Advertising monetization: Do developers need mediators?

Alawar told App2Top how the indicators of advertising monetization have changed after the start of cooperation with Appodeal, a service for the competent monetization of mobile applications.

Alawar is a Novosibirsk publisher of games, known for the casual series “Treasures of Montezuma”, “Merry Farm”, as well as for games of the genre “hidden object”. In this article we will talk about the advertising monetization of casual players in the company’s Android games.

Alawar monetizes players through rewarded video and interstitial ads. The video is used to restore hints in games of the genre “I’m looking for” (hidden object games); the user sees full-screen banners at the moment when some completed action occurs (for example, a scene has ended or a chapter of the game has been completed). With the purchase of the full version of the game, the user automatically turns off advertising, so only the free part of the game brings revenue from advertising.

Alawar tested the operation of different grids, both individually and within the framework of different mediation solutions from Fyber, MoPub, AdMob and Appodeal.

Recall that mediation is a tool that allows an application to increase advertising revenue by selecting the most profitable option among several advertising sources. For example, in Appodeal, the selection of ads takes place through an auction, where advertising networks and other sources compete with each other in real time for each ad impression. The presence of multiple grids allows mediation services to increase occupancy, which leads to an increase in the number of banner or video impressions. And the auction form of interaction allows the publisher to get the maximum income by broadcasting the advertising of the grid that offered the maximum bid per impression.

But is this theory confirmed in practice?

Alawar found out how the average eCPM of advertising grids change if mediation is used. eCPM has grown for almost all the grids used in Russia, the USA and Europe (this group includes Germany, France and the UK) after starting working with Appodeal. The exception is AdColony (in Russia) and Applovin (Russia and the USA) grids.

According to the share of total revenue , advertising grids were distributed as follows:

Full-screen bannersRewarded Video

As we can see, AdColony and Applovin, whose eCPM decreased after the connection of Appodeal, occupy secondary places in the share of total income, and the growth of eCPM fell on partners who bring the main income.

The results obtained by Alawar on users of casual games on Google Play demonstrate that mediation can work. But what results can be achieved in other audiences and platforms is a topic of a separate conversation.

You will be able to learn about the latest trends in the gaming industry first-hand, personally meet and discuss working issues with leading companies in the game development and publishing market at White Nights St. Petersburg 2016, which will be held on June 28-29.