With the mobile gaming industry constantly evolving – testing, measuring, and optimizing is the air developers are breathing. To lay that groundwork, Sinan Cagalyan, Ad Monetization Manager, walks us through how Outplay Entertainment is implementing sustainable long-term paths that guide their decisions with the powerful capabilities of Fyber FairBid’s, such as multi-testing and data-driven ad placements.
Here are some of our favorite highlights from our interview:
Multi-testing is helping us reach the results we need
A mediation platform is a single platform used to streamline the integration and management of several ad networks running within the same traffic source. Most importantly, mediation reduces the overhead work on integrating multiple SDKs into one. In addition to mediating ad networks, Fyber FairBid offers developers a powerful tool for multi-variate testing of ad monetization strategies. Outplay saw multi-testing as a prime opportunity to test more variants at the same time. “With multi-testing capabilities, we are one step ahead of simplified A/B testing. There is always room to grow and explore”, says Sinan, “for instance, we can create multiple test groups, which is efficient and helps us reach data-driven decisions more quickly”.
Outplay house multiple reward ad placements that are implemented inside the game. Sinan shares that “each placement behaves differently in terms of eCPM, ad revenue performance, engagement, etc”. Through multivariate testing, monetization managers can identify a problem, formulate a hypothesis around it, create the variants by changing a single factor in a control group, selecting the traffic split in a way that is comfortable for them, and start running with the test.
With more information, we save time and money
Outplay work with multiple different ad networks, so naturally, it’s time-consuming to go into each of them individually and check their performance. Using Fyber FairBid they are able to access all the data in one place. “The fact that it’s the most transparent and accurate mediation platform is really essential for us”. Sinan continues to explain that the different ad networks that they work with, compete with each other, and therefore affect each other’s performances. Outplay noticed this.
With Fyber FairBid’s capabilities, “we are able to zoom out to see the bigger picture with visibility into the overall performance and results of each network”. Sinan continues to share how “this saves us a lot of time, and gives us a clearer and more accurate lens into what is happening in our reports. Aside from that, it makes our operations a lot easier and lets us stay on top of all the key changes in our monetization performance and optimize our strategy accordingly”.
How we measure KPIs in placements
With our mediation platform, Outplay is able to create, customize and measure different ad experiences (for the same ad format). They have placements that some players can watch only once a day, or only once they level up, whereas some ad placements have no limit, and players can watch ads over and over. However, depending on the placement, eCPM can be affected in the long term. Therefore, KPIs in placements really depend on their individual performance.
Sinan shares: “In some cases, it might be better to increase the volume, but then you may have to lower the prices too. In other cases, an instance can underperform (you may need to decrease the price or remove the instance altogether) or overperform (potential to increase the price a bit more). Features like the placement ID allow us to go in more depth”.
In-app bidding helps with better performance and higher eCPMS
As the adoption of in-app bidding is picking up pace, multiple different ad networks are leaning into it and developers are integrating it into their monetization strategy. “In-App Bidding provides us with more stable performance over the traditional waterfall model, and helps us maximize our potential. We can still set up waterfalls manually and it can work quite well but sometimes they don’t perform exactly how we wanted them to”.
Because multiple ad networks have the opportunity to bid on every impression, there’s a higher likelihood that the impression will be filled – ultimately increasing fill rates.
