The Ad Monetization Manager’s primary role is to achieve the highest possible advertising revenue for publishers. Whether your organization has a dedicated position or if this responsibility is distributed among other roles, it is vital to prioritize advertising and stay up-to-date with monetization trends. This involves continuously refining ad placements, trying different ad formats, keeping an eye on ad quality, and staying informed about industry advancements. By consistently improving ad strategies and adjusting to changing market dynamics, businesses can effectively utilize their digital assets to generate greater returns from advertising space.
Ad Monetization Manager challenges in 2024
Undoubtedly, Google’s recent decisions present a challenge for Ad Monetization Managers. In October 2023, the company declared its plan to transition mainly towards real-time bidding auctions for apps. It means that they stopped responding to waterfall calls that lack a bidding ad unit. Additionally, from January 2024, the decision has been made to discontinue responses to multicall requests within hybrid setups. In other words, it caused a reduction of multicalls, limiting the number of non-bidding instances to only one per waterfall. But what can Ad Monetization Managers do to maximize the positive impact on the applications’ performance?
Bidding optimization
One of the challenges the Ad Monetization Manager role imposes is effectively managing bidding strategies. This involves setting minimum eCPM floors to achieve the highest possible bid for each country or country group and preventing from outselling your inventory for too little price. Although for many, this tactic is better known as a solution for web content, it’s now gaining momentum and showing auspicious results if applied to mobile apps. eCPM floor prices can be set by users on, among others, the MAX and LevelPlay platforms. A goal to success is finding a sweet spot for the floors in each ad format and country or region. However, it’s a never-ending process because you should adjust bidding rates constantly due to the application’s performance. To automate the whole process, in December 2023, Bidlogic presented a tool that improves monetization effects in particular countries and mediation groups. It tests the minimum eCPM levels and adjusts the price appropriately.
Waterfall optimization
Optimizing waterfalls has been one of the main tasks for monetization specialists for quite a long time. Now, after bidding has taken over most of the revenues, it might be tempting to leave the time-consuming waterfall construction of eCPM bids. However, it’s not advisable because, in most applications, 20-30% of revenue is derived from waterfalls. To boost earnings from displayed ads, the Ad Monetization Manager adjusts, removes, or relocates eCPM placements within ad networks in waterfall setups. Each app may have numerous waterfalls due to segmentation by countries, regions, and ad formats. Additionally, Ad Monetization Managers should now prioritize even more latency monitoring, particularly concerning bidding networks, since they seem to be more sensitive to response times from the networks.
Ad quality control
Quality ad control is all about taking care of the quality of displayed ads and making sure that no incorrect, harmful, or competitive ads are being displayed. Ad Monetization Manager keeps track of ads that are already served, identifies advertisements, advertisers, or ad networks facing quality problems, and removes them. Thanks to all the above-mentioned actions, a publisher is ensured that bad ads don’t stop him from getting higher revenues, as high-quality ads tend to have higher CTR. What’s more, intrusive or inappropriate ads can disrupt the User Experience of the app, potentially driving users away from your product. To avoid such a scenario, you can utilize solutions like ironSource’s Ad Quality tool, which helps you monitor the performance of ads and get a notification whenever an undesirable ad is displayed.
Ad events design
Another duty of the Ad Monetization Manager is ad events design, which, simply speaking, is the act of planning and implementing advertising events within apps, considering where, how often, and how ads appear to users. This bread and butter for monetization specialists usually includes conducting A/B testing, utilizing platforms like Firebase, and tailoring strategies based on user segmentation, such as IDFA or non-IDFA users and regional divisions. Notably, while ad specialists typically prioritize boosting eCPM through optimizing ad network stack or the waterfalls, they often overlook the potential benefits of increasing ad quantity or enhancing their presentation within the app or game.
Summing up
Effective monetization of mobile applications involves more than just placing ads strategically; it also entails optimizing the application and sharing insights with developers to implement cutting-edge solutions. With the evolving landscape of online advertising in 2024, app and game owners may find it daunting, but Ad Monetization Managers should look for appropriate solutions regardless of market shifts. Crucially, in order to boost your advertising income, you can also rely on the right partners. Especially those who offer individualized help and streamline various repetitive tasks. If you’re interested in automating processes focused on getting an optimal hybrid monetization formula that assists in the optimization of both real-time bidding and traditional waterfalls, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
