EPIC-There is no best AD network , excellent tips to find best Network for your apps

Ok I see a lot of threads about which is the best AD network and honestly there is no best AD network. But to find out which AD network is best for your specific game or app , I can help you with that. To understand what networks works check out this criteria

  1. GEO’s - This means country this is the 1st piece to finding the right network. Look for AD networks that target other countries rather than the big 3 GEO’s ( US,UK,Germany) . There are many international AD networks like Airpush, Appnext,mobilecore,mobvista, etc.

  2. Googleplay compliant - Next you have to search for if your app will be on googleplay which AD networks are fully compliant and have a history of no bans. Obviously ADmob is the 1st choice plus it gives you a few rank points. But besides ADmob there are others that have a great track record like Appnext,mobvista,appbrain,etc.

  3. 3rd Party Markets - Now for 3rd party markets you can make some money.

  4. Airpush has a 5 cents per install program in their bundle 2 plus they have notification ADs which bring in the bacon . Last year developers were making big bucks with Airpush.
    BIG NOTE Airpush has $50 eCPM on the bundle2 SDK.

2)Tapjoy if you know how to program very well can bring in money by offering users to download apps for in game currency plus video ADs that pay well.

  1. Notifymob has a guarantee scam program , do not use them.

  2. Appnext has a new SDK that has high eCPM but I haven’t figured how exactly they are doing it. Doesn’t matter , what matters is extra money in your pocket.

  3. Did you make a game or app ? Now when you sign up to one of these networks before using them see if there is a way to have the ADs optimized for games or apps. Talk to your account manager and if he isn’t doing his job come to making money with android and find a rep. The rep’s here will help you as best they can to optimize your ADs.

All networks I REPEAT ALL NETWORKS will go through slumps. When this happens you should already have a backup network just in case. Don’t jump to say scam when an AD network slumps off. The only AD networks I would tell you to avoid is startApp and Notifymob .Otherwise use the information above to help give your self a better chance at making money.

Absolutely true. The only way to find the best network for your game is to try different ones and discover what performs the best. Then whatever is the best today may not be in a month. Staying on top of this and being agile in routing your inventory can make you 2-3x as much revenue as just picking one network, integrating and forgetting about it.

All the above are fine ad networks and they all have their merits of course.

But, you as FGL stated beautifully - you need to check which one is better for you, test them out and you don’t have to decide immediately.

I also invite you to try out our SDK - HomeBase.

We are not an ad network - we don’t do banners but sponsered content on your lockscreen. Meaning that you don’t need to replace any current SDK you might have - it’s just another revenue stream.

PM me for more information.

Cheers,

Noam

Hidden notifymob ad, better review than other networks, like always pixelpower is spaming with notifymob cryptoads. From begining he is writing about notifymob network who is scam network. Earnings on 100k impressions are much lower than 100k in airpush, mobilecore or even appnext. Notifymob have also server problems, in the past, many ad request disabled their ad server (so pathetic). What is good? They have weekly payment. Guaranteed ecpm? It’s logical that more impressions>less ecpm, here this guy is writing that more users>higher ecpm. It’s not possible.

DO NOT LISTEN AND NOT USE NOTIFYMOB and pixelpower is notifymob crypto-account :wink:

You can only guarantee ECPM if you cheat developers on impressions count.

You should log your own impressions. A low tech approach is to ping flurry with an event everytime you call and ad, along with the callbacks. Then compare those stats to what the ad network shows. As long as the numbers are within 10-20% of one another everything should be good. If they off its worth looking into further… it doesn’t mean the network is cheating you but you should spend the time to find out the cause. We worked with networks that worked to show us high CPM’s by not filling any inventory they didn’t think was valuable. This way they could show us $10 CPM but the impressions were FAR FAR lower then expected. Thankfully we routed any unfilled impressions to other networks down our waterfall so it didn’t hurt us but if we were using that network exclusively we would have lost $1000s based on their strategy vs. if they filled everything but our final CPM only ended at $5-$6. They were literally throwing away value just so they could show an impressive CPM on our dashboard.

Couldn’t agree more. There’s too many possible integration points to try to paint one network as the best.

Here’s another option that I’ve been working on. Totally opt-in minigame ads. You can see them in action at demo.unlockable.com.

We’ve been seeing eCPMs anywhere from 3 to 15 dollars because we are CPI based and users who choose to play our games will oftentimes have fun (92% play our games all the way through) and actually know about the apps they are offered. We also work with developers to reskin our modal to fit apps.

Anyone who’s interested can reach out to me @ [email protected]

Hope to hear from you soon!

Excellent information !! You figured out what the AD network was doing and found there was space for profit to be made. Then you added another AD network to fill in the gap.

Actually its even more complicated then that. If an ad network doesn’t fill your full traffic it’s very difficult to evaluate them properly. At least in the context of the most important decision you have to make:
Use them or someone else

Here is an example to illustrate the point.

Your game has 20,000 impressions per day.
25% are from high value users (Tier 1 countries, etc.)
75% are from low value users

This breaks down into 5000 high value impressions and 15000 low ones.

Your current network fills them all with an average CPM of $5
20,000 x $5 = $100/day

Now you try network B who promises $10 CPM. You replace your current network. Look at your dashboard the next day and see:
5000 impressions x $10 = $50/day

Hopefully you notice the lower impressions but it can be hard if your traffic is fluctuating or the update to your app is propagating slowly to existing users. You might simply be smiling and happy at a $10 CPM and dreaming of all money you will make once you get back to 20,000 impression.

But you do notice they are lower and contact your rep. He says

“Oh, yea we only take the inventory that we think will be worth that $10 CPM. You can send the rest of your inventory to your other network. Since you had $5 CPM before you are making more money letting us go first.”

That makes sense. So you setup your own little waterfall with the new network on the top. Whenever they don’t show an ad you show your old network. Now you check your dashboard and see
15,000 x $2 CPM = $30/day

Now you are making $80/day… why did the CPM from your old network drop so much?

The reason is that your old network actually did a better job of monetizing those high value impressions then the new one but it was all blended into a single rate.
In this example they are paying
$14 CPM x 5,000 high value impressions = $70/day
$2 CPM x 15,000 low value impressions = $30/day
together you are making $100/day, or said another way you are getting $5 CPM x 20,000 impressions

This is all pretty clear when shown in this much detail but its all a dynamic system with the inputs changing every day. Even with a lot of logging and looking carefully it’s not always easy to understand what is going on. It’s like an onion, every time I figure something else out I just realize there is another deeper layer I don’t yet understand.

We have tried all the mediation systems but never end up with anything that performs better then our own approach. It really surprises me because at a a very high level our approach is basically “Try everything out and see what works best at the moment. Route our inventory to that system. Keep a small amount on others to keep an eye out for improvements. Keeping adding new SDKs to see if they are better. Repeat.” It seems so simple that I expect a “machine optimized / machine learning / big data” mediation system to do a better job with our inventory but it always ends in disappointment.

Well said Pixel.
If anybody would like to learn more about Airpush or our products, check out our demo site at Airpush Showcase | Interactive Demo Portal or shoot me a PM.

Cheers,

Airpush Nick

Thanks guys I actually learn alot , especially how to do your own mediation rather than use another company for it. Basically the path to getting more money from your games or apps is to test networks. Take the same amount of time you do making your game or apps and test it . Hopefully once you understand GEO’s , mediation, googleplay vs 3rd party markets, you can being to make proper choices to make the most money.

Airpush is also not safe so many apps were banned because of it. It is good only for apps outside of play store.

HI Taimur97,

Our current generation SDKs have been validated by us and numerous publishers using this SDK as 100% compliant with all Google Play ad and SDK policies. Apps are not banned for just having the Airpush SDK in it. Please PM me with your Airpush accounts email address and copies of the emails from Google Play and I can investigate further.

Cheers,
Nick

Thanks lets stay on subject if you got any info of which network pays best and please be,specific with GEO types and app type.

I’ve tried playing around with lots of geos with my app creations. I’ve got a hit in the MX, and few others in TH, US, and IT.

Admob, does well for me currently as a par performer.
Mobilecore was good but has declined this month so they don’t fill much of my traffic like they used to.
Notifymob is excellent right now and is a top performer for MX, TH, and IT!
I have a waterfall setup… Airpush too and it is stable/standard, but higher for US, and IT! I don’t see the banning issue that taimer97 is experiencing, so I bet that’s an isolated incident.

Loo

Thanks forcthe information this is the feedback I was looking for. I saw some people complaing about mobilecore, I guess they will pick up next quarter. How many apps do you have released? Looks like you got a nice set-up of AD networks and GEO’s.

Have you tried in East & Southeast Asia?

Lol I never got ban because of Airpush but so many other devlprs in past were banned bcz of it

Subscribed

Some good info here. As mentioned by FGL, the best method is to test various ad networks. With AerServ mediation this is extremely simple and doesn’t require you to integrate additional SDKs. Easily pause or remove networks from your waterfall with a single click. Rearrange your network waterfall with our easy drag and drop feature.

Feel free to ping me if you are interested in a demo of our platform!