB platform performs. About the TapSense Private Mobile RTB Exchange The TapSense RTB exchange is used by mobile app publishers to manage advertising. The private RTB set-up allows publishers to choose the buyers and put parameters in place to control how buying works on their inventory. The platform supports a wide variety of ad formats such as IAB banners, full-screen interstitials, native ads, video and other innovative custom formats. In April 2014, the platform saw over 10 billion ad requests total, across all regions. Platform Stats Queries per Second (QPS) levels: 30K QPS RTB Spec: 2.1 Open RTB Auction Mode: Second Price Auction CTR range: 1.5% to 15.25% Inventory: Top 25 App Store Apps Platforms: Android and iosvt 5

6 TapSense Private RTB ecpms are 213% Higher than Public RTB in the U.S. TapSense private RTB ecpms in the U.S. are 213% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB ecpms on ios globally are 223% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB ecpms on Android globally are 197% higher than public RTB 6

7 TapSense Private RTB CTRs are 278% Higher than Public RTB in the U.S. TapSense private RTB CTRs in the U.S. are 278% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs on ios globally are 250% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs on Android globally are 336% higher than public RTB 7

8 Public vs. Private Mobile RTB Analysis: Top 5 Countries by ecpm United Kingdom TapSense private RTB ecpms in the U.K. are 122% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs in the U.K. are 185% higher than public RTB Canada TapSense private RTB ecpms in CA are 325% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs in CA are 318% higher than public RTB Australia TapSense private RTB ecpms in AU are 513% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs in AU are 179% higher than public RTB Germany TapSense private RTB ecpms in DE are 235% higher than public RTB TapSense private RTB CTRs in DE are 267% higher than public RTB 8

9 TapSense Private Exchange April 2014 Data Release Analysis 9

10 Major findings from the April data analysis are: iphone ecpms continue to be the highest, with the average iphone ecpm 111% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm Competition across the top Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) is strong, with the number one DSP s ecpm indexing 240% above the TapSense platform s overall average ecpm The average CPM of the Top 5 DSPs is 176% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm ipad CTRs index lower than all other platforms, but ecpms remain strong, at just 4% below the iphone ecpm index 10

11 TapSense Private Exchange April 2014 Data Release: ecpm Index The average iphone ecpm is 111% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm The average Android ecpm is 65% of the TapSense platform s overall ecpm 11

12 TapSense Private Exchange April 2014 Data Release: CTR Index The average iphone CTR is 112% higher than the TapSense platform s overall CTR The average Android CTR is 122% higher than TapSense platform s overall CTR 12

13 TapSense Private Exchange April 2014 Data Release: Demand-side Platform ecpm Index The highest DSP ecpm is 240% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm The fifth highest DSP ecpm is 140% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm The average of the Top 5 DSPs ecpm is 176% higher than the TapSense platform s overall ecpm 13