Saurabh Bhatia is CEO of Chocolate.

After years of showing potential, advertising is fast becoming a key revenue generator for mobile games.

This is particularly so with the rise of ‘hyper-casual’ titles that rely on advertising to make money, rather than in-app purchases.

And these days there are a plethora of ad types to fit a developer’s needs. Static banner advertising, video ads, playables, rewarded advertising, each can be tailored for a title’s specific requirements.

Ad mediation

One company in the middle of this mobile games advertising boom is Chocolate, which offers a special Ad Mediation tool. The firm is especially focused on building a brand video advertising platform that can benefit both developers and advertisers equally.

“We realised how difficult it can be for mobile game developers to build a successful business out of a great app, says Chocolate CEO Saurabh Bhatia (pictured, main).

“They lacked tools which could help them monetise, so Chocolate built a comprehensive solution that powers app developers to turn their digital content into revenue generating engines.

“Chocolate Ad Mediation is a tool that serves as an end-to-end monetisation solution for mobile games developers. Through our in-app video advertising platform, developers can unleash the true potential of their app inventory and increase ad revenue, CPMs and fill rates by integrating just one intelligent SDK.

“In addition to ad mediation platform, Chocolate has its own exchange – Chocolate Marketplace a global programmatic buying and selling platform for mobile video advertising.”

Chocolate Ad Mediation differs offers developers the ability to add and manage multiple ad networks and demand partners.

Through its universal auction tech - providing real-time competition among all ad networks - the company says it can increase eCPMs by at least 20 per cent, as against the traditional waterfall model used by other mediation platforms.

Its segments and A/B testing feature meanwhile helps devs divide their audience and serve contextual, personalised ads based on demographics, in-game app behaviour, device type and more.

“We are the global leaders in mobile video advertising, providing the widest range of ad units like rewarded video, native, pre-roll and full-screen interstitial ads for developers to choose from, that can help improve engagement and user satisfaction,” says Bhatia.

Key partners

Chocolate has worked with numerous apps developers, including a leading sports entertainment app and various games.

On the demand-side of its Ad Mediation SDK meanwhile, it has partnered with ad networks like Google’s AdMob, Facebook Audience Network, AdColony, InMobi, Tapjoy, Unity Ads and others.

It serves companies all over the world, from clients in the US and Europe to India and other APAC countries.

The firm says since the launch of its Chocolate Ad Mediation platform in early Q4 2017, more than 1.2 billion in-app video requests have been processed.

“We have observed 126 per cent growth in ad revenue for app developers on our platform in Q1 2018 versus Q4 2017,” says Bhatia.

“The rewarded video is the top performing ad format with 1.5-times the eCPM versus other video ad formats. Video ad impressions served via Chocolate mediation platform has seen an exponential rise of 316 per cent in Q1 2018 versus Q4 2017.

“The US, followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico are the top countries based on average eCPM in Q1 2018.”

For more information about Chocolate’s Ad Mediation platform, visit the website here.

You can also read the company’s full report on app monetisation for games developers here.

The report offers in-depth analysis of in-app advertising revenue, the top performing in-app video ad formats, the top countries based on eCPMs and more.