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

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The bottom line

Mature apps raise eCPM by making more ad networks compete for each user, using mediation tuned by format, device and geography. At this scale, small gains in each segment add up to large revenue jumps.

Key takeaways

  • Past performance split by format, device and geography is the base for every decision. 2:30
    • Most networks sell only where their sales teams are. AppLovin does very well in the U.S. but may not give the best eCPM in India.
    • Rewarded video is a format where Unity is reported to do very well.
  • Running bidding and waterfall together fills the gaps that either one leaves alone. 5:36
    • Not every partner is available on bidding, so bidding alone leaves demand out.
    • Group networks with similar eCPMs, then group them by geography, format and device.
  • Small tweaks in each segment bring big revenue gains at scale. 6:37
    • Seasonality in network CPMs cannot be predicted, so test small partners on a control group of the audience to spot upticks.
    • Developers have seen massive eCPM spikes just from getting this strategy in place.
  • The ad experience should match each country's market. 8:17
    • In the U.S., where rewarded demand is high, cut interstitials and focus on rewarded.
    • In high-volume, low-eCPM markets like India, Brazil and Vietnam, a heavier ad load fits what users already see.
  • Three device buckets of high, mid and low end are granular enough. 10:08
    • Lists of devices for each tier are easy to find online, and AdMob provides them.

Increasing your competition means that for every ad request, every user that you have, you're making multiple people compete for it.

Sid, Aproda

Chapter summaries

0:00 Where a mature app stands

A mature app has already solved launch and growth, so the open question is how to earn more from users it already has.

  • A mature app has scale, a steady product cycle and a mediation setup already running. 0:45
    • It has over a million downloads and organic users.
    • Updates are planned and scheduled.
    • Part one covered launch, where the goal is product market fit and there is no mediation.
    • Part two covered growth and the choice between waterfall and bidding.

2:10 Build the baseline, then talk to partners

Higher revenue per user starts with studying past data and learning what each partner can offer.

  • A baseline needs historical data and a team that reads it regularly. 2:54
    • Earlier mediation experiments supply the data.
    • Analytics work grows as the data grows.
    • A dedicated team has to watch it on a regular basis.
    • Networks behave like sales teams, so eCPM is highest where their salespeople sell.
  • Next, shortlist relevant partners and ask each what it can offer. 5:00
    • Describe your audience, formats, devices and geographies to each partner.
    • Ask what eCPMs each can work with.
    • Each partner answers with what works for it and which audiences it has.
    • Partners also describe the campaigns they run, which builds your own knowledge.

5:56 Setting up segments and testing seasonality

Segmenting takes work up front, and a control group is the only way to catch network seasonality.

  • The setup work pays off because every later optimization builds on it. 6:21
    • Once the groups exist, each small segment can be checked for what works and what doesn't.
    • The speaker admits it looks like a lot of work, but says everything else then starts falling into place.
    • Mediation and bidding are set up so each network is read by geo, format and device.
  • Network seasonality has to be measured because it cannot be forecast. 6:51
    • Each network has months of very high CPM and months of very low CPM.
    • A sales team behind each network drives this, so "March beats April" can't be assumed.
    • When a small partner on the control group spikes, move it up in the waterfall.
    • Bid optimization and direct deals through Google Ad Manager or AdX are a separate topic.

8:17 Ad experience by country and device

Ad load should follow each market's habits, and device tuning needs only a few broad buckets.

  • Country-level ad experience matters most when two or three countries carry the audience. 8:23
    • It fits cases where those countries bring about 70 to 80 percent of users.
    • Study each market and what its competitors do, then build the experience to match.
    • U.S. users face rivals with deeper pockets and clear ad experiences.
    • In India, Brazil and Vietnam, volumes are huge and eCPMs low, so heavier ads are tolerated.
  • Device tuning works with broad buckets, not individual models. 10:08
    • There is no need to separate a Pixel from a Moto.
    • The goal is a few larger buckets that are easy to operate.
    • AdMob's lists help sort devices into the three tiers.

In the growth library

Sid and Steve P. Young, Sid, ad monetization expert at Aproda (Approach); Steve P. Young, host of App Masters. Mature apps with hundreds of thousands of monthly users can raise AdMob eCPM by segmenting performance by format, device and geography, then running bidding and waterfall together. It also covers testing ad network seasonality with control groups and tuning ad experience per country, which Sid says have produced massive eCPM spikes for developers.

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

Transcript349 lines
0:00

what is up app nation you made it it is part three of how to increase your ad bob admob ecpm and joining me like always is sid from approach look i'm gonna break down part one and two first part one was all about apps in that launch phase you're trying to find product market fit you're just getting it out there maybe spending a little bit money just to test the retention what are the features great points there no mediation all right in part two we talked about the growth phase now that you found product market fit you're really trying to think about that skill how do i get more and more users and you are now thinking about mediation and sid really broke down the waterfall versus bidding which one you should be doing all right i'm not going to spoil it so check out part two if you missed that and in part three we're gonna talk all about those mature apps you got a million downloads you got

0:50

organic users you've got a product cycle you're making updates that are planned scheduled you're a legitimate company right you got some really good users you got things all planned out you figured everything in out everything out and now you're like hey all these millions of users that we have hundreds of thousands of active monthly users what do we what can we do beyond mediation that can really help us increase our ad revenue so we're gonna break it all down right now with my partner in crime the guy that knows all about this stuff because frankly i know nothing and i'm learning with you guys and taking notes with you guys is sid from atroda sid welcome back to part three my friend thank you thanks for having me third time man i know we made it and i am hopeful one time friends [Laughter] we've done so many videos together i have i feel that i'm part of ab nation now man i love it man you are definitely that

1:55

all right said well i'm gonna hand over the the floor to you it is all yours help us increase more monies i've done it sid i've got i made it man i've got lots of users now i need to just make more money from each user that i have correct and that's exactly where you are right now now uh think of it from a simple scenario right you've got good amount of dau you've got a stable income in place now the only simple way to look at it is to increase your competition right increasing your competition means that for every ad request every user that you have you're making multiple people compete for it you're saying that guys this actually user is much more valuable than you think you're paying for so give me a better rate for it and that's exactly what we want to do today we want to help you understand how to get a better buck for each user that you have now let's start with the most basic thing

2:52

form a baseline now when i say form a baseline it's important to understand the historical performance of your entire app now if you watched part two of the video i said and i talked about setting up mediation right and if you've already done that if you've already uh sort of mediation and experiment with a lot of things you would have historical data available right and this is where it becomes really tricky because that's where a lot of data analytics will now start kicking in you'll have to have a dedicated team who's looking at this on a regular basis and i'll tell you i'll get into a minute as to why that's important right so again like i said let's start forming the baseline let's look at the historical performance and the three things you should sort of segment that is on format devices and jio for each one of them you can actually look at a different ad network let me let me give you a few examples now let's

3:43

say geography right uh besides google and facebook most ad networks are designed to work in certain geographies in simple terms you would think of it like sales team right essentially there is a sales team sitting at the end of the company where who's going and selling ads and saying okay guys i have these 10 apps i want you to start putting these azure because they're supremely relevant the users are amazing here so wherever their sales team are present that's where you're getting the most ecpm from so i'll give you an example applovin phenomenally well in the u.s but maybe if you go to an india it might not give you the best ecpms similarly if you're looking at format format is also supremely important because again that it ends and boils down to what sales teams are finally selling at the end of the day so if you have rewarded video one partner that i have heard across does really really well is unity

4:36

so it is important to understand what formats what geographies what devices that you have and devices also a third parameter which i talked about uh again it's an important way to sort of segment these devices go into high mid low pricing devices and sort of see where your audiences are what your audiences looks like and what ad networks current ad networks that you have and how are they performing now the next logical step would be have a list of partners that you feel would be really relevant for these start talking to all the partners and understand okay guys i have this kind of audiences is the kind of formats is that kind of devices the kind of jio what can you do what kind of ecm's can you work with us how can you help us each of them will come back with answers in terms of what works really well for them what kind of audiences they have what kind of campaigns they run so understand build

5:26

your knowledge on that and start working on it now once you have all this information in place then start looking at your mediation strategy if you uh if you remember what we spoke in video two we talked about setting up um your bidding in place but the limitation with bidding is not all partners available on bidding so the smart thing now to do is actually to look at bidding and waterfall at the same time one is just not enough in today's world so you've got to sort of segment your audience and look at mediation and bidding set up your ad networks in such a way that they look at jio format device and start understanding how they are clubbed it is also interesting to always club ad networks which have similar ecpms in a certain group and then club them by jio club them by format club them by device this seems like a lot this seems like a lot of work right but it's extremely important you get this setup in place

6:24

because once you do everything now then starts falling in place and little little optimization will come in place a little while back i said you need to start looking at data and this is where this comes in handy because each of these smaller segments you'll have to start analyzing start looking at what's working and what is not because the scale you're at little little optimizations on either these subsets will have a very massive jump in your revenue now while you're doing this it's also important that all of these ad networks have a seasonality seasonality simply means that there are certain months that they will have extremely high cpm certain months they will have extremely low cpm now if i tell you that march is a better month than april for app 11 that's unfortunately not true because essentially like i said at the end there is a sales team sitting out there who's actually selling and it's a completely

7:12

uh it's completely it's impossible to predict when it's going to go up or down but what you can do is set up control groups set up control groups in your ecosystem that allows you to understand the seasonality of all these ad networks take a small percentage of your audience and put small partners there to understand if there is a seasonality spike you've got to figure out these upticks in seasonality so that you can change the mediation stack and ensure you put a partner up in waterfall now again this seems like a lot of work man but guys this is very important to get your ecpm up we've seen developers have massive spike in ecpms just because they get their strategy in place now uh another very interesting thing and i think this is where cam comes in place or google ad manager or radix what we talk about is bid optimization and direct deals but again that's a conversation for another day we'll talk

8:08

about addex separately but this is a really good setup in place you should get this done the other strategy that you can look at is defining your ad experience by country now it this might not work for everybody but if you have audiences in two or three countries which contribute about 70 to 80 percent of your audience with 20 20 30 30 split it's also important to understand that you split your experience in a way that works for a certain country uh right if and again this is very generic approach that i'm talking about here but for example if you think about rewarded rewarded is a great format that has extremely high demand in the us so if you're looking at u.s audiences which are extremely mature which have a lot of competitor apps who might be doing iops who have clear ad experiences what deeper pockets it is important to understand maybe maybe you got to reduce your interstitials there right focus on

9:02

rewarded as a format get users to understand the experience give them that ability to do it but for example if you're looking at tier three markets or tier two markets whereas india brazil vietnam where users are still you've got larger volumes you've got extremely large volumes but the ecpms are low and maybe your iteration is a little okay there so what you can do is you can increase the ad experience because every other app in the ecosystem has high ad experiences so you've got to understand and study each market separately understand what your competitors are doing understand what the geography is about what kind of ad experiences these guys are used to and then build your ad experience accordingly this also has massive impact on your revenue so these two strategies extremely important sid how granular should we get when it comes to the devices is it as simple as hey here's an iphone versus here's an android or do we

9:56

figure out like hey these android devices are super like it's a google pixel and this is like a moto moto xp or whatever it's called but like should we get that granular in terms of optimizing the ad experience for the device great so you don't need to get really granular man the idea is to break into larger buckets three buckets is usually something that has worked really well you have high-end devices mid-end devices and low-end devices the list of which is easily available online go online search for these devices you'll get a list of them admob provides these lists so you can sort of bucket these devices really well but don't go to granular just make it into three broader buckets that you operate in i love it all right one thing i want to say you guys look we broke it down it sid it's probably tired he's a tired man right now we have five different videos and in this three-part part one

10:46

launch part two growth and part three he covered it all in terms of mature apps now if you're interested in how to optimize your ad return revenues how to increase more ecpms i want to read a quote real quick from approada nayen says i was facing low ecpm issues in most of my apps i tried using a few strategies of my own but could not do much with aproda's plug and play optimization suite i saw great results and couldn't be happier so go check him out it is approacha.com he shared a ton of knowledge for you guys sid really knows his stuff once again it is approacha.com sid if the audience wants to connect with you in any other way do you want to send them anywhere else no man i think abroad is a great way to start we've got a lot of reading material for you to go and study just go to our website fill up the form speak to a specialist and they'll get you started with something which is completely relevant for you and get you

11:40

started asap i love it once again approach.com sid thank you so much for doing this thanks man thanks for having me thank you all and i'll see you on the next video