The Mobile Ad Monetization Newsletter #10

💸What’s the dollar value of an impression💸? How much is an impression worth to a mobile publisher? Honestly, it depends… It's such a boring answer, I know. I don’t like boring answers, so let's break down the factors that decide what an impression is worth and make some models you can use to factor in impressions in your game design. Ok, everyone! Off into the ad revenue Rabbit hole🐇!

First, here’s a helpful formula: Ad Revenue = Fill x eCPM. Let’s start with eCPM. 

eCPM (effective Cost Per Mile) is the price an ad network will pay for 1k impressions. Let’s go down one more layer. How do ad networks calculate eCPM? All ad networks consider various factors to decide what an impression of a publisher’s user is worth. Google is roomered to use 94 different factors in their algorithm (yes, the weather is supposed to be one), and according to Town Gossip, the ironSource algo is based on 61 factors. According to late-night gossip, device price is the largest factor in the mighty Applovin algorithm🤷. Don’t quote me on this, as it’s gossip.

Gossip is fun, but these are the metrics that are given the most weight when a network calculates eCPM:

• Click Through Rate of ads shown in the last 7 days.

• Install Rate of ads shown in the last 7 days.

• Competitiveness or win rate on how often a network won bids for impressions in the last 7 days.

• Geolocation of user (the richer a country, the higher the eCPM…duh).

• Percentage of userbase that has made an IAP in the past according to network history.

• Number of impressions shown to the user before (the more, the lower).

• Was the network responsible for bringing the user to the app or game? If yes, networks will pay more because they have more data on the user (this is why organic traffic has a terrible eCPM and eCPM rises with UA).

Please message me if you know any of the factors ad networks use to calculate eCPM. I would love to hear about them!

*Takeaway: The eCPM you’re paid for impressions as a publisher directly correlates with the value of your user base to networks. The only thing you can do to optimize this is to improve competitiveness or increase UA.

Let’s look at competition a bit deeper, as this is the only influence you, as a publisher, have on increasing your ad revenue (aside from UA). Multiple ad networks bidding for your inventory increase your fill rate (% of impressions sold) and the competition. . A network adds to the overall competitiveness if a network is over 5% of your revenue share (Network revenue/total revenue). This is called the 5% rule. If a network is below 5%, the network does not add any value to overall competition and should be removed.

Okay, there’s been a lot of blabber. Here’s what I see impressions being worth on average across iOS and Android:

*Date range 15 Nov 2024 - 15 Jan 2025 Basket Games with 25% IAA & 75% IAP

*Date range 15 Nov 2024 - 15 Jan 2025 Basket Games with 100% IAA

*Taking away an impression's value will vary on the factors I listed above. If you message me saying that the values look off I’ll know you’ve not read the above. This is meant to help you plan out the value of impressions not be a source of 100% truth.

If you’re eCPMs look off compared to the above consider adding and removing networks in your ad stack or reach out to me and I’ll be happy to give you some tips!

💰Great Content 💰

What are the trends we see in ad monetizised games from the last 3 months? We’re joined by Katerina Maliaran, the head of ad monetization of Burny Games to take a look at 6 titles that have scale the download charts with only ad revenue. Check out our amazing and insightful episode.

🎯The Cinderella of the Week🎯

Miracles still happen! Despite the uber-competitive landscape in mobile, solo developers are still able to scale their IAA monetized games to crazy levels. This section is to salute you. Why? Because everyone loves a Cinderella story… that’s why.

Solo developer Ali Aidi has racked up 85k downloads in 2 weeks for his game Comfy Days Coloring Book. This means that this game, which is a simple colorbook game, has nearly reached 280k downloads since launching at the end of November.

For More Incredible Insights

Try 2.5 Gamers on YouTube!