By Ekaterina Portunova, Ad Monetization Manager, Herocraft

IAA at a minimum or how to build an Ad Monetization strategy without 100k impressions daily?

Most of the successful cases and best practices on how to run Ad Monetization are easily applied for big games with the US and Tier-1 traffic. But what should do those ones that aren’t that big?

It might be tricky, but with the current state of the AD Industry, it becomes easier. This is the perfect time to push it and reach new heights since the reward is worth your efforts. Anyway, we should undertake the preparatory work for maximizing the results.

Holistic Approach

To begin with, let’s start with the Holistic Approach. The symbiosis between IAP and IAA is the best thing about the game industry. We used to discuss that, feel free to refresh it here.

And the big players proved this correlation in a win-win way. For example, Melsoft with its latest case study prepared together with a Facebook link.

It’s clear and straightforward, but what should you do as an ordinary indie developer? How to get through the lightly comments of Ad Network Managers asking for more traffic in the US and Tier-1 zones? How often have you heard from your AM that as soon as you grow traffic they will immediately show themselves at full power? Does it always work this way?

Holistic is an important word, that is closely related not only to project promotion strategy and IAP monetization but with the ad itself. It means that AD is a bit more complicated than integrating the SDK and waiting for the profit net-30. Here is also important to work thoroughly.

From a Product Side vs from a Mediation Side

The ad should be implemented in every game in the right way. I called it “with elegance". Depending on your income distribution (Split off IAP and IAA) as well as the genres of your title.

Another thing to remember is to make sure that the ad is working (thank you, captain) and working according to the standards of the industry. You are aware of benchmarks, don’t you? Those metrics should be close to the average across the industry:

• AVR(Ad View Rate) / Engagement Rate - 50-70% (depending on your genre)
• Imp/DAU and Imp/DEU - 3.5/6+ (depending on ad format)
• Impression Rate - 20-30% (depending on ad format)

Then you can estimate the potential revenue and compare to the real numbers how much money you CAN earn and HAVE already EARNED. Use this simple formula from Facebook:

The Mediation in a Full Beaty

We‘ve already discussed the demonization of the Mediation Platform link. But the Mediation Platform is good. A/B test that! All the pros and cons can be easily fitted in one line:

MEDIATION = COMPETITION

Generally, this formula can provide you with a 30-50% boost compared to an exclusive agreement. But I can tell you that in some cases mediation performed 3 times higher to solo SDK.

This is not the exception, I would rather say this is the rule with the current transition period. You can achieve these results even with low numbers, no need to earn 10k USD/ daily, or serve 100k impressions per day.

The main obstacle from working with low traffic is that ad network algorithms are struggling due to the lack of data. They work with big data. Otherwise, they can’t show the most relevant impression and can pass the opportunity. As a result, you suffer from Latency on an overcomplex waterfall with no fill instances, crashes, and ANRs, that are ready to break through the threshold. Is it possible to make your mediation works for you, not against you?

RTB is an answer. Real-Time Bidding helped to evolve the Hybrid Mediation Platform. It’s like the fresh breath of air in the world of 60 lines traditional waterfall serving 10 000 available daily impressions. Complicated, long-waited and doesn’t work.

RTB works in real-time and bids for every impression

Most of the mediation platforms are now transiting to the hybrid model. As a result of this switching, even a small game can maximize its ad revenue. Learn more in this article - The New Era in Ad Monetization: How App Bidding is Transforming Businesses or watch the webinar here.

Recently MAX launched its solution for the global market. The Lite version can be a good start for low numbers. All the bidders are available in one pack. You can onboard more networks as you start growing and when you feel confident enough - enable traditional waterfall. This is what we call hybrid mediation.

Finally, RTB helps to scale during your Global Launch and ROAS campaigns.

You can learn how to set up a hybrid waterfall in the recent free course with devtodev – AD Monetization Course.

Start with these small steps and see how how it would affect your results.