Manual or Automatic Mediation.

In every fight, there’s always a winner. In app monetization, there’s always a way to earn more.

App monetization and the ways to do it can be confusing, but don’t be overwhelmed! We’ve tasked ourselves here at AdtoApp to bring you a comprehensive review of both manual and automatic mediation–two of the ways to monetize your app. We will compare the two methods and find out which one can bring the most earnings to you.

Let’s get to know the methods and compare
Manual Mediation
With this method, the publisher personally chooses the ad network to advertise in, monitors the ads and optimizes them as needed. The process goes like this:
Publishers install the software development kit (SDK) of their chosen ad networks to their app.

If they want to advertise with more than one ad network in their spread, they need to install multiple SDKs.

Conflicts usually arise when more than one SDK is installed.

The publisher has to constantly monitor for changes in the ad network’s rates.
If the publisher doesn’t optimize by choosing the best rate, the app is losing revenue.

Automatic Mediation
With automatic mediation, there is a one-time SDK installation of the mediation program by copy-pasting 8 lines of code. Once the installation is complete, the program integrates the app with multiple ad networks. From there, automatic mediation program works like this:
The program uses optimization algorithm–a mathematical formula integrated inside the program–to choose the best ads.
What is ‘fill rate’ and why is it important?
Fill rate is a great metric used to gauge your method’s effectiveness. If you’re getting a higher fill rate, it means you’re selling more ads and earning more.

Fill rate is the percentage of ads that are actually bought and filled based on the number of ads you allocate to an advertiser or your whole campaign. For example, if you–the publisher–allocate 500,000 spots to fill with ads and 500 of those failed to display for some reason, the fill rate would be 99%. How did we compute this? Here’s the formula:

As you can tell, the closer to 100% the fill rate is, the better. It is very rare and almost impossible for a single ad network to buy all your ad spots, so the best way is to sell it to many ad networks.

Fill Rate: Manual vs Automatic
Manual Mediation
Conflicts due to multiple SDKs drops you to a starting point of ~90% Unstable ad networks not reporting precise rates= ~10% fill rate loss Changes in revenue stream= ~10% fill rate loss
Bugs caused by constant manual testing= ~10% fill rate loss Human error margin with manual control= ~10%

90% – 10% – 10% -10% -10% = 50% expected fill rate

Automated Mediation
The mediation program automatically integrates the app to multiple ad networks at the same time. Here’s an example of several ad networks integrated with only one SDK:
Optimization through advertising selection:

The program selects the best ad networks every 3 hours based on eCPM. eCPM is the “effective cost per thousand impressions” or the revenue you will earn for every 1000 visits to the site where the ad is.
Each ad network has a set maximum eCPM, the algorithm collects the data every three hours and changes the priority ad network according to the rates. The highest eCPM gets top priority.

If the app has low daily average users (DAU), the algorithm only assigns the most expensive ads. If the expensive ads are not enough for your requirements, the ad network with the next highest rate will be lined up.

This is how you get 100% fill rate which is not possible if you are only on one ad network or experiencing glitches due to multiple SDKs.
Optimization through Personagraph and “Country-Source” groups:

A mediation program like AdtoApp uses Personagraph to understand mobile users, their interests and their needs. Personagraph maps user behavior and uses the data to optimize the ads that will be shown to them.
Through “Country-Source” groups in the program, the publisher can filter the target users through geo ( location), age, interests, income, gender and other attributes.
The right ads get to the right users.

This process results to a fill rate of 100%.

What are the features of manual and automatic mediation?

There’s not much flexibility in manual mediation. The process is straightforward and there is very little customization to be done. The advantage of automatic mediation when it comes to features is customization.

Choosing advertising formats:
With manual mediation, the publisher is not able to sort the advertisements. If they want to customize or change a current format they’re using, they would have to send a request straight to the ad network.

With automatic mediation, the publisher can maximize profits by choosing the best formats depending on the target users and other factors. Available formats include creatives like:

Verdict:
Automatic mediation puts the app and the publishers in the position to earn the most revenue while manual mediation subjects the advertising outcome to a lot of factors outside the control of the publisher. It may seem that manual mediation gives power to the publisher; but upon our review, we can clearly see that this is not the case.

Choosing to go the manual route instead of trusting a specialized program to handle mediation for an app can cause serious losses. Automated mediation has the publisher’s best interests at all times and it works without having to take time off from a publisher’s busy schedule.

Now, which form of mediation do you think wins?

Check out AdtoApp FAQ for additional questions about mediation.

— modified on Aug 27, 2015, 3:03:27 PM