Last year Google introduced consent management platform (CMP) requirements, requiring publishers to gain explicit user consent to show personalised ads.

Speaking at the Dubai GameExpo Summit powered by Pocket Gamer Connects, GameBiz Consulting head of monetisation Božo Janković discussed why publishers should continue harnessing personalised ads.

Showing anonymised data from clients, Janković said the opt-in rate varied significantly across the best performing and worst performing games. Some titles had just a 64% opt-in, while the best had as high as 90%. The average opt-in rate for Android users was 76%.

He highlighted Outlets Rush as a good example for how to get users to opt-in. Typically, publishers have a pop-up screen with a button asking users to ‘accept’ or give permission for personalised ads consent. In the case of Outlets Rush, the team used a ‘Play Game’ button, encouraging users to click.

Janković highlighted the importance of gaining user permission for personalised ads by showing data for clients comparing eCPMs for personalised and non-personalised ads.

One publisher showed a substantial difference - without consent, they had a $5.5 eCPM rate, while with consent, this rose to $18.5. You can see further examples in the chart below:

“It’s very important to get that consent to help you achieve the highest price possible,” he said.

Janković added that there is some confusion some publishers that, because a lot of networks will show ads using bidding algorithms, there are no further optimisations to be done.

However, he noted a few examples of where continuing ad tests improved their performance by as much as 35%. This includes latency optimisation, bid floor tests and testing new ad networks.

He also said it was important to compare and run tests between traditional networks with bidders, as in some cases bidders can perform better, while in other cases the waterfall model works best.