Admob Mediation

Hi guys,

I just logged on to my admob and saw a new column named Mediation that will help to distribute requests to different ads from multiple ad networks available. I am meant to understand Admob run a beta test and i guess the new sdk is available for download. One can even configure the mediation and i see we will have over 6 adsizes to choose from. I also just saw they admob guys updated the tutorials and there are some insights on ad mediation. https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/docs/android/mediation/. It will be interesting to hear how this works and if it will improve eCPM and consequently more revenue and how different will this be from those who have been implementing their own ad allocation system or using networks like adwhirl. So, has anyone tried this new feature and what are your thoughts about this?

There is Adfonic, Hunt Mobile Ads, InMobi, Jumptap, Millenial Media and MobFox. Anyone knows anything about them? Which is worth the try? I’m definitely gonna experiment on my less popular games first to check it out.

Interesting to see some fruits starting to come from Google’s acquisition of AdWhirl. The ad mediation features look pretty neat. I’m especially happy to see custom events are supported, for integration of unsupported third-party networks. And interstitials are fully integrated too.

So far, out of all these ad networks I’ve used InMobi (pretty similar results to AdMob in terms of eCPM), MobFox, and Millennial Media. MM actually have a few mediation options of their own. To answer your question Magnesus, I’d suggest all of these are worth a try. :slight_smile: If you’re using a mediation platform, you can always just switch one off if it’s not performing well!

Thanks. I will definitely try them.

cool, haven’t recognized that yet - thx for info :wink:

I recommend Mopub… it was started by a bunch of people who left Admob.

I just recognized, that my game Sholik suffers from a bad fillrate (don’t know why) … so I will use that game to try admob mediation I think.

This game is making just a bunch of impressions (~100-200 per day) so it is not very risky.

I already own a leadbolt and greystripe(?) acc, so what do you think, should I use them or try one completely new … like mopub?

it’s only banners, landscape

I have implemented Admob mediation to my android game and tested it with 3 activated ad networks 1) Millenial Media 2)Adfonic 3) Admob.

The result for two days is: The reported numbers, clicks impressions by Admob mediation are completly wrong. I see in Admob Mediation for MM 450 clicks a day, then I login to Millenial Media and there are only 150 clickes regstered, the same with Adfonic. Also my revenue dropped, I think because the fillrate is not 100% anymore.
I have now deactivated Millenial Media and Adfonic, running only admob network, and the revenue seems to be as before. But the reported numbers in Admob Mediation still differs from the ones shown in Admob.
I can only say Admob can run their “alpha” tests without me in the next time…

Thanks AKApps for the info, Too bad such things happen but i believe these issues happen in the early stages of introducing some product feature. The most important thing is to try this with apps that are not generating high revenue and we can use them as “sacrificial lambs” just to see how it all works out. I will be incorporating V6 of admob sdk and try out Mediation feature early next week and i will inform you guys of the progress.

I have just implemented it on one of my apps that doesn’t get many impressions. My clicks are correct for yesterday (but it is only 3, so with more volume it may not be correct).

The requests and impressions show more in the mediation report than on the Millenial Media report.

And Admob still shows 100% fill rate for that app although under the mediation it shows around 60% fill rate. I’m guessing it is still filling the remaining with adsense ads but that isn’t shown on the mediation report.

But I’m not surprised I was using AdWhirl and their numbers were never anywhere close to the true numbers. And this Admob mediation is basically Adwhirl being moved to under the Admob name.

This happens with all networks. The mediation layer will record all clicks, but the advert layer will filter out duplicate click’s etc. e.g. user clicks twice within 2 seconds (or whatever they define as ‘duplicate’).

How big ecpm are you getting from millenial media compared to admob?

Thanks @AKapps and @fivehellions for the reports so far. It doesn’t sound like there’s any clear cut benefit to using the mediation right now, except as an experiment to hopefully improve in the future.

I’ll be trying it out on a few of my apps anyway, once I get a chance to update them. Hopefully this is one of the products that Google iterates quickly on (like they’re doing with Google+, for example!)

I’m hoping that soon you will be able to try to serve an ad from all your networks before serving adsense ads. I’ve often wondered if turning off adsense and sending more requests to my other ad networks when admob couldn’t serve an ad would benefit me more even though I lose the near 100% fill rate. So it would be cool for them to have adsense as a seperate network in the mediation so you could just set it as a last resort.

So lets hope they spend alot of time making this mediation layer more robust.

I am pretty sure, that admob will be replaced by (or integrated in) adsene completely at some point of time …

eCPM is pretty meaningless unless you are talking about eCPM + impressions = money.

What you want to compare are (for a given ad size and timing rotation):
= CPC (cost per click)
= CTR (click through rate)
= fill rate

What you will notice is that once you have optimized advert position and placement to give you the best results, the next thing in your control is WHICH advertiser you get to show your adverts.

Ignoring fill rate (just so we can point out something that is not often discussed… normally people concentrate on fill rate calcs):

Advertiser 1:
CPC = $0.05
CTR = 0.30%

So eCPM = 1000 ads x 0.30 /100 x $0.05 = $0.15

Advertiser 2:
CPC = $0.08
CTR = 0.15%

So eCPM = 1000 ads x 0.15 /100 x $0.08 = $0.12

With same refresh rate and impressions my eCPM was on MM not higher than on Admob, that’s acutally the reason why I cancelled this Mediation project after 2 days.
It doesn’t make sense to for my small revenue to share it on three different networks and then wait monthes for reaching the minimum payouts.

I still wish, there were a feature, where the admob sdk can fall back to internal banners when there is no connection available.

That would instantly drive every ad-blocker useless xD

They have the ability to call a custom event to be able to use other ad networks that are not supported. I wonder if that event would get called if it couldn’t reach any of the ad networks because of ad blocking? Or if it couldn’t connect to admob in the first place then it wouldn’t be able to get list of networks and percentages and just do nothing?

I may play around with that and see. The more I think about it, probably the second case above. But worth a shot experimenting with I guess.

update
after digging around a bit I found this

https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/docs/android/intermediate

You can override the onFailedToRecieveAd event and call your own code. You could probably put your own banners in the ad layout in this event. I’m not even going to bother testing the custom event because I know thatwon’t work if they are totally blocking all ad networks. This method however should still work.

admob sdk does tell you, when it didn’t get an ad - so you can implement your own ads. But than I have to struggle around with placement and scaling so it is the same as the admob ad - would love if I could just ad a pic and the sdk does the rest… naa, maybe I’ll write my own wrapper, to reuse it xD