Statistica reports search advertising spending is anticipated to reach 164.6 billion US dollars by 2022. This figure is expected to rise to almost 190.5 billion US dollars by 2024. This display advertising is to seize the right audience at the right time at the right location.
But what if your ad network doesn’t serve relevant ads to your users? Or it doesn’t provide the eCPMs that your inventory deserves. You must understand the best ad networks to monetize your gaming app to overcome these challenges.
In-app purchases(IAP) are a challenging sell for most mobile gaming app publishers. In contrast, Mobile advertising is a simpler approach to monetizing the ever-popular free-to-play mobile games.
A monetization expert can help you choose the best ad network for your mobile game. Furthermore, the best ad networks allow marketers to conduct more targeted ad campaigns and app publishers to monetize their services better.
This article will cover what in-game advertising is and the importance of game ad networks.
What Exactly Is In-Game Advertising?
Have you ever played a game and ended up watching an ad after clicking on an appealing graphic or puzzle? These playable commercials are outstanding instances of in-game advertising and act as samples for live mobile games.
In-game advertising typically prompts ad impressions during pauses, between stages, and after obtaining new lives. Various ad forms are shown to keep the audience’s attention for the duration of the ad’s runtime.
Ad networks serve as intermediaries that simplify mobile advertising by serving as a marketplace that connects advertisers and app publishers.
What Do Mobile Game Ad Networks Mean?
Ad networks for mobile games sell ad space within games. They do demographic, interest, and genre-driven research to attract more advertisers for game developers and publishers.
Gaming Ad Network links advertisers to mobile games with available ad spaces, thus helping game developers earn money.
Popularly used In-game Ad Formats by Mobile Game Ad Networks
Ad formats determine how and where an ad will display on a publisher’s app. Additionally, this allows adverts to stand out from the rest of the game’s UI, capturing players’ attention. This aids in monetizing a non-paying user of a gaming app.
The following are the most common in-game ad formats utilized by mobile game ad networks:
Interstitial Advertisements
Interstitial Ads are advertisements that cover the entire interface of their host apps. These full-screen ads captivate broad user attention, owing to their certainty.
Primarily, this ad style seeks to get the most ad impressions. These ads are typically presented as the user transitions between the various activities in a mobile app.
Banner Advertisements
Banner advertisements, as the name implies, are similar to digital billboards in mobile gaming apps. These immobile display ads appear on several mobile platforms and generate revenue through impressions.
Native Advertisements
Native advertisements are non-intrusive ads that blend with the app’s interface. These adverts target consumers with interests similar to those identified in the original app.
Playable Advertisements
This ad type provides a brief preview or sample game experience. These ads are designed to grab users searching for new experiences and encourage them to download the suggested app using visually exciting and dynamic content.
Reward Advertisements
Who hasn’t seen an advertisement for extra life in Temple Run or Subway Surfers? Video ads played for a few seconds in return for an additional life are common among mobile games. Rewarded video ads help draw ad impressions from highly engaging game users that may not have been interested in other forms.
This ad style is a consistent source of in-app advertising that increases ad revenue for mobile game owners.
Best Ad Networks for Gaming Apps
1. Unity Ads
Unity Ads enables mobile game developers to integrate Display, Video, and Playable ads on their apps. This ad network supports banner, native, and interstitial ad formats for app publishers.
It also employs machine learning to match the interests of gamers with mobile advertising, providing better lifetime value to the publisher.
A key quality of this ad network is its ability to target users interested in a specific gaming genre. With the support of Unity Ads’ analytics and solutions, you can meet your revenue and growth targets.
Unity Ads delivers the expertise and experience needed to support your monetization and user acquisition (UA) strategy, whether you’re a game publisher, advertiser, or both.
In essence, if you intend to monetize your game with ads, you should not overlook this ad network.
2. Media.Net
Media.Net is a rapidly expanding global advertiser network that strives to run excellent ad campaigns by promoting licensed products and high-quality display ads. The ad network is used by a number of well-known ad tech businesses and publications. This assists publishers in selling ad space on their blogs or websites by showing relevant keyword tags.
Media.Net has created a D2S (Display-to Search) ad format that combines a user’s search history with future keywords. This procedure shows pre-approved advertisements on many platforms, including mobile gaming.
By using Media.Net as their ad network, the customer may tailor-make ad units and change the layout of advertising to meet their needs. Ads in gaming applications can be displayed by Media.Net even when the user’s game screen is in motion.
3. Chartboost
Chartboost monetizes your mobile gaming app by directly managing ad campaigns and giving publishers control over their ad inventory.
Chartboost, owned by the mobile game company Zynga, provides all standard ad formats for gaming apps like Interstitials, banners, and Rewarded ads.
Chartboost offers a simple SDK integration, diverse ad formats, high eCPMs, and a transparent revenue-sharing approach, making it one of the best gaming ad networks.
4. AppLovin
AppLovin is one of the few ad networks focused entirely on mobile advertising. It covers all ad formats, from banners to video ads. It provides high eCPM and fill rates to game developers to maximize profits.
AppLovin is amongst the top gaming ad networks, relying on the fusion of numerous forms to establish a huge ad community and generate amazing results for publishers.
It offers options for CPI and CPC-based advertising in terms of bidding strategies.
5. AdColony
AdColony is a mobile advertising network that offers app publishers a more native integration of ads by changing the color scheme and typefaces of the ad asset.
It is also one of the leading ad networks that offer high-definition video ad campaigns for app monetization.
AdColony offers a programmatic ad purchasing solution and improved ad tech that accepts CPI and CPC pricing schemes.
6. Vungle:
Vungle is one of the most dependable gaming ad networks for game developers and publishers. It offers high-quality video ads for games and apps, accessible on several operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows, and Amazon.
It has data-optimized advertising for over 1 billion devices, offering optimum worldwide exposure, involvement, and conversion.
7. Start.io(Previously StartApp)
Start.io, previously known as StartApp, is an app monetization platform focused on in-app advertising. It specializes in interstitial ads, app walls, native ads, and video commercials.
This ad network uses the CPM campaign to maximize revenue for app publishers.
Startapp works with app developers to help them better monetize their free apps by introducing search advertising to mobile devices.
To Conclude
The mobile game business is constantly growing. Although there are several methods for monetizing mobile games, determining which in-game ad network is best for you is crucial to getting the most out of your game.
As a game or app publisher, it is crucial to select the best ad network for monetization. Since the landscape for mobile game advertising is changing rapidly, the ad networks responsive to the changes will accomplish more than others.
At AppBroda, we understand that developing an app, scaling users, and monetizing them could be very overwhelming. Hence, we offer mobile app monetization service to save your time and focus on what you do best – creating great apps!
So, what are you waiting for? Book a free consultation NOW!
