Felix Braberg

To get ad impressions for a subscription app, you can “give up” part of your subscription app content or give users a “taste” of what the subscription would be like via rewarded videos. Rewarded videos are the best way to monetize your users through ads: they have the highest eCPM and bring the least risk for retention.

The key to adding ads to non-gaming apps is that you need volume. Once you get past 30-50k DAU, you have to think about how many impressions you can display to that user base, which is much harder for subscription apps (e.g., it’s hard to show 5 to 10 impressions compared to gaming).

When adding ads to subscription apps:

• Don’t treat your user base as uniform and segment by geo and/or based on how long users have been in the app _(e.g., ads only on Day 3) _so you don’t hurt conversion to subscription.
• If you can’t segment your user base, you need to get more creative about the ad placement and what is offered to users for watching ads. Example: giving them credits for watching ads, removing a watermark for watching an ad, etc.

If you have too many placements on the Unity dashboard, you get latency on the server side because they get latency on their side too.

You can also make direct Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) deals with DSPs, which changes the commission to just a few cents. Top DSPs on APS: Xander, ShareThrough, OpenX, LoopMe. Mobilefuse, Somato, Rubicon, IndexExchange, InMobi, Pubmatic. If you’re starting, don’t run any deals and figure out the top DSPs on the Monetization side, then reach out to them to do an IO deal.

Amazon Publisher Services currently doesn't support the video end cards, which are superimposed by ad networks and highly impact CTR.

InMobi placements perform better on banners compared to their bidders.

Unity had an over-reporting bug where they were capturing all the high-value placements in the waterfall, which led to reporting 10x the earnings. No actual revenue was earned, and it messed up AdROAS campaigns. You can file a complaint with Unity to get compensated.

If you’re using GAM (Google Ad Manager) for your mediation, you’re missing out on gaming demand, which means lower eCPMs (lower than AdMob). To open up to the gaming inventory and get +10% to 20% higher eCPMs, start with AppLovin, Unity, ironSource, and Facebook: 

• If you have a big app, you can also set up a buyer network via DSP and connect to a programmatic deal to get ads through Google Ad Manager mediation, which will have a slightly higher cost

For banner ads in your app, use a refresh rate of 15 seconds. It’s pretty “aggressive”, but it’s good to get the revenue app and is pretty average for gaming. Adjust the banner refresh rate based on how it impacts retention.

There are two ways to go about balancing ad monetization and retention for interstitial ads:

• You set an eCPM floor, so you only show an ad if you get a minimum eCPM.
• If you have multiple ad-trigger points in your app, you can also cap the number of ads you show to users to be below a certain imp/DAU so that you can keep eCPM higher since ad networks pay less for impressions when they've already shown that user impressions during the same session.

Facebook makes it hard to show rewarded ads from their inventory in an app. You have to meet several criteria to be compliant. Send an internal email through the general contact link, send pictures of your placements, etc. The best way is to have a Facebook rep.

Experiment with both interstitials and banners in your app. Start running A/B tests showing ads a day or two after peak subscription time _(e.g., Day 3, Day 5) to see how it affects retention._

To implement rewarded ads in a subscription app, you have to give up something that’s behind the paywall or unlock a new feature. Remember that rewarded ads are widely common in gaming, so users have seen them before.

Tighten up your waterfalls if you have placements from the same network being called twice or more in a row or placements with less than 1% fill AND earn less than 1% ad revenue. Run A/B tests before Black Friday, where you set up high placements to fill over the weekend, so you’re in a good spot for Black Friday.

App-ads.txt ensures digital ad inventory is sold only through sellers that USA publishers have approved. Ad networks frequently update this file. In the next ten days, update these lists and make sure your entries are up-to-date to maximize your demand pool. If you don’t update these lists, you’re missing out on ad partners, which means less revenue.

Do theme-rewarded ad icons: change the physical button where you call the rewarded video. Example: ad button in the shape of a turkey or a pilgrim. You can see impression/DAU increase by 5-7%, which reverts to baseline after 4-5 days. This is only worth it if you already make significant money from ad monetization, in which case you can ask your UI designer to batch-design the icons for the entire year.

Some ad networks turn on the audio automatically, even though the volume is off. As soon as you notice this, get it out of your game because it will hurt you on the review front. Check the video to learn which network does this more than the others.

Ad networks often make it hard to close mobile ads by making the clickable area on the “X” button small. Find which network does this by looking at the screenshot of the problematic ad and telling them, “We’re getting a lot of complaints that your ads are not closing. Can you kindly review the clickable area on your “X” button and enlarge it, please? You’re the only network we’re getting complaints about this, and we need it fixed ASAP.” 

AdMob’s bidder artificially ramps up traffic to new placements for 3 days, to see how performance works. Some companies, therefore, change their placements every 3 days, until AdMob reaches out. Note: this is against their policy.

Without telling you, ad networks often add long-end cards to their rewarded videos, which makes videos longer. This typically creates complaints from your community. What to do:

1. Figure out which ad networks do this. Watch out that they do this gradually (i.e., they don’t add 15s from the get-go) until they hear complaints.

2. Tell them: “I understand the performance risk, but I need parity with all my networks in my game. Please remove the end cards ASAP”.

Ad placement price points are negotiable. Some networks initially limit you, but if you see good performance, you can tell them, “_We’ve had very good performance on this placement; can you make a higher placement value on the backend?_”. Google, ironSource, and Vungle are some networks that will make the change.

Whenever you deal with an ad network, everything can be negotiated. This starts as soon as you get assigned an account manager at an ad network.

When there is a holiday, always change your rewarded icon to show the holiday theme. Example: change your rewarded button to a Halloween-themed button on Halloween.

On Unity, you can get latency on the Unity side of the Unity dashboard (not just the mediation side). This is because the bidder will go through every placement you’ve made (which can go up to 100-200 if you’re running A/B tests). To mitigate this, ask your Unity AM to remove placements that haven’t seen a bid in the last 30 days.

To do your job well as an ad monetization person, you need to know as much as possible about as many networks as possible. It gives you an edge to make more ad revenue and increase your ad ARPDAU.

During soft launch, your north star ad metric is Impressions/DAU ie. how many ads your users watch a day. A gold standard you want to aim for to have an impact on your overall UA efforts is at least 5 impressions/DAU. At an early stage, don’t worry about mediation: worry about reaching this number.

Since Ad revenue = Impressions x eCPM, everything you do to increase revenue should be aiming at increasing Impressions or eCPMs. During soft launch, focus your energy on maximizing impressions and once that’s done, focus on maximizing your eCPMs.

Experimenting with end cards on networks like Unity/AppLovin makes a big difference on the UA side in terms of CPIs and purchases. Example: different visuals.

Bending Spoons 6 co-founders agreed that the one finding the highest-paying job will take that full-time job while the others work on the business. Luca Ferrari (CEO) ended up working at McKinsey for 16 months.