Ad Network Mediation Guideline

Ad network management and ad optimization

Increase fill rate and eCPM

Boost monetization for app developers

Content

I. Overview II. What is mediation?III. How many mediators are

there?IV. How does mediation work?V. What can expect from

mediation?

I. Overview

Ad serving •With the development of mobile internet, Mobile media and mobile advertising are evolving rapidly. Historically, ad serving has only applied to web pages. But now, ad serving can place advertisements on both websites and mobile apps.

App booming •As we all know, advertising is the only way for an app developer to monetize, especially for free apps. But apps are numerous, varied, and can be hard to distinguish from each other at first glance.

Mediation •With the proliferation of hundreds of thousands of mobile apps, how can app developers ensure their apps don’t get lost in the crowd? How can they market their complete new mobile apps and make money? To meet these market requirements, mediation platforms emerge.

The guideline is intended to introduce mediation, its working mechanism and current state to help more developers to get familiar with it and know how to use it to boost user engagement and monetization.

The guideline is, in particular, applicable to the following readers:

An indie, who just produced a complete mobile app, desires to market it and make money, but has no idea how to get started.

An app team/company hoping to market your apps to explore your audience and drive more downloads. But large amounts of app advertising platforms with various tools are hard and time-consuming for you to choose.

You, playing app advertising games with some big ad networks, invested a lot, but overall results are disappointing: bad fill rates, low eCPM and CTR.

You, managing multiple apps with several ad networks, want to develop a holistic marketing strategy to distribute the traffic, leverage the traffic with cross-promotion, and increase the numbers of each app's MAU.

You, using a single ad network to monetize your apps, want to know how to optimize its settings, such as name, banner color, text, and so on, to get the highest eCPM and CTR.

II. What is Mediation? Mediation, commonly referred to as

“ad network mediation”, is basically an ad-tracking platform that is integrated with multiple ad networks at the API level.

It can facilitate ad networks management and ads optimization. By employing it, you can add unlimited ad networks and efficiently manage them to enrich the content and form of mobile advertising and optimize the fill rate and eCPM.

Ad monetization is measured in clicks and impressions - the more you can deliver the more meaningful your monetization will be. With mediation tool, monetization will become easier than before.

III. How many mediators are there?

Mediators refer to companies delivering an integrated portfolio of ad networks which can be optimized based on performance.

They earn revenue from publishers for providing integration and optimization management services, and in turn provide free mediation services for app developers.

These include Adwhirl, AdexLink, Mobclix, AdMarvel, Mopub, Nexage, Burstly and so on. Mediation is all about ad provider (ad network) scale. The more providers the more value the mediation service can bring to the market.

Some mediators tout their algorithms to automatically switch allocations for best revenue. They are essentially a black box making all the decisions and sending you a check at the end of the month. Since you are turning over monetization control to the mediator, trust is an important factor. Algorithmic optimization requires good end to end reporting data, and mobile ad metrics and reporting today is highly variable across mediators. You will want to make sure you get revenue breakouts by network so you can keep the mediator honest.

Other mediators will give you the tools to go in and set allocations yourself. This means you need to track your data and make decisions. It is more work, but you are the one most interested in optimizing revenue for your traffic. It also helps to build relationships with the networks.

At present, mediator is pioneered by the folks at AdWhirl and AdexLink. And the most majority of mediators are free for app developers to join.

IV. How does mediation work?

Detailed mediation steps may vary according to different mediators, but the basic procedures are roughly the same (Mediation Instruction Manual is available at each mediator’ website).

You need to register all the ad networks of your choice as a developer first, download their SDKs and complete app setting.

There are many ad networks in the market for you to choose, such as AdMob, AdSense, iAds, Millenial, Jumptap, BrightRoll, InMobi, JumpTap, MobFox, vdopis and Tapjoy.

Next step, you need to set up all ad networks of your choice and adjust their allocation percentages of traffic and backfill priorities at a mediation platform, such as Adwhirl and AdexLink.

Then the mediation platform will monitor all ad networks and request ad from a higher priority network. If ad request comes back unfilled, the system will roll over to your backfill settings and continue down to a lower priority network and so on.

All networks you set up will run automatically and get reports later, through which you can determine the most profitable traffic portfolio and find out the best fit ad network.

At some mediation platform, it even can do test for you to get the highest performing ad settings.

Mediation platform manages everything for you – bringing the best ads to one platform and handling all the details so you can stay focused on building great apps.

V. What can expect from mediation?

1. Add networks without updating your app.2. Your ads are a perfect fit with your content and your

users.3. Your fill rates can be increased from 50% or less to

nearly 100% immediately!4. Your eCPM will be improved 10 times better.5. Free to drive a massive amount of installs. 6. Your traffic will be accelerated along with fast growing

installs. 7. Earn maximum revenue for every impression.

You can add unlimited number of ad networks, and efficiently manage them to explore more audiences.

Mediation platforms can help you stop worrying about the traffic distribution of ad networks and figure out how to allocate the traffic to get the highest eCPM.

You can easily and conveniently adjust the traffic distribution and do the testing immediately to see the real-time reports.

Mediation platform can also help you to increase your fill rate to nearly 100%. Current research on ad networks shows that most of ad networks have very low fill rates, rather than what they have claimed. Mediation technology can assist you by automatic detection and requesting another ad based on the priority you set up.

One point lots of developers may not know: at some mediation platform, such as AdexLink, it can even allow you to do testing (see the right picture) to optimize ad settings: name, gender, age, text, color, and so on. It is a great method for the app developers to determine which combination of ad settings can increase CTR.

That's it! We hope our instructions can help you.