Appnext Impression Counting

On this page https://wiki.appnext.com/hc/en-us/articles/212146069-How-do-we-count-impressions- AppNext states:

“An ad impression is now considered viewable when 50% of an ad’s pixels are in view on the screen alongside with user uniqueness filters.”

Comparing Appnext impressions vs MoPub impressions is showing 60% less impressions when using Appnext. I am pretty sure MoPub already only counts an impression if the full view is visible, so the only part left to question is this “user uniqueness filters”?

By lowering the number of impressions using shady “user uniqueness filters”, you can artificially raise the eCPM in the dashboard. This is both impressive to the advertiser and the publisher. Unless of course that publisher has been using mediation and can notice the drop in total revenue and impressions. The eCPM is always going to look 60% higher than other networks because of this.

I would like to know what these “user uniqueness filters” are?

They are heavily under reporting impressions. This is well known fact. Yet they pretend like they know nothing.

I think you are right about faking the eCPM, because I have noticed that they change their algorithms once in a while. For example my impressions decrease to half while my CTR doubles.

I have also heard stories about them banning people for no reason but I have not experienced that myself.

I just want to explain this a little better for any publishers out there. If you are using a mediation stack which includes AppNext with other networks, please take note.

Lets say I am using MoPub ad server in my code with a few other third party networks in mediation, using the waterfall method.

If I use MoPub Marketplace one day for an ad placement and it gets 100k impressions and makes $10, my eCPM is $0.10.
On the next day I use Appnext and get 100k impressions and make $9, making a $0.09 eCPM.

Now the problem comes when AppNext applies the impression counting filters. According to AppNext I had 60k impressions, not 100k impressions, and an eCPM of $0.15. I think to myself, great 50% more eCPM, when in actual fact I made $1 less revenue compared with MoPubMarketplace.

If I was not aware of this, I would of put AppNext above MoPubMarketplacein my mediation waterfall stack using the eCPM values I am given, after which thinking to myself, AppNext is great, such high eCPMs! When in actual fact, what I have just done, will cause a reduction in total revenue, I will be losing money.

So the only true way of comparing AppNext with other networks in the mediation stack is by using the original impression count given by the mediation provider and doing math to create the true eCPM, I can then correctly position AppNext in the mediation stack.

I hope this helps some of you guys.