In this Monetization Masterclass, Tezcan Unlu, Senior Advertising Monetization Manager at Kolibri Games, reveals how detailed data analysis now enables his team to monitor ad performance across user segments, acquisition sources, and regions. His approach to rewarded video ads - positioning them as optional progression boosters rather than interruptions - creates value for both players and publishers.

Tezcan also dives into compelling insights on the industry's shift to hybrid bidding systems, which while reducing operational workload, has diminished direct pricing control, presenting both challenges and opportunities.

As a Senior Ad Monetization Manager, how has your data infrastructure evolved to optimize ad placements and revenue generation?

I have created dashboards through our own BI where I can analyze the ad placements performance based on the main KPIs. So I can directly understand how the changes in the product can impact the ad placement performance. This can also reflect on how some technical issues might impact certain ad placements more drastically than the others. Basically, I can go very granular in terms of filters that I can apply for the ad placements and understand how users interact with the ad offers/placements depending on their cohort, UA source, country, etc. 

With rewarded video ads typically generating a significant portion of mobile game revenue, how do you ensure ad frequency enhances rather than disrupts the gaming experience?

As the nature of the RV, users are given an opportunity or option to watch an ad to have a faster progression throughout the funnel. However, the RV ad placements are not intrusive or do not disrupt any kind of game experience. It only serves as a booster to help them progress in the content smoothly. So, users are aware of the fact that RV is an optional and engaging revenue stream where both parties benefit out of it. On the other hand, we usually give them an option to spend some hard currency alongside with RV ad offers, or we leave them free to not to watch an ad or spend any hard currency. 

What recent trends or innovations in the mobile gaming ad monetization landscape excite you the most?

What excites me the most recently is actually how the mobile gaming community is open to share their best practices. I believe in mobile gaming and especially in the ad monetization landscape, there are many great experts that are open to share their experiences and grow together as professionals. Whenever I go to Gamesforum or other conferences, I always feel free to ask people questions and catch up with them. Also, on a daily basis, people are open to have a chat or even a call on the topics that other investigate or are curious about. This approach pushes the ecosystem to go to a better place and grow together. 

If I need to speak more technically, I like how people are trying new innovative features in terms of AdTech. There is always a new metric or new solution which I hear from the people in the conferences. Also, I like how AdMon people are integrating more and more with the ad placement and product optimisations. New AdMon description in the market is collecting the Marketing+Data+Product altogether and creating a brand new vision on the mobile gaming industry.

Can you share an example of a particularly successful (or unexpected) A/B test you've run on ad monetization? What were the key takeaways?

I can’t share exact numbers or the details of the tests. However, we were able to increase the Ad ARPDAU significantly, especially the early Ad LTV by pushing the eCPM levels higher through some technical changes and implementations. This was a successful A/B test that didn’t require any changes on the product side that was done thoroughly by the AdMon and Tech teams. 

What are the benefits and challenges of employing a hybrid setup in ad bidding to balance transparency and efficiency in your monetization strategy?

Benefits: AdMon managers have less operational workload and are less prone to the operational mistakes. This reduces the stress during the heavy operational days. Remaining time and energy is nowadays allocated for more strategic investigations and projects where we can actually see the business from a higher overview. This helps us to be involved in cross team projects where we have the chance to work closely with the UA,data,product and tech teams on a daily basis. 

Challenges: Losing the control of our pricing on our own inventory has been the biggest challenge for the last 1 year. In the past where hard work, good analysis and operational perfection was bringing an impact to the business with the waterfall optimisations and segmentations. However, currently, this method is gone and the impact we can bring to the products or games that we work on comes mostly from cross department projects or initiatives. 

Overall, I see these changes as sweet challenges which can lead to great opportunities where we have to adapt to the changes in the industry and evolve ourselves as professionals. Being able to adapt these kind of changes in the first years of my career has brought me valuable skills. In addition to that I am happy to see how people in the industry adapted quickly to the new terms as well.

As someone who likely works with multiple ad networks and a mediation platform, what factors do you consider when selecting ad partners, and how do you optimize waterfall or hybrid bidding strategies?

I usually release the new partners with a geo release to make sure that we have technical stability. Then, prioritize them regarding their potential impact, incentives and feedback I receive  from the Ad Mon community. I try to test the A/B test provided by the mediation tool and generally monitor it day by day with the top countries. I usually favor having more partners to potentially increase the competition. I take them to 100% of the traffic unless I see a red flag during the test period. Then, I monitor the live performance on the apps. For further optimisations, it’s always good to keep in touch with the account managers and update them on the performance. 

With the rise of privacy regulations (like ATT on iOS) and changes in tracking, how do you see the future of mobile game ad monetization evolving? How are you preparing for these challenges?

The changes in the privacy regulations have always been part of the UA&AdMon people. Even though these changes create challenges and cause us to lose visibility and performance, they also bring opportunity. For example, we observed the rise of android performance on the eCPM levels after the changes in the iOS in 2021. This was a way of budget allocation changes in the industry. This is a great example where we should embrace the changes and look for new opportunities to keep creating incremental value. Currently, some partners in the market are looking for ways to increase their visibility on understanding the user behavior in-depth. I started to hear more about the first-party data sharing and optimising it for the UA campaigns. Hence, this can reflect to a better ad monetization performance. Overall, we will try to find a way to create incremental value within the changing circumstances since all the stakeholders need each other to keep their businesses running. We can’t imagine an ad network generating more money in the long term without having profitable publishers in the market. 

How do you balance the sometimes competing interests between user retention metrics and short-term ad revenue goals? Have you found any strategies that successfully increase monetization without negatively impacting player lifetime value?

The idea is logical in this regard: whatever method makes the most revenue for the company or the game while increasing the user experience and engagement. The important metric to always look for is the ARPDAU and overall profitability of the games. For example, implementing some ad formats to some of the genres do not make sense because these games might generate higher ad revenue until D14 but the overall LTV until D90 might be lower. This also highly depends on the LTV and ROAS curves. So, I don’t think the only controversy here is between user retention(engagement) and short-term ad revenue goals.The impact of the product or monetization changes on the UA sources of the game is also crucial.  There are more than one subsidiaries that we need to consider while making changes in our products.