Monetizing your mobile app doesn’t have to suck

Presented by Rubicon Project

If you’re a mobile publisher or app developer, you have likely experienced at least one roadblock when it comes to selling your inventory. First, there are the delays caused by heavy SDKs that slow applications and take time to connect with an ad network. Sure, it might seem like a minor delay, but time is literally money in the mobile world and even a minor delay can ruin your carefully crafted user experience — not to mention access to the best inventory.

In the hyper-competitive world of apps, a single bad experience is unacceptable and can cause immediate churn. Simply put, if you want people to keep using your app, your monetization solution has to work flawlessly, and the creative has to fit in seamlessly with the experience of the app.

In addition to taking a toll on the user experience, conventional mobile advertising solutions are outdated and force publishers and developers to leave money on the table. Why? Because conventional in-app advertising solutions rely on waterfall auctions that don’t actually create a true marketplace for each ad impression. Instead, they rank all buyers based on the total revenue they have traditionally offered. When a given network or exchange is engaged, its entire demand pool has to be dried up — including the poorly-performing campaigns — before the next ad network can participate.

Most DSPs and exchanges actually have limited demand and there are other buyers in queue with better paying campaigns — that is, there is more money on the table if you can access it. But today, most publishers are trapped inside the waterfall, and there’s no getting out. Worst of all, waterfalls end up undervaluing automated ad inventory, which is expected to be the source of 80 percent of mobile advertising demand by 2010 according to IDC Research’s 2016 Programmatic Forecast. You’re not simply trapped; you’re trapped in the past.

Header bidding is the answer to mobile monetization

While not everyone knows about it yet, there’s already a solution that eliminates the inefficiency that comes with waterfalls. That solution, header bidding, does away with the one-network-at-a-time waterfall approach. Instead, it enables multiple buyers to bid on every last impression your app serves. In other words, header bidding creates a truly open advertising marketplace that maximizes your in-app revenue.

What about those painful delays as an SDK connects with an exchange? Header bidding solves that one, too. The super lightweight code was purpose-built for mobile and integrates easily with your primary ad serving and ad rendering SDK. Now, your monetization solution simply calls the exchange to run an auction on every impression, and then selects the highest bidder that satisfies all of the rules you’ve set. Best of all, this simple monetization solution supports all of the creative formats you need, including the 100 percent user opt-in rewarded video format that consumers want.

Header bidding is the right step forward for in-app advertising. It’s faster, more profitable, and finally brings the full promise of programmatic (automated) advertising to mobile apps. The good news for app developers is that a lightweight header bidding solution is already available from Rubicon Project to give publishers a more meaningful way of selling in-app inventory to one of the largest, independent marketplaces in the world with 250 mobile buying platforms that bring demand from tens of thousands of advertisers.

To learn more about Rubicon’s Header Bidding solution, click here.

Bill Wolfe is VP, Product Management for Mobile Apps at Rubicon Project.

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