Interview

Mobile ad monetisation challenges and best practices

SafeDK's Ayala Rudoy discusses ad monetisation challenges and best practices

Mobile ad monetisation challenges and best practices

During Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2017, SafeDK Strategic Customers Director Ayala Rudoy discussed the challenges with ad monetisation, the quality of ads, how they impact the users and what the best practices are to better manage the ads users are seeing.

To find out more about ad monetisation, enagement and just how big ads could become in mobile gaming, we caught up with Rudoy after the show for more insights into the space.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you explain a bit about the services that SafeDK provides?

Ayala Rudoy: SafeDK is an end-to-end management solution for SDKs, it monitors SDK behaviour in real-time, identifies and alerts about any problem that can impact the app and its users, and allow the developer to easily fix it on the spot.

Our flagship solution also provides game publishers with real-time Ad Intelligence data from real users. It automatically detects and alerts about tech and content ad-related issues like ad crashes, latency issues, inappropriate ads, performance anomaly and blacklist violations.

What are some of the key challenges faced by mobile games developers using ad monetisation?

The main challenge today in the ad monetisation world as we see it at SafeDK, and as was recently commonly discussed in Postback Seattle, is how to gain more transparency over the ads in the app.

More transparency will allow game publishers the following:

1) Making sure the content of the ads is relevant to the target audience thus optimising the revenue coming from the ads.

2) Monitor how the user experience is being affected by the ads, thus ensure the different creatives don’t cause revenue loss in the long-term.

How engaged do you think mobile users actually are with the ads that they see?

We see various degrees of engagement depending on the content and format of the ad. Rewarded videos and playable ads get a significant higher CTR than regular interstitials.

What are some of the best practices you’ve seen when it comes to ad monetisation?

With ad monetisation there isn’t one way. It’s important to understand each app works differently and has a different target audience, so getting as much data as possible on the ads in your app and how they resonate with its specific users is the key for getting the revenue line to its max potential, taking into consideration the revenue and loss coming from each ad.

It’s important to make sure quality and performance is not compromised due to integrating many ad networks or third-party ad servers.
Ayala Rudoy

For games which consider ads as one of their main revenue streams, it’s important to make sure the quality and performance of the game is not compromised due to integrating many ad networks or third-party ad servers. Using SDKs management and transparency solutions is best practice and highly recommended.

Will advertising ever replace IAPs as the main revenue stream for the majority of mobile developers, or will it continue to supplement those revenues?

IAPs are an amazing way to monetise since you have complete control over the user experience, and the user journey that leads to revenues is more natural.

In many games, advertising is already the main revenue generating stream, but it has a long way to go before it can become the main revenue stream for the whole industry, though I believe that the revolution has begun.

With products like SafeDK’s Ad Intelligence mobile publishers can have full control and visibility on the user experience and the knowledge to turn their in-app advertising to an ultra-targeted one, which does not harm the overall user experience.

What do you see as being one of the biggest trends in the mobile games industry over the next year?

I think the personalised experience will take a front seat, giving users a tailored experience based on their behaviour and interests. We’re finally at a point where the technology is mature enough to enable this.


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