Fine tuning your mobile app monetization strategy for better ad revenue and performance isn’t always easy. Especially when you are doing it solo and things change as fast as they do these days. In just a few decades, publishers went from selling ad inventory directly to brands to relying on automated programmatic systems. Now the industry is shifting again, working towards standardization, and keeping up is no small task.
Today, Abraham Armas, our brilliant Software Engineer, is making a special appearance on our blog to discuss some of his best and timeless tips to level up your mobile app monetization strategies. Let’s make life easier for you as a publisher!
Use High Value Formats
In the app world, it’s common to see people only using a banner ad format. Sometimes even overusing it because “it’s the thing that best adapts to the layout”. To make a winning strategy, it’s important to use a variety of ad formats strategically.
The usage of high value ads that the user interacts with in your app helps improve CTR, Viewability, Time in view, etc… which leads you to a better CPM and to set up a good strategy that can:
- Increase session duration and thus user retention (EXTREMELY valuable for advertisers looking to spend money on your ad space)
- Make users happier as they are using the app in a positive way.
- Improve app revenue since you are using more formats, have better user retention, and generate more intentional impressions.
Leverage Rewarded Ads beyond gaming apps
It’s a huge misconception that Rewarded ads are only fit to be used in mobile games apps. You can use them in any app if you implement them correctly into your strategy. Here’s an example of how you could leverage this ad format in a news app, for instance:
Let’s say you open a news app and start reading the articles. After browsing around for a while, you come to a point where you reach the limit of articles you can read for free. Then a message comes up giving you the option of either waiting a certain amount of time or watching an ad voluntarily to continue reading a little more. This is a Rewarded Ad (mobile app edition).
The rewarded ad is used as a deterrent in this case. This makes this ad format command a high CPM, since users opt in to watch the ads. Since we can expect the app users to watch the Rewarded Ad instead of waiting at least once or twice per session to get back to reading, this is highly beneficial for you as a publisher.
This should improve overall ad metrics because each rewarded ad impression is intentional. Users are engaging with the app to continue their experience, not just browsing briefly. This reduces wasted ad requests, boosts viewability and CTR, and ultimately increases overall CPM.
Set up your UI properly
Differentiate between tablet and phone UIs
Differentiating between tablet UI and phone UI might not be everyone’s favorite task, but we highly recommend going through it so you can optimize the ad sizing, and the ad positions for all your UIs in different devices.
Don’t load the footer on every page, let it reload naturally!
Publishers often rely too heavily on banners (to the point of overuse in some cases). If users navigate quickly between screens, repeatedly requesting a footer ad in the same spot leaves that space blank most of the time and generates unseen impressions, hurting your ad metrics.
To solve this, you should request banners that are always anchored and let them refresh instead of making multiple calls. Consider anchoring the banner to the top or bottom of the screen. Make sure to only partially change your UI below or on top of the banner using Fragments or Compose in Android or child ViewControllers in iOS.
Con la nostra Monetize APP SDK solution we try to re-use requests and ad content, so this happens less when requesting the same ad ID. Our team is on the lookout all the time to spot these kinds of problems on your app and provide swift solutions.
Don’t stick to a single demand provider
Most publishers who want to jump into the app monetization trend tend to follow the “get started” pages of AdMob or Facebook. If they play around for long enough, they might get into ad mediation themselves but soon after they’ll figure how hard it is to keep up with updates and the A/B testing of the different ad networks and demand providers (which could be a lot).
Then, they move into mappings and check statistics of their platforms. And finally, on top of it, they need to dive into bidding, which is another ordeal: keeping track of bidders, real time auction performance, ORTB or TCF standards changes that occur every few months…. etc.
It could be messy taking this titanic task on your own. Counting on an AdTech partner to handle all the optimizations of the different demand sources is an easy fix. They will make sure to include only the demand that matters to your platform and notify you when something with the Consent is a problem and give you the solutions.
Turn your mobile app into a gold mine!
Elevating your mobile app’s ad monetization strategy is all about striking the right balance: generating revenue without compromising the user experience. To achieve this, you’ll need to choose the right ad formats, design your UI mindfully, and connect with high-quality demand partners to maximize your yield.
Here is where we can give you a hand! At Refinery, we are passionate, so we want to deliver a service tailored to you. We review each app and website to see if we can improve their strategy. From there, we can help with the next steps to make the most of it!
Get in touch with our experts to get a personalized review of your app and learn all about our Monetize App SDK solution for easy app monetization! Let’s join forces!
