Thriving in the Mobile App Ecosystem Fyber s 2014 Guide to Smarter Ad Monetization
Dear Reader, At Fyber, we like to compare the app economy to the Wild West. The industry is full of opportunity. With the recent influx of ad tech companies ad networks, analytics platforms, supply side platforms mobile app monetization has become very lucrative, but also harder to navigate. That s why Fyber s mission is to empower developers to monetize their apps in the smartest (and easiest) way possible. Thriving in the Mobile App Ecosystem is your guide to building a better ad monetization strategy. This whitepaper answers your most pressing questions on everything from ad network mediation to ecpm optimization and essential dashboard controls. We hope you find this handbook useful as you embark on your ad monetization journey. Sincerely, Janis Zech Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Fyber 2
Table of Contents 04 Choosing Your Mobile Supply Side Platform 05 Your 5 Most Pressing Mediation Questions, Answered 06 Optimization 2.0: Raising ecpm with Fyber s Predictive Algorithm 07 Taking Control: Fyber s Ad Monetization Dashboard 08 About Fyber 3
How to Choose a Mobile Supply-Side Platform Supply side platforms (SSP) have one mission: to help developers manage their ad inventory and optimize revenue. Today, there are many SSPs from which developers can choose. Here is Fyber s checklist of the 6 most important features to look for when you re selecting your mobile SSP: 1. Single Integration Go with a single, unified SDK so that you can avoid the nightmare of integrating multiple ad network partners. If you re migrating from other monetization platforms, this is essential so you don t have to spend valuable engineering and QA resources integrating, testing and servicing multiple SDKs for each revenue source. 2. Maintain Your Direct Ad Network Agreements Every mediation product should allow you to foster direct relationships and contractual agreements with leading ad networks (that is, after all, the definition of ad network mediation). 3. Flexibility With Ad Formats Choose a solution that offers multiple ad formats to achieve a more sophisticated monetization strategy. At Fyber, we re focused on helping freemium app developers drive the best performance from their strategy; so, based on their feedback, we have built our supply side stack to support rich media and video Interstitial Ads, Offer Walls, and high-engagement Rewarded Video Ads. 4. Unified Dashboard To best execute your ad monetization strategy, you will want a centralized and unified dashboard, which gives you a clear overview of all your ad revenues, in addition to actionable insights to manage and optimize your revenue sources. 5. Strong Yield Optimization Select an open platform that provides you with a range of monetization products. Our team took this to heart and made sure that our platform was built to provide both a robust ad marketplace and a strong mediation platform. You ll also want an automated option, like our platform s Autopilot, for driving the highest yield optimization from your mediated ad networks, DSPs, clients direct and house ads. 6. Reliable & Scalable Architecture Trusting a supply side platform to manage all of your sources of ad revenue requires not only a scalable infrastructure, but even more importantly, a reliable infrastructure. You should be able to confidently serve billions of impressions without any risk of down time. Want to learn more about our mobile Supply-Side Platform? Contact Us developers@fyber.com App Developers Ad Formats Platform Products Demand Partners Communication Music Gaming Productivity Utilities Non-Rewarded Interstitials Static, Video, Rich Media Rewarded Offer Wall Rewarded Video Analytics & Insights Developer Tools Fig. 1: Fyber s Open Ad Monetization Platform at a glance. Optimization Mediation Ad Marketplace Ad Networks Video Networks Ad Exchanges Agencies Ad Networks Affiliate Networks Direct Advertisers 4
Answers to Your 5 Most Pressing Mediation Questions Ad monetization is successful when you re able to show your users an ad any time they encounter a placement regardless of the time of day or their geographic location. As any developer who s suffered from low fill rates knows, as your amount of ad inventory and in-app traffic increases, the more difficult it is for a single ad network to provide sufficient fill rates. Integrating several ad networks sounds promising, but integrating each ad network individually, and then managing each through a different dashboard, takes a lot of time and resources. The good news is that an innovative solution called ad network mediation is taking the industry by storm. 1. What is ad network mediation, and why should I use it? Ad network mediation is the industry s best method for seamlessly integrating, managing, and optimizing several ad networks in parallel, while maintaining direct relationships with your networks of choice. Mediation enables you to maximize your ecpm, fill rates, and overall revenue without having to invest heavily in engineering resources, but still allows you to work directly with ad networks so that you can preserve your existing deals. 2. What makes mediation so simple to implement? Fyber has built a mediation solution that brings together multiple ad network adapters with a single, unified SDK. This means that integration is only a matter of one drag-and-drop motion, which adds your selected ad network libraries to your project. This simple process is identical whether you re integrating one ad network or one hundred. 3. Does mediation allow me to effectively manage my ad networks? Of course! Mediation addresses a major inconvenience that comes with integrating several ad networks individually. Rather than forcing you to manage your settings through several dashboards from various different ad networks, Fyber s unified ad monetization dashboard allows you to configure all your networks, set up optimization controls, and analyze ad network performance all in one place. 4. How does optimization work with mediation? Mediation allows you to get the most out of each network and achieve the best possible ecpm rates for maximum ad revenue. Because manually adjusting your ad networks rankings based on their performance can be a long process, Fyber has created an Autopilot feature. Autopilot taps into the reporting APIs of your networks to fetch revenue data and automatically optimize each ad unit based on its expected yield. However, sometimes this information isn t readily available. That s why we released our Predictive Algorithm to take things a step further. By using statistical modeling, our predictive algorithm is able to estimate the ecpms of ad individual ads when the hard data isn t accessible. This ensures that the highest paying ads from all networks are served. If you still want to customize your rankings with Autopilot enabled, Fyber provides the option to fix an ecpm floor, or to top-rank a specific network in a group of countries. 5. How do mediation solutions choose ad networks to support? Fyber s team continually screens and selects the best ad networks for our mediation solution. We screen on the basis of an ad network s ecpm potential, fill rates, user experience, and stability. Each ad network we support undergoes a diligent onboarding process, ensuring seamless integration into our mediation platform. The bottom line? Mediation is a clever way to maximize your ecpm, ensure high fill rates, and integrate the right ad networks all while minimizing the effort required to integrate, manage, and optimize these ad networks. Have more mediation questions? Contact Us developers@fyber.com 5
Taking Control Fyber s Ad Monetization Dashboard Fyber s ad monetization dashboard offers an intuitive user interface that empowers developers to optimize their ad monetization strategies with relevant metrics and actionable insights. Feedback from our developer partners indicated that they needed an effective and in-depth way to evaluate their ad monetization strategy. In response, we introduced two new metrics as part of our new dashboard: Daily Active Users (DAU) and Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU). DAU and ARPDAU are incorporated into the analytics and insights across our dashboard. These metrics ensure that revenue sources are understood not only at the app-level through ecpm and fill rate, but also at the user-level. Our goal for the dashboard was to illuminate hard-to-discover analytic views, bringing them front and center. Our country performance graph, for instance, provides an overview of country-by-country performance based on DAU and ARPDAU. With insights like these, you can analyze your ad monetization strategies at a glance and answer questions, such as: To showcase how metrics like DAU and ARPDAU can help you make better ad monetization decisions, we ve outlined to scenarios below: Scenario 1: High DAU, Low ARPDAU Let s say you notice that you have a high DAU, but low ARPDAU, in Germany. You know that you should increase ARPDAU so that you re making more revenue from your users in that region. You can take action by inserting another ad placement into your app or by switching to another network with better coverage in Germany. Scenario 2: High ARPDAU, Low DAU On the other end of the spectrum, you might realize that in Sweden you have a high ARPDAU, but low DAU. This means that you generate a lot of revenue from your users in that country, but you have a low number of users. To take action, you might decide to launch a targeted user acquisition campaign to increase your traffic in Sweden. How well am I monetizing my users? How does each ad format contribute to my overall ARPDAU? Which ad networks contribute most to my ARPDAU? In which countries do I have the most potential to effectively increase revenue? Like what you see? Check out our dashboard. Click Here 6
Optimization 2.0 Raising ecpm with Fyber s Predictive Algorithm Optimizing yield is a key goal of any ad monetization platform. To achieve it, it s important that every single ad request is filled with the highest-yielding ad available at any given time for any given user. But optimizing yield is complicated even for mediation solutions that offer large amounts of demand. Technical limitations sometimes restrict data on ad performance for client-side ad networks, making it hard for mediation solutions to predict and serve the highest yielding ads in the queue. The industry s most popular optimization model, the Waterfall Model, serves ads based on the average ad network yield and ranks accordingly. The catch is this: low-ecpm ads from ad networks with high average rankings are served before high-ecpm ads from networks with lower average rankings. Needless to say, this discrepancy represents a substantial revenue loss for developers. Fyber s Solution: The Predictive Algorithm Here at Fyber, we believed we could create a better way to optimize yield through statistical modeling. This is why we released a Predictive Algorithm to help developers move beyond the Waterfall Model. Our Predictive Algorithm starts with the assumption that yield declines as a user progresses through the inventory of a given network. Leveraging the extensive data at our disposal as a mediation platform, our algorithm uses a continuous feed of traffic data to create a dynamic approach. The algorithm generates unique models for each ad network, and each app using the ad network, in order to account for differences in app usage and network yield patterns. The moment a user requests an ad, our Predictive Algorithm starts working in real time. We combine the individual user s history with the ad network models, according to the specific app in question. Then, we predict the yield of the next available ad from each network. Based on these predictions, we deliver a list of ad networks ordered by the yield of the next ad in their queue. The client finds and delivers the first fill in the list. The ability to locate the top-yielding ad available for a particular user, at a particular point in time, has further boosted the performance of our mediation platform. It has become an integral part of Fyber s optimization solution, moving past the dated waterfall model to help developers executive the best ad monetization strategy possible. Want to learn more about our Predictive Algorithm? Click Here YIELD OF INDIVIDUAL AD SERVED Fig. 1: The traditional waterfall model: Since the individual yield of an ad is unknown, networks are ranked by their average yield value, resulting in a non-optimal ordering of ads served. YIELD OF INDIVIDUAL AD SERVED NUMBER OF ADS SERVED TO GIVEN USER NUMBER OF ADS SERVED TO GIVEN USER NETWORK 1 NETWORK 2 NETWORK 1 NETWORK 2 Fig. 2: Fyber s predictive algorithm estimates yield for each individual ad. This allows for an optimized ranking an a per-ad basis. 7
About Fyber Fyber (formerly SponsorPay) is a leading advertising technology company that empowers app developers to execute smart ad monetization strategies through a unified mobile supply side platform. Serving over 250 million unique users per month, Fyber works with thousands of the world s leading developers, publishers and advertisers. Our partners: Ad networks, Fortune 500 brands and leading developers ADVERTISERS & DEMAND PARTNERS DEVELOPERS Contact Us Let s continue the conversation. You can get in touch with us at developers@fyber.com. Want to stay in the loop? Subscribe to Fyber News for all our latest updates, industry developments, and more. Subscribe 8