Supercell vs “air sellers”

Supercell has severed relations with the online advertising operator Appia. Why did this happen, and what is happening in the mobile advertising market today?

In a nutshell, the following happened: the authors of Clash of Clans and Hay Day paid Appia for screenings on the company's sites, and then found out that their order was then resold to a third-party company.  

This angered the Finns so much that, according to GamesBeat sources, despite Appia's willingness to pay a penalty, Supercell terminated its contract with her.   

Appia, in turn, denies what happened. The company claims that their publisher resold the offer without their knowledge. And they don't seem to be working with him anymore. 

There is a version voiced by the British advertising agency Fetch, according to which one of the main partners of Appia was responsible for conducting the Supercell advertising campaign, who resold the campaign to his marketing partner without permission, who violated the terms of Appia.    

In our opinion, the following could also happen: Appia resold the offer to another agency, and that, in turn, offered Supercell to work directly. Such a situation is not uncommon in a market that Western media increasingly compare to the Wild West. 

Advertising agencies, in fact, sell air and receive huge revenue. Conditionally, they charge one amount for traffic, and then resell it for less money. The difference in price can reach one fifth of the initial amount paid by the advertiser.

However, the main problem is not resale, but that no one guarantees that by buying unmotivated traffic using the CPI model, you will not get traffic of below average quality.

With large volumes, it is not difficult to sell 70% of unmotivated traffic and 30% of motivated unmotivated traffic at 100% price, because it is almost impossible to check the quality in this case.

There are different ways to deal with this. One possible way, according to VentureBeat, is for developers to cooperate by privately sharing a list of companies involved in the resale of advertising campaigns. 

Another possible way is to find the final advertising platforms, but this is not always easy.

P.S. For the help in writing the material, we thank Ekaterina Makarova, marketing specialist at Zillion Whales.