App monetization is indispensable for the growth and success of an app. For any app publisher, AdMob is their go-to platform for ad monetization however, if you are struggling to increase your AdMob eCPM. The key is to understand the lifecycle of an app!
An app’s life cycle goes from launch to growth and then maturity phase. Each phase requires a different monetization approach due to varying needs. Increasing your AdMob eCPM or app revenue largely depends on your app’s lifecycle stage.
Would you like to know how to increase AdMob eCPM in the launch or growth phase?
You can check out the below-listed articles:
- Increase AdMob eCPM in the Launch Phase of your App
- Increase AdMob eCPM in the Growth Phase of your App
Nonetheless, in this article, we will focus on increasing AdMob eCPM in the Maturity Phase of your App. But before we get to that, let’s analyze what exactly the maturity phase is.
Maturity Phase of The Mobile App
The Maturity Phase of an app is when your app is successful! Your app now has millions of users, thousands of regular organic downloads, scheduled updates, planned features, and many other such happenings!
The maturity phase of an app is when you have achieved it all and are now willing to scale further. It is also a phase where you make a stable income through AdMob or other app monetization platforms. You have figured it all out! So, where do you go from here? And how do you increase your AdMob eCPM?
Here are three factors you must deliberate to increase AdMob eCPM and overall revenue:
1. The Historical Data
Analyzing the app’s historical data lets you track and improve monetization efforts over time. It also provides key insights essential for the optimization of eCPM. Furthermore, it helps you better understand and segment your app monetization strategies.
2. Form A Baseline
After studying the historical data, form a baseline by considering essential metrics such as Retention Rate, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), Cost Per Install, Session Length, Ad Request eCPM, etc.
For example – if your historical Ad Request eCPM is $1, this becomes the baseline for Ad Request eCPM. Any increment on the baseline eCPM can measure all your optimization strategy’s success.
3. Increase Your Competition
To improve the eCPM for your app inventory, increase the number of demand partners. By now, your app must have a large DAU/MAU, and your users must be valuable to the advertisers. Increasing your competition means letting the advertisers fiercely compete for the ad space on your app, eventually increasing the bid rate.
Scope of Optimization in the Maturity Phase of an app
- Formats – The choice and placement of an ad format can shape how you monetize your app. Ad formats can help increase engagement and unlock new ad inventories to maximize ad revenue. For example – Rewarded ads can help increase the engagement within an app by offering extra life, premium usable, or ad-free experience in an app.
- GEOs – Creating user groups based on the GEOs and having a personalized strategy for each becomes essential. Besides Google AdMob or Facebook Audience Network(FAN), most ad networks are designed to work better in specific geographies. For example, Applovin does exceptionally well in North America. Whereas AdMob performs better in Asia.
- Devices – Users can access your app on multiple devices with different screen sizes. Displaying ads seamlessly on as many devices as possible is the key to good CTRs. An ideal way to ensure this is by segregating the devices based on low-end, mid-level, and high-end. It also helps you understand the type of users you have and gain more insights.
The Strategies to Adapt in the Maturity Phase
Before adopting a new ad strategy, list down the relevant ad networks for your app. Contemplate these ad network partners based on your segmentation mentioned above – the types of users, the various ad formats, the devices, and the GEOs. These segments will help you analyze the bidding method to opt for, the priority order of these ad networks, and the strategies to adapt.
- Mediation Strategy: AdMob mediation can optimize the best-performing ad networks and help build a robust revenue model. You also have an option to access multiple ad networks with Open Bidding and ensure the highest paying network wins. Mediation strategy in AdMob offers built-in solutions to help you automate and simplify your monetization. It allows you to scale your setup across many ad units seamlessly.
- Waterfall vs Header Bidding: The waterfall method in mediation sells the ad space to the first-in-line ad network you may have manually given preference. On the other hand, header bidding ensures that inventory is always sold to the highest bidder giving equal priority to all the demand partners. Waterfall follows a preferential auction method based on historical data, while header bidding is real-time.
- Control Groups: Setup control groups in your mobile app that allows you to understand the effect of a change in your monetization strategy. It can help A/B test with different ad placements or demand partners to figure out the best performing strategy while rolling an update to just a small set of your users.
- Defining Ad Experience by Country: This app optimization strategy is highly personalized and may not apply to every app. Although, if your app has substantial traffic from multiple countries, try to split your user’s ad experience to suit the behavior of each country. For example – Rewarded ads work immensely well in Tier 1 markets such as the US. However, if you have more users from Tier 2 or 3 markets such as India, Vietnam, or Brazil, where users don’t mind watching an ad for free app use, try increasing the ad density. Hence, understand each market separately, study the competitors, learn geography and the kind of ad experiences users are used to and then build your ad experience accordingly.
Conclusion
Does it look like a lot of work? It definitely is!
Juggling between app development, creating content, scaling users, and monetizing is difficult! So, get in touch with AppBroda as we take care of your end-to-end app monetization, revenue optimization, and user acquisition so that you can do what you do the best – creating great apps.
What are you waiting for? Book a free consultation now!!
