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How to Increase AdMob eCPM for Growth Apps (Part 2/3)

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The bottom line

Growth-phase apps raise AdMob eCPM by opening up competitor ads, lifting show rate above 60%, and mediating through bidding instead of waterfall. Together they raise the price advertisers pay and the share of won ads that get shown.

Key takeaways

  • Unblocking competitor ads raises eCPM without much hurting retention. 1:53
    • Many developers block competitor domains and categories at launch to protect revenue, so the fix is to remove those blocks (2:36).
    • Test it on about 10% of the audience and watch retention before opening it further (3:04).
  • A show rate above 60% keeps advertisers bidding on your inventory. 5:24
    • Show rate falls when users never reach the ad screen. A 50% win rate caps an end-of-level interstitial at a 50% show rate (3:55).
    • Refresh calls made while no ad slot is free also hurt it. An advertiser who wins but is shown only 35% of the time gets a bad deal and stops bidding (4:54).
  • Bidding beats waterfall in the growth phase because it has lower latency. 6:16
    • Bidding asks about 10 partners at once and the best price wins. A waterfall asks one after another, so latency grows and eCPM drops (6:42).
    • Meta's Audience Network (FAN) is the obvious first partner after AdMob, with the largest inventory and good global eCPMs. Smart, AdColony and AppLovin are others, but only those that support bidding (7:14).
  • Once bidding runs, multiple calls at high, mid and low prices may add a little more. 9:07
    • This step is optional. Test it, and if it adds no value, bidding alone should be enough (9:32).

Competitors are the highest eCPM demand that you're ever going to get, because they are trying to get your users.

Sid, AppBroda

Chapter summaries

0:00 Competitor ads come first in the growth phase

Mediation starts once the app has product market fit, and unblocking competitor ads is the first step.

  • Mediation belongs to the growth phase, not launch. 1:09
    • Launch work is about retention metrics and level design.
    • Growth is when revenue and daily active users are already good.
    • Sid lays out a step-by-step order for mediation.
    • The first strategy he always recommends is competitor ads.
  • Competitor ads sound risky but cost little retention. 1:34
    • They seem like they would drain downloads and users, but not necessarily.
    • Run an A/B test on a small audience before committing.
    • The aim is to keep retention intact while giving away a little.
    • Many apps saw higher eCPM with little retention impact.
  • Blocks come off only after the user relationship is built. 2:58
    • Launch is about retention and building that relationship.
    • Once it holds, open up a test group.
    • If eCPM rises a lot and retention holds, open it further.
    • There is no setting to enable. Blocking controls are what you loosen.

3:16 Show rate drops when returned ads go unshown

Show rate is the share of ads AdMob returns that the app actually displays, and design choices lower it.

  • A low show rate means ads were returned but never displayed. 3:30
    • AdMob has an ad for you, but the app does not show it.
    • Two causes explain almost every case.
    • Developers ask Sid about this often.
    • Game design decides how many players reach the ad screen.
  • Backup ads and refresh calls trade show rate for speed. 4:17
    • Developers keep a backup ad loaded to cut latency.
    • It looks like a good strategy but lowers show rate.
    • The problem case is a refresh call right after an interstitial was shown.
    • Show rate is one more number worth raising.

5:17 Show rate and the bidding choice

Caching, ad placement and refresh set the show rate, and bidding avoids the latency a waterfall adds.

  • Show rate is fixed by how ads are cached, placed and refreshed. 5:24
    • Show rate never reaches 100%, so 60% is the practical target.
    • Caching is the first thing to optimize.
    • Check where in the app the ads are shown.
    • Check how refresh behaves.
    • Done in the growth phase, it keeps paying off across the whole app cycle and its eCPMs.
  • Waterfall is the old habit, and bidding is the newer setup to use instead. 5:50
    • Bidding is a recent addition to Google's ecosystem.
    • Long-time developers learned waterfall first and still treat it as the default.
    • A waterfall tries AdMob at one eCPM, then Facebook at another, then AppLovin at a third.
    • Bidding lets partners compete at the same moment, so it beats waterfall most in the growth phase.
    • Bidding has fewer partners, but the latency cost of a waterfall lowers eCPM more.

8:56 Last step and recap

Multiple price calls are an optional extra, and the core plan is three simple steps.

  • Multiple calls are recommended but not required, and the deeper version waits for the maturity phase. 9:00
    • The three steps are to allow competitor ads, get show rate above 60%, and use bidding only.
    • Part 3 covers eCPMs for mature apps.
    • Multiple calls suit developers still not getting enough from mediation.
    • More on multiple calls is held back for the maturity phase.

In the growth library

Sid, AdMob monetization expert at AppBroda, with host Steve P. Young of App Masters. For apps in the growth phase, three steps lift AdMob eCPM: reopen competitor ads, raise show rate above 60 percent, and move mediation to bidding instead of waterfall. Each one targets how advertisers value and win your inventory.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript309 lines
0:00

what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of masters.com the place you go when you want action-packed content related to helping you grow your app downloads and more importantly and the main reason you're joining us here is to increase your revenues in particular your admob ecpm and joining me in part two if you missed part one go check it out it is specifically how to increase your admob ecpm for that launch phase you're just getting going you're trying to figure it out you're trying to find product market fit if you're a game you're trying to figure out hey what are the retention metrics that you should be going into maybe it's level design all these parameters but now that you figured it out you're in this growth phase now you're like hey i'm ready to scale i'm getting revenues i'm getting good daily active users now sid tell me how to scale so sid is joining us again from aproda where he's going to really break

0:53

down how to increase your ecpm for growth phase apps sid welcome back my friend hey steve thank you for having me again man uh great to be here great to have a great to have this conversation i think this is going to be a really interesting conversation uh because you keep on telling me sir i don't talk about mediation i think this is the phase where everybody wants to do mediation and should do mediation i said one of the biggest takeaways for me in that previous video is you're like don't do mediation in that launch phase but i guess now is when we should start incorporating mediation here correct and what i'm going to give you is a step-by-step process of how you should go about doing it right now again the first strategy i always always recommend is competitor ads now this this might seem a little counter-intuitive right you would say why competitor ads man that's going to really really drain my

1:46

app of all the downloads of all the users right but not necessarily we we've seen a lot of apps where enabling your competitor ads actually increases your ecpm and it does not have much impact on your retention so again something you should definitely give a try do an a b test run it on a small audience try it out because competitors are the highest ecpm demand that you're ever going to get because they are trying to get your users so if you're able to still retain your users and give away a little bit to ensure your attention is not impacted too much but you're still making iec pm he said how do you enable competitor ads is that the setting within admob like how do you know to enable competitor ads i don't know how to do that sure so it's not about enabling it's actually the other way around a lot of developers we work with what they do is right in their launch phase they actually disable all the competitor

2:38

ads now in the in the initial phase of your life you want to ensure that you're not being targeted by your competitors they're not taking away your revenue so usually what happens is in your blocking controls you'll remove all the domains and the categories that might might be considered as competitors but again you've removed them you figure out your app again like i said launch is all about retention right building a relationship with the user so if you've built that try it out try it out right around 10 of your audience and see if it's not impacting too much of your retention and is increasing your ecm massively maybe you want to open it up a little bit and see how it goes if it works definitely something that you should try now let's go to strategy number two show it now this is also a question i get asked multiple times uh and i i it's important to understand what sure it is about what

3:28

can you do about it so let's get into it now show it simply means admob has an ad for you he's returned it to you but you did not show it for some reason right there are two primary reasons why that happens first the user did not reach the screen where the ad was supposed to be displayed let me take an example now let's say you have an interstitial in your game which appears at the level one end but you're designed you've designed your game in a way that your wind rate is fifty percent now when your wind rate is fifty percent automatically you're sure it would become 50 why because the user is never landing uh because the user is landing only 50 times at the windscreen the other reason is uh you're asking admob for an ad even when there is no ad slot available so to give you an example if uh again if you have an interstitial you've shown the interstitial but you've done a refresh call now what happens is i show it this is a

4:24

very common strategy again that i've seen within developers that they keep on calling as they have always a backup of ad available to reduce the latency of the ad call but sometimes you end up compromising your short it and the show rate goes down now it might seem obvious that this is a good strategy but think of it from a very logical sense uh here's an advertiser who's trying to bid for your inventory he's won it now he's won it but there is let's say if you're sure it is 35 there is only a 35 chance that he's actually going to uh show that ad on your app that sort of is a bad deal for the advertiser right so essentially what happens is automatically those advertisers stop bidding for your inventory because the win rate after show rate after the win rate is also low so another very very interesting thing to focus on figure out how to get your show rate up uh again there is no clear number as to what is the good number or

5:20

a bad number obviously sure it never goes to 100 but a good number to keep in mind is always bring it above 60 percent uh there are obviously multiple strategies to focus but the main thing you should sort of optimize on is your caching understand how your caching understand where you're showing ads understanding the refresh and make sure your show rate goes above 60 this by itself will have a very very long impact in your app cycle and your ec pms so please get this sorted in your growth phase now strategy number three mediation now mediation is also two kinds uh you have waterfall and you have bidding now uh bidding is something that google has recently introduced in their ecosystem right and among the two a lot of developers who have been in the ecosystem with google for a very long time have always experienced uh mediation or the waterfall strategy as the primary strategy now again in the growth phase i actually

6:19

recommend you to not go into mediation in terms of waterfall but rather focus on bidding there are two primary reasons for it first because in the growth phase the latency of ad is extremely important right if you actually choose pitting over a waterfall bidding has an extremely low latency for a simple reason bidding means uh uh your for your ad request admob is asking 10 partners at the same time that who's got the best ad available what's the best price that you guys can give me and whoever gives the best price actually comes back and gives me the ad on the other hand when you do a waterfall it actually keeps on asking one after the other and that increases the latency so depending on who's winning in the cycle your latency would go up so very very important aspect choose bidding over mediation now another thing is obviously the number of partners that are limited in mediation in bidding but i think an obvious choice

7:14

would always go after fan the second partner after admob is fan largest amount of inventory available in terms of ad demand good ecpms globally available great player again a lot of other partners that are available are smart or ad colony app lovin but again only focus on partners who can do bidding don't look at mediation at this point in time because latency is going to be affected and that is going to have a drop in ecpm so you said don't focus focus on bidding over mediation that mediation is yes is that waterfall or is it just yes look i know mediation works sure sure so i think the same feedback so mediation so mediation hdb can be set in two ways one is to create a waterfall a waterfall is a simply step-by-step process that first hit admob at a certain ecpm if that's not working out hit facebook at another ecpm then if that's not working out go to app login and hit another acp that's the oldest way that

8:16

mediation has been set up but google on admob itself has launched a bidding as a setup that allows you to actually compete at the same time it is far superior as opposed to mediation especially in the growth phase so sid if i can interrupt so if i can break this down you're saying the waterfall method where you're trying to call different and be like do you have this high ecpm no go to this mediation or this network you have this high ecbm no that that causes latency which may hurt you but go after bidding so don't go after waterfall if i can summarize what you do correct okay got it completely right man completely right all right now let's go to the last step the last step and this again is important you don't have to always do it but this is recommended if you're still not getting enough out of mediation is actually doing multiple calls so now again you've set up the bidding ecosystem great now google has

9:16

launched this new uh flow strategy that allows you to set high mid and all prices so if you've set the bidding ecosystem in place try and figure out a high bid a mid bid and a low bid just set these up and test it out and see if it's going to add value to it if it's not don't worry about it mediation should be more than enough to get it but if you're looking for that little extra jump may or may not work out but do test this out if not there is always something that i have stored for you for the lo for the maturity phase we can talk more about multiple calls during the maturity phase oh i love that little tease all right anything else you want to talk about on the growth phase that i'm going to miss uh no man i think again i'm recapping competitor ads give it a shot show it definitely get it above 60 and mediation bidding only that's it three simple straightforward strategies step by step to make sure your ecm

10:14

increases all right in part three for you big guys out there you found this you're mature now you're just trying to go bigger bigger bigger bigger you know get hungry on that so join us for part theory where we're going to talk about ecpms for your mature apps all right until next time i'll see you on the next video