Admob Mediation?

Does anyone know the difference between using Admob for mediation vs Appodeal? Is one better than the other?

It completely depends on the inventory for who is better.
I would personally self mediate. Use the networks YOU want to use in the order (waterfall) you want.

Enhance™ will let you use the ad networks you want to use (one or more) and let you have control of how they are used.
Better chance at getting a higher eCPM for sure!

We are not an ad network, but a tool to allow you to integrate SDK’s quickly and easily, minutes not hours.

Click the banner for more info on Enhance™!
Let me know if you have any questions.

I believe that both AppoDeal and Admob let you choose the networks that you want to use. I know Appodeal does. I think the only way that I would want to order them is highest ecpm to lowest… so the order doesn’t matter much to me. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with these two products and could point out any high level differences.

Yes! I had experience with both AdMob and Appodeal. The last one for sure could bring more money but again depends on traffic/geo/platform and so on. At least you will continue work with Admob and could at the same time work with other networks with one account.

Thanks! So does that mean that you currently use Appodeal in your apps?

Not all but we are thinking about integration with them with other apps as well.

Appodeal seems a good option. I personally don’t have any experience with them and right now considering to move with them. But then I came by a post in this forum which states -

Though the post is old, last updated about an year ago. But still making me wary, i just don’t want my apps to get banned from GP. So I’m kind of curious about their current status, I mean what others are experiencing with them right now, will it be a good idea to move with them?

Hi Indie Dev.

My name is Mary Rardin, and I am the Marketing Manager at Appodeal. I’m glad to hear you’re thinking about integrating with us and doing your research. :slight_smile: Using Appodeal will not get your app banned in Google Play. I can send you a couple of case studies from current clients with apps on Google Play who have had great success with us. If you’d like a little more background on how we detect and combat fraud, you can find it here: How Appodeal Combats Fraud from Publishers - Appodeal

Feel free to message me at any time.

I had experience with both services: a couple of month ago i used admob mediation in some of my games and appodeal in others. Currently i’m using appodeal only.
AdMob is a great, reliable, good paying network, especially for banners and interstitials. And you should definitely use it for banners/interstitials in your manual waterfall/mediation. But i can’t say that admob’s mediation is that good.

  1. The biggest con to my mind is that u have to download sdk for each network u’d like to use + adapter. And only several adapters are included in sdk: adcolony, mobfox and some other not that popular platforms. The point is that I had to make a dozen of sdk/adapter installations, read instructions and set up each network manually.
  2. Setting up takes time and i can’t say that admob’s support replies quickly, so integrating and setting was a big headache for me that took a lot of time.
  3. To put it simple, here’s a passage from their FAQ: What if I want to mediate with a network, but there is no supported adapter for it? You can write your own mediation adapters using custom events.
  • I want to start using mediation and earn some money, but not set up networks and spend evening writing manual adapter… and that’s really important to me.

I switched to appodeal, because

  1. Their sdk already has libs of all networks they support - u don’t have to create accounts in networks u want to use. no need to download each sdk+adapters and set it manually. Appodeal did this all work for me and I got access to a great number of major networks right after integration and it took me just a couple of hours.
  2. Another cool thing is their support that answers in live chat 24/7 and I usually get response within 15-20min.
  3. Mediating algorithms. I suppose that in case with admob its a standard waterfall that includes selected networks. This means that u need to understand how definite network performs in your app. Basically you need to test each network to be aware of its results. I personally had no time and interest to test all of 30+ networks one by one, moreover i havent’t heard about half of them (I mean zucks, vpon, vdopia, tremor, nend, domob).
    Guys from appodeal claim that they have a smart auction-based algorithm that dynamically makes networks compete with each other for every ad impression, which allows to choose the highest bid for each imp. I’m not that hard-boiled in all these tech aspects, so I usually judge by revenue. CPM and fillrate are vague reference points imo, cause u may have $10 CPM and earn $30 a month, just because your fill rate is 20%, and draw wrong conclusions.
    I tested both solutions on almost same apps, these are arcade clickers, with different designs but same geos (mostly US + western europe) and have around 3m downloads each. I stuffed both projects with lots of ads: 320x50 banners - up the screen during whole gameplay, interstitials after finishing certain levels + rewarded videos, that allow to get free coins/items with definite frequency, so that users can’t watch them every time they need some boost.
    as I said my geos are mostly US & Europe, so the top networks in my case are admob, mopub, applovin, adcolony, chartboost, startapp, vungle, unity, facebook. I selected them for admob mediation and they also were some of the best performing through appodeal (which also had other sources, that filled the impressions for uncovered users.)
    The test lasted 1 month, for that time I had quite good results with admob mediation, but appodeal brought me around 20% more revenue, so I switched all my traffic to them. btw avg cpm and fillrate were also higher in appodeal. All in all it’s just a matter of your experience, understanding your app & it’s geos/audience and personal choice)

Correct, but they are taking a cut.
Enhance™ lets you work directly with these networks without going through the struggle of integrating each one. We don’t take a cut.
Sometimes the highest eCPM doesn’t always fill, so you have to find a good middle ground in your waterfall.

This will allow you to pocket more $$$.

My experience with Admob has been great in pretty much every aspect BUT mediation. I’ve also moved on from AppoDeal because there are better options, but it IS better than Admob from what I’ve come to experience.

OscarD, what did you move on to? What was the issue you had with AppoDeal?

Great answer pepperoniplayboy. I think not having to signup for the networks is sweet. I appreciate your time. Have you had any experience with survey monetization products like pollfish?

Whats stopping you from using Enhance™?

Here are the reason I didn’t go with Enhance:

  • To integrate AppoDeal it only took me about 1 hour… and I had never done it before. It was super simple. They had people online all the time that I could chat with to help me with anything. No need to upload my apk or anything like that.
  • Appodeal is a trusted name by people and has been in the market for a long time. I’m not saying Enhance isn’t a good tool, but it’s new. New stuff generally has more issues than existing stuff. Ad revenue is very important for a free app. Imagine if something happened and the Enhance software wasn’t mediating properly (or at all). New products break and that scares me.
  • Appodeal you don’t need to signup with all the different ad networks. With the free version of Enhance you do need to signup with the different ad networks.
  • With the non-free version of Enhance, Enhance takes a unknown part of the revenue. This is from your TOS: “All revenue from ads trafficked through EnhanceAds™ will be collected by FGL and a portion of these revenues will be paid to you on a variable basis, as determined by us in our sole and absolute discretion.”
  • With Appodeal, you get two payment sources (them and admob) You don’t need to worry about hitting minimums and different tax forms from all sorts of ad networks. This is all handled by Appodeal.

Those are the main reasons. They may take a little bit of the revenue from me, but it seemed like a better fit then to go with Enhance. People are generally happy with Appodeal. Maybe down the road when Enhance gets going and people are talking about it or if I have problems with Appodeal, I will give it a shot. But right now, I’m going to have to stick with Appodeal.

-An hour isn’t terrible. Enhance™ could save you some time there. We also have real time tech support.
-I do hear a lot of developers love Appodeal and thats cool. FGL (who brings you Enhance™) has been in the market of helping developers for a really long time. The tool, yes its new. But its is just a tool, not a network. You control the mediation. The product is only a tool to integrate the sdk’s. There are services beyond that that we provide however, just using Enhance™ as a tool to integrate is the time saver. You can choose to have us mediate or you can still do it yourself.
-True you don’t have to, that is an option in Enhance™ as well. In the self managed area, yes if you have signed up for the networks, you can use them. The fully managed version, we do that for you. Personally, I would sign up for as many networks as possible so you can be free to interchange them or set up waterfalls as you please.
-You shouldn’t need that, only when you have us take on the tasks would that happen. You’d be using the self-managed area which means money goes to you.

I hope everything works out well with appodeal.
If you want to get away from a mediation network and start running ads directly from the different networks, hit us up.
Good luck.

Any plans to release your service as a Library instead? that would maybe allow even more control on exact Ad placement? (just a guess, have no idea how Enhance works at the moment)

Enhance™ is simply a tool that allows you to integrate SDK’s in minutes, not hours.
Ad networks, analytics and other 3rd party services without the hours and hours of coding each.

There are a lot of services that are already offered with Enhance™ Zero Code, but there are somethings that may require extra coding. Not for the network, but potentially the placement if you have something crazy going on…

I’m not an engineer, so I can’t dig too deep there, but if you have any questions, please head over to the Enhance™ site and ask away!

Never said I had issues, just wanted to find better options. No looking to bad mouth anyone :slight_smile:

Thanks, I was just trying to get an idea what people thought was the best and why. Thanks for clarifying.