0 1. What is advertising aggregation?
General definition of intermediary: Intermediary can aggregate multi-party advertising SDKs, coordinate the advertising request and presentation logic of each advertising space, and make multiple SDKs work normally in one advertising space.
The ultimate goal of advertising aggregation is to improve the efficiency of advertising request and display and eCPM.
Mediation can be achieved in two ways:
1. Independent development
Advantages: Developers can independently control the logic of advertising request and presentation, and the process is transparent and flexible.
Disadvantages: Aggregation SDK has a high technical threshold, which requires constant experiment, update and optimization, and long-term investment of time and energy.
Use three parties
Advantages: It saves labor development and maintenance costs, and can request and display multi-party advertising SDK on a single platform, thus improving eCPM and filling rate.
Disadvantages: The whole process is a black box, and developers can't know the actual request and logic.
To sum up, it is suggested that developers with strong financial strength and large scale can choose to develop aggregation independently; Novice developers can consider starting from three aspects.
02. How to choose aggregation
There are many polymerization products on the market, so how to choose a suitable polymerization platform? I think there are the following reference standards:
1. Access and operating costs
Is the advertising SDK easy to access? Is the operation of aggregation platform easy to understand?
2. Supported advertising platforms and advertising types
Can the types of advertisements supported by aggregation meet the demand? Does the supported three-party advertising platform meet the demand?
3. In-app bidding
Compared with traditional waterfall bidding, in-app bidding can reduce labor cost and delay, which is the development trend of advertising bidding in the future. The specific content will be mentioned in the next article. Therefore, we should consider whether to support in-app bidding.
4.SDK stability and defects
Is there a strong technical team to support and provide stable services?
5. Data center
Whether it is visual, which data dimensions can be subdivided, the timeliness of data, whether it can pull multi-party data and accurately calculate the channel ROI.
6. Other special functions
Do you support automatic optimization? Is A/B testing supported?
03. Overseas Top Advertising Aggregation SDK
Admob？
Background:
Below Google, there is a golden signboard of "the world's largest mobile advertising platform". Admob covers more than 200 countries and is the largest mobile advertising platform in the United States.
Access and operating costs:
Admob is Google's advertising aggregation, and the technology access is relatively simple; The background setting is relatively simple, the logic is concise, it is not easy to make mistakes and the operating cost is low. It is a beginner's entry model.
Supported advertising platforms and advertising types:
Support banner advertisements, spot advertisements, reward video advertisements and native advertisements; The supported advertising alliance is super powerful, basically covering all the well-known advertising alliance in the market, with more than 40 * * *.
In-app bidding:
In-app bidding is still in the testing stage and is only used by some publishers. There are many advertising sources that can be supported, including: Aarki, AdColony, AppLovin, Fluct, Facebook, Index Exchange, OpenX, Rubicon Project, Smaato, Tapjoy, Liftoff, Triplelift, UnrulyX and Publicized.
SDK stability and defects:
With the support of Google advertising technology, the service is stable and the probability of system paralysis is very small.
Data center:
The report can be divided into hours, some data can be visualized, and the data can be connected with Google products such as Google Adwords and Firebase.
Other special functions:
Support automatic optimization, and automatically sort by obtaining relevant data of three-party advertising sources.
Disadvantages:
Have their own advertising source tendency, biased towards admob advertising source.
Reference link:
Maximum value (AppLovin)
Background:
Team members have worked as Admob and Mobpub successively, with strong technical background; AppLovin is the first platform in the industry to launch in-app bidding aggregation.
Access and operating costs:
Access requires a separate application authority, and the successful application depends on the product; There are many functions supporting operation in the background, which has a certain threshold compared with other aggregate SDK.
Supported advertising platforms and advertising types:
Support Banner (banner advertisement), Interstitial (centerfold advertisement), award-winning video (reward video advertisement) and MREC (medium and long banner advertisement); Support more than 20 advertising platforms.
In-app bidding:
It is the first platform in the industry to launch in-app bidding aggregation. In-app bidding supports AppLovin, AdColony, Facebook, InMobi, Mintegral, Tapjoy and Pangle, and Max can support the mixed mode of bidding and traditional layering.
SDK stability and defects:
Strong technical team and stable SDK.
Data center:
Support developers to pull relevant data into their own BI system through API or accurately measure user costs through tracking platforms such as appsflyer.
Other special functions:
Provide A/B testing tools with perfect functions. Game developers can clearly see the impact of the adjustment of their bidding strategy on ARPDAU (average income of daily active users).
Reference link:
/Documentation/Mediation
Tieyuan
Background:
An Israeli company started as an intermediary and docked many DSPs. IronSource was rated as "the company that young people want to work most" and "the sexiest company" by Israeli media.
Access and operating costs:
You can open the corresponding aggregate SDK by registering Ironsource account, and the technical documentation is relatively simple and the access cost is relatively low. The background operation is simple and easy to use, and all operations such as advertisement display order adjustment, in-app bidding optimization, and advertisement monetization strategy adjustment can be easily realized in the same interface.
Supported advertising platforms and advertising types:
Support Banner (banner advertisement), intermittent (spot advertisement) and incentive video (incentive video advertisement); Support more than 10 mainstream advertising platforms.
In-app bidding:
At present, the new online function only supports Ironsource, AdColony and Facebook, but it can also support the mixed mode of bidding and traditional layering.
SDK stability and defects:
Strong technical team and stable service.
Data center:
In-depth analysis and understanding of each player through background or customized reports. The data report includes DAU, ARPDAU, ARPDEU, LTV and advertising interaction rate.
Other special functions:
Support automatic optimization; Support A/B test, but the function is not perfect; Support the operation of waterfall in different countries.
Reference link:
/iron source-mobile/Android/Android-SDK/
Mopub
Background:
Under Twitter, it focuses on RTB services.
Access and operating costs:
The overall function and logic are similar to admob, but many functions that developers can play are added, which is relatively difficult to develop and suitable for developers who have a certain understanding of advertising technology. Mopub's advertising network is very strong. In its advertising network, Line item runs advertising materials with a specific budget and uses special parameters to locate advertisements. And each different advertising parameter corresponds to a different priority, so the configuration is relatively complicated.
Supported advertising platforms and advertising types:
Banner (small banner), Banner(Mrect) (large banner), interactive (screen insertion), reward video (incentive video advertisement), reward playability (interactive incentive advertisement), native (native advertisement) and native video (native video); Advertising platforms that support advertising platforms above 10 and are not on the official list of MoPub can participate in advertising bidding together as long as the platform develops MoPub adapters.
In-app bidding:
All cooperative advertising platforms can support in-app bidding.
SDK stability and defects:
The official docking efficiency is relatively low, and the bug is not fixed in time.
Data center:
The data report is updated in time, and users can get real-time data after triggering the advertisement display; The dimension of revenue data is relatively complete, and RTB advertisements are different from third-party advertising alliance advertisements; You can process the data yourself, or send the data to the third-party analysis and attribution platforms such as Adjust, AppsFlyer, Branch, Kochava, Singular, SOOMLA, Tenjin, etc., so as to accurately calculate the LTV of each user.
Other special functions:
Marketplace:MoPub's own RTB network, as a supplement to the cooperative advertising platform, is convenient for developers to better obtain RTB advertisements. RTB advertising can help developers realize that advertisers who get exhibition opportunities are the highest bidder every time, which is beneficial to developers to increase advertising revenue.
Reference link:
/publishers/mediation/mopub-network-mediation/
04. Summary
If I make a comment on the above four kinds of advertising aggregation, my personal thoughts are:
Admob is suitable for novices, with low cost in all aspects and is not easy to make mistakes, but it is biased towards its own advertising sources;
MAX has relatively perfect functions in all aspects, but the application authority is not easy, which is suitable for products of a certain scale;
The docking cost and operating cost of Ironsource are relatively low, and the functions such as in-app bidding and A/B testing are not perfect compared with MAX.
Mopub is very extensible and suitable for fine implementation, but it has a high technical and operational threshold.
There is no best advertising aggregation, only the one that suits you best. For these top overseas advertising aggregations, the realization efficiency has been verified for many years and is reliable.
Experiments have been done. The same product and the same bidding strategy are assigned to different advertising SDK, and the number of advertisements displayed per capita is almost the same as ARPU. Of course, because each advertisement request and caching mechanism are different (serial, parallel or mixed, the number of caches is 1 or 2), the per capita request and display rate of process indicators will be different.
Therefore, since each advertisement aggregator has its own advantages and disadvantages, there is finally a question, what do you care more about in order to help your team realize more efficiently? This is the final reason for deciding which advertisement aggregator to use. Of course, if there are complex convection requirements, it is recommended to build your own aggregation.