Recommendations on how to improve monetization of mobile apps

August 14, 2020

Yandex Mobile Mediation helps mobile app owners optimize the revenue they earn serving ads from different advertising systems in their app. It does this by using a machine learning algorithm that predicts which system will offer the most favorable bid, and then checks this system first. In this article, we share tips on how to set up mobile mediation.

Connect to more advertising systems

Experiment with your lineup of advertising systems — remember that having a larger number of monetizers helps ensure a high fill rate for your ad slot, no matter what the audience.

Mobile Mediation from Yandex currently supports nine monetizers with significant market popularity. These advertising systems cover audiences across different countries and support common ad formats: banners, native ads, full screen and rewarded video.

Set at least ten thresholds for the ads systems selected

To increase fill rates and app revenue along with it, set ten thresholds for each ad slot and for each advertising system where possible.

Ten is the optimal number to help train the Mobile mediation algorithm, allowing it to develop a plan to pass the thresholds and minimize the number of repeat requests to each monetizer.

Keep track of statistics and adjust your thresholds

To optimize the algorithm's performance, figure out which thresholds are the most profitable. Having a regular look at your statistics will help you identify them. Check your data once every two weeks to make conclusions about which thresholds bring the most revenue from advertising systems.

Let's say that you have thresholds ranging from 10 RUB to 190 RUB set, and you notice that most of your revenue comes from the 10, 30 and 50 RUB thresholds. If that happens, try temporarily giving up the higher thresholds and direct your attention to the lower ones — divide them up into smaller increments, with differences of just 5 rubles.

To see how new ad campaigns affect impressions, set your highest threshold significantly higher than the rest, e.g. 20-30 RUB higher.

Adjust the caching time of your ads

Limiting ad caching times will help you increase your revenue from the ads appearing in your app. If your mobile app's content appears as an infinite feed, set the ad caching time to no more than 20 minutes.

When a user opens the app, ad materials pre-load. This does not mean that interaction with the banner occurs at the same time — the user may analyze a page's content and look through articles. If the ad impression takes place 20 minutes after the creative was cached, some ad networks do not pay for such impressions. Limiting the caching time can increase revenue from the ad slot.

Caching time limits allowed our partners from the Sport-Express app to increase their CPM more than threefold.