With over 2 million apps in the Apple App Store alone, competition is fierce among mobile app developers to attract and retain users. In order to monetize their apps, mobile developers must choose the right ads and integrate them in a way that sustains a positive user experience. Historically, the Offer Wall has been popular with mobile developers, as the ad format presents a selection of relevant ad offers from advertisers and then rewards user actions with virtual currency. For custom integrations, Fyber provides an Offer Wall API, which allows developers to take raw offer data and display it in virtually any way they want within an app.

Fyber makes it easy to implement the Offer Wall API, guiding you every step of the way. Here’s a high-level overview and some key insights.

Native offer integrations

One major benefit of the Offer Wall API is the ability to let you customize the appearance of the offers and place them natively within your app. We’ve helped many top app developers integrate high paying offers natively into menu screens, level maps, in-app stores, and more. To drive monetization, implement the ad in a location in your app that is very visible for users.

The popular strategy game, “Throne Rush” by Nexters, is an example of how to successfully use the Offer Wall API:

1. As displayed in the screenshot, “Throne Rush” prompts users to click on a Gem in the middle of the map.

2. After clicking on the Gem, “Throne Rush” displays an incentivized Offer Wall ad with a reward and the user earns currency. The result is a more engaging, user-friendly ad experience as the displayed offer blends well with the overall flow and design of “Throne Rush”.

Philip Bykovskiy, Project Manager at Nexters stated “Offers displayed natively really increase the engagement rate of the Offer Wall. Also, they increase the average payout from Offer Wall completions.”

Rewarded display ad integrations

Developers can use the Offer Wall API to increase engagement with various display ad formats.  Any app that uses virtual currency can display a rewarded offer as an interstitial or banner ad, and encourage users to interact with the ad. Apps without virtual currency can display an interstitial ad that requires users to complete an offer before they can unlock premium content.

Highlight campaigns with big budgets

Fyber’s Offer Wall API also allows publishers to choose which offers to display. This is especially useful if you know that a certain advertiser is running a high-volume burst campaign with a big budget. Developers can tap into this budget by pushing the campaign to as many users as possible with banner, interstitial, or native ads that leverage the Offer Wall API.

Christophe Bach, CEO of TextMe stated, ”We have seen massive success from this strategy. Users love seeing the special reward offers, and we get amazing boosts in revenue by working closely with the Fyber team to push burst campaigns to our user-base.”

Get Started!

The sky’s the limit with the Offer Wall API, and Fyber’s team of industry experts have helped hundreds of top apps use it to increase ad revenue! To learn more, send an email to developers@fyber.com, or contact your Account Manager.

The post Take Offer Wall Monetization to the Next Level with Custom Integrations appeared first on Fyber Blog.

Mobile video is a great way for advertisers to engage with target audiences in key moments. For video ads using the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) standard, an effective way to reinforce messaging and drive user interaction is using End Cards.

Background on VAST

VAST is a widely used IAB guideline that enables ad servers to use a single ad response across multiple publishers and different video players. VAST instructs video players on what type of ad to play for various scenarios, how the ad should be displayed, duration of the ad, if the ad can be skipped, where to find the ad in the ad server, and what the click-through URL should be. VAST also allows companion ads to show within the canvass of the video, while End Cards are a version of companion ads that help improve performance for advertisers.

How do End Cards work?

When a user has completed watching a video, End Cards allows the user to interact with the ad and easily connect with the advertiser. Examples could include a travel advertiser who provides a gallery of travel deals to click on, a retail advertiser who offers coupons to download, or a gaming advertiser who provides a link to an app store for downloading the game. The result for advertisers is higher engagement rates that maximize the full potential of ads.

Implementing End Cards is Easy

Here are steps for Fyber advertising customers that want to implement campaigns with End Cards:

• Setup your campaign ads on a VAST compatible ad platform
• Use different sized ad images for the different device types and resolutions, including 1280×800 for tablets, 960×640 for phones, and 300×250 as a general fallback
• After the user completes the video, Fyber’s SDK will identify the best image for the size and the aspect ratio, then it will show the ad to the user
• When the user interacts with the End Card, tracking URLs for the click are pinged by the Fyber SDK to track the user’s actions for reporting purposes

Get started!

To learn more about how End Cards can help increase ROI for your advertising campaign, please reach out to your Account Manager or email advertisers@fyber.com.

The post How video advertisers can use End Cards to improve performance appeared first on Fyber Blog.

Flaregames is the publisher behind Royal Revolt 2, the popular action game that lets players build and defend their own fantasy kingdoms.

Starting in 2014 flaregames worked with Fyber’s expert monetization and growth (M&G) team to significantly increase player engagement and Ad ARPDAU in Royal Revolt 2. The success came down to getting players more engaged with rewarded video, a strategy that Fyber’s M&G team encouraged the publisher to implement with expert advice and guidance.

3 expert suggestions for increasing engagement and Ad ARPDAU

1. Ongoing performance reviews that helped flaregames understand key metrics – In addition to daily status updates, Fyber’s M&G team analyzed Royal Revolt 2’s weekly performance to pull out the best metrics to bring to flaregames’ attention. The core metrics were the placements of ads, the level of player engagement with ads, and how they both impacted ARPDAU.
2. Using proprietary data to help set performance targets based on network benchmarks – Fyber’s M&G team also analyzed data from similar titles within our own platform to gauge how well the ad units in Royal Revolt 2 could have been performing. Offering flaregames benchmarks that they would not have had access to was another value-add.
3. In-game implementation recommendations that resulted in incremental growth – At every phase, Fyber’s M&G team offered flaregames recommendations on how to better integrate rewarded video. For example, one of the first improvements was connecting the ads to an in-game reward (in this case, allowing players to earn Food for the next battle in exchange for watching an ad). Later improvements continued to boost incremental growth.

The results were impressive – Ad ARPDAU in Royal Revolt 2 increased by more than 10x. The gains came as result of smarter placements and overall strategy around rewarded video.

“Working with Fyber, we were able to integrate rewarded video in Royal Revolt 2 in a way that made the ads and rewards a key element of the game. The increased engagement and Ad ARPDAU were a clear result of the M&G team’s industry expertise and knowledge of smart ad placements.”

JUSTIN STOLZENBERG, HEAD OF STUDIO, FLAREGAMES

Download a copy of the case study here.

The post flaregames increases Ad ARPDAU 10x with Rewarded Video appeared first on Fyber Blog.

Last month digital marketers from around the world headed to Germany for DMEXCO, one of the largest digital marketing events in the world. Traditionally, a buy-side focused show, it now attracts more developers and publishers as programmatic real time bidding (RTB) is becoming a bigger part of mobile game monetization strategies. In fact, the move towards inclusion of transparent and efficient RTB exchanges, and away from working only with traditional ad networks is happening so fast that some game developers are at risk of missing out on the benefits of programmatic advertising today.

Programmatic RTB is an automated way to connect advertisers looking for specific types of users (i.e. audiences) to sellers  (i.e. mobile game developers) that have those desired users. From a yield management perspective, RTB is similar to how mediation automatically connects games and apps to multiple ad networks to optimize revenue. However, the flexibility, transparency and volume of advertisers on RTB platforms provides compelling arguments to include programmatic advertising into any monetization strategy. So how would a developer get started?

Here are three key criteria in evaluating what you should look for in the best supply-side platform to monetize your game effectively and extract maximum benefit out of programmatic advertising. It comes down to working with the most comprehensive and flexible supply-side platform, which supports mediation, cross promotion and ad serving in addition to programmatic RTB.

• Higher fill rates

Whether working with a mediation provider, an ad server to enable direct deals or several ad networks, there are still times when you might have ad space that goes unfilled. Similar to other perishable assets such as hotel rooms or airline seats, if you don’t serve an ad to a user at a specific moment, that revenue opportunity is lost forever.
Programmatic platforms can significantly increase the amount of demand for in-app inventory because thousands of advertisers might be connected through hundreds of demand side platforms (DSPs) looking for inventory. All else being equal, the more demand you’re plugged into, the greater the chance of a relevant ad getting served, which increases fill rates and makes you more money.

• A different type of advertiser for your game

Programmatic ads also bring new types of demand — essentially a new class of buyers — to the app monetization equation. In-app campaigns are quickly becoming “must-haves” for global brands and agencies, which have billions to spend per year.

In the not-so-distant past, global companies and brands like Unilever, IKEA etc. were reluctant to advertise in mobile games. The hesitation possibly had been driven by misconceptions of the types of users that make up gaming audiences, or due to a lack of awareness as to the strength of metrics such as rewarded video completion and engagement rates. With the shift of time spent on desktop and TV to mobile and the rise of ad blocking, in-app inventory is gold to brands and agencies looking to effectively reach and engage various audiences.

This is good news for game developers who might want to show fewer user acquisition campaigns of competitive games or simply want to provide users with an ad experience that includes a variety of both brand and user acquisition campaigns.

• Higher eCPMs

The great thing about RTB platforms is that they enable thousands of brands and agencies with potentially large budgets to access your inventory efficiently and in real-time.  With all of these potential advertisers competing for your inventory, bid prices are driven up, which in turn raises your eCPMs and delivers more revenue.

So what do developers need to do to capture this higher-priced demand?

Because so much of advertising from brands and agencies are driven by targeting and automation, the mobile games that supply clean and relevant user data like Google Advertising IDs and Apple IDFAs, lat/long coordinates etc. are the ones that will get the programmatic deals. And make no mistake, simply “connecting the programmatic pipes” won’t bring in massive deals until DSPs have analyzed your data and have gained an understanding of who your users are, where they go, and what they’re broadly interested in.
It’s also important to ensure that your monetization solution doesn’t only support RTB but also optimizes all the top DSPs effectively against other monetization channels you’re engaged with.

A sophisticated monetization platform will be able to support programmatic demand as just another channel in addition to mediation, direct campaigns and cross promotion and is flexible enough to give you the tools and controls to optimize all demand equally to fit your monetization strategy.

With the clear value programmatic advertising can bring to developers, it’s important to consider it now as part of any mobile game monetization strategy.

You can check out the original article on AppDeveloperMagazine.

The post Three Ways Programmatic is Changing Mobile Game Monetization appeared first on Fyber Blog.

One of the first decisions developers must make when it comes to ad monetization is choosing the right ad formats for their app.

Choosing the right ad format can mean the difference between great reviews and increased ARPDAU, or angry reviews, low player engagement and missed revenue.

With so many different options, there’s no reason to disrupt the user experience with irrelevant or otherwise unpleasant ads. Instead, developers can enhance the experience with ad units that offer unique content, rewards, or some other user benefit.

Read on for a list of the four most popular ad units, with some quick thoughts on how to decide which ones make the most sense for your game or app.

“There are two key points to think about when it comes to choosing the right ad format for an app. First, is the complexity of the app or game, and how that impacts stats like session time and repeat visits. Second, are the mechanics of the virtual economy, if there is one.”
– Christy Wong-Taylor, VP of Monetization, Fyber

1. Rewarded Video

How it works:

Rewarded video ads are full-screen commercials that give players an in-game or in-app reward in exchange for watching.

Benefits:

Video ads can be gorgeous and entertaining on their own, meaning they’re less likely to incur negative user feedback. When the reward is tied to a valuable in-game or in-app benefit — such as new weapons in an action shooter game, or additional credits in a messaging app — users are more likely to repeatedly engage, leading to increased ARPDAU.

Rewarded video works well in simple action and puzzle games like endless runners or match-3, and when combined with Offer Wall ads, can drive high ARPDAU in games with a very robust virtual economy.

Best for:

• Endless runners
• Match-3 and puzzle games  
• Messaging app

2. Offer Wall

How it works:

The Offer Wall is an opt-in ad unit that gives users a selection of relevant offers — for example, download an app and complete the tutorial, or enter information for a free trial — and rewards their actions with in-app currency.

Benefits:

Offer Wall units put users in charge, giving them the chance to earn as much in-game or in-app currency as they’d like, by interacting with the offers that are most appealing to them. Depending on factors like the target audience and time of year, these ad units can deliver very high eCPMs in aggregate. Offer Wall ads work very well in mid-core titles and apps that have a robust virtual economy.

Best for:

• Simulation games
• FPS
• Strategy games

3. Banners

How it works:

The original digital ad format, banners typically include an image with easy-to-read text and a call to action. They link to destinations like the advertiser’s website.

Benefits:

Banners are the most universal, lightweight ad format. They take little effort to integrate, and can give developers access to big budgets from brand advertisers and ad exchanges. They’re also great for monetizing users in regions that may not support higher-bandwidth ad units like video.

Best for:

• Simple games with no virtual economy
• Publishing apps where players scroll through content
• Apps and games with players in geos with limited bandwidth

4. Interstitials

How it works:

Interstitials are static, rich media or video ads that take over the full screen while an app is loading, between levels or on menu screens.

Benefits:

Interstitials are very simple to integrate, and work well as supplements to other ad units.  

Hybrid Interstitials functionality gives developers the option of choosing only static or video interstitials, as well as the ability to mix both formats in order to avoid user fatigue with either format.

Best for:

• Games and apps with long load times between levels
• Games with a natural break in their core loop design
• Simple apps with no virtual economy

Our Monetization & Growth team helps app developers figure out which ad formats will drive the most revenue. Find out more at developers@fyber.com.

The post Developer How-To: Choosing the Right Ad Formats for Your App appeared first on Fyber Blog.

With an easy-to-use self serve interface, Fyber’s Ad Server allows publishers to:

• Easily create and manage direct deals with advertisers and agencies for rewarded video
• Connect to ad networks through tags with no need to integrate a new SDK
• Get granular controls and flexibility with campaign management, including targeting, pacing, pricing and creative testing
• Enable competition between all sources of demand to maximize revenue — including direct, programmatic and mediated campaigns

How does it work?

Take a quick tour of our direct-sold campaign setup tutorial, or follow the steps outlined at the end of this article to get started!

Quick Steps: How to setup your direct-sold campaign

1. Log in to your account at adserver.fyber.com. If you do not have account, contact your account manager or developers@fyber.com to sign up. 
2. Head to the CRM screen where you can see all advertisers & publishers
3. Add new advertising partners
4. Set campaign details like name, start/end date, currency and priority
5. Upload the creative
6. Set targeting and other parameters as line items (ex: frequency capping, pricing, targeting and pacing)
7. Head over to real-time reporting to see the line item in action

You can find out more about direct sold campaigns and the Fyber Ad Server here. Also, please feel free to reach out to your account manager, or support team at developers@fyber.com. We’re here to help!

The post Fyber’s Ad Server Now Available to All Publishers for Direct Sold Campaigns appeared first on Fyber Blog.

With the growing popularity of programmatic video advertising, managing video formats efficiently is essential to save time and deliver an optimal video for every ad request. That’s why Fyber’s Video SSP provides Automatic Video Transcoding, a convenient way for publishers or advertisers to upload a single video creative and automatically transcode the video file into various common formats required for a campaign. This saves time and reduces the risk of errors, delivering beautifully displayed video ads regardless of the viewer’s device or network bandwidth.

How does Automatic Video Transcoding work?

1. Fyber publishers or advertisers upload just one video creative in the Fyber Ad Server dashboard (screenshot below)
2. Fyber assesses the video creative and automatically creates a collection of video files with all the sizes, resolutions, and formats required for the campaign
3. When a user requests a video ad, Fyber serves the best rendition of the ad for that environment, whether it’s a smaller and slower version to fit a low bandwidth mobile device, or a full-quality version for high-speed desktops
4. Audiences will always see the optimal video for their device and scenario, which means better engagement for advertisers, and higher eCPMs for publishers

Get started!

To learn more about how Fyber can help you increase revenue and save time with Automatic Video Transcoding, please reach out to your Account Manager or email support.rtb@fyber.com.

The post Automatic Video Transcoding for Fyber’s Video SSP: One Easy Creative Upload for All Formats appeared first on Fyber Blog.

Stating there is a “Flashpocalypse” may be overzealous, but there is an undeniable industry shift to move away from using Flash for video content. As this shift continues, publishers need to adapt by implementing solutions that allow them to continue monetizing through video ads.

The decline of Flash

Flash was a powerful video technology for publishers, including in VPAID ads which used to be almost exclusively created with Flash. VPAID is the IAB standard for how to enable an entire video player screen to be an interactive canvas, which allows actions such as pausing the video ad so the user can click on some type of dynamic ad.

Flash was popular in the desktop era, but in recent years its industry position was harmed because of security vulnerability, lack of flexibility, and a reputation for draining device batteries. The use of Flash waned as browsers began blocking it and embracing open source HTML5, which also performs better for mobile. Specifically, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari started blocking the Flash plugin from automatically loading content unless users give their permission.

Impact on ad monetization

Many ad servers currently don’t have the technology to serve video ads when Flash is blocked. As a result, publishers’ fill rates go down, ads are not served for the advertiser’s campaigns, and the publisher/advertiser relationship is negatively impacted.

To resolve this issue, publishers need to ensure their video player version can support JavaScript VPAID in order to serve HTML5 video ads. They also need to choose an ad server that has the technical capability to handle JavaScript VPAID.

Take advantage of Fyber’s Video SSP solution

Fyber’s Video SSP addresses the issue with ad serving capabilities that support both Flash and JavaScript VPAID wrappers. So, when advertisers mark their content as either Flash or JavaScript, Fyber will choose the appropriate wrapper and serve an engaging interactive video ad. Currently, JavaScript VPAID wrappers are available for web properties, and in-app availability is coming soon.

To learn more about how JavaScript VPAID wrappers can help you increase revenue and fill, please reach out to your Account Manager or email support.rtb@fyber.com.

The post Addressing the shift away from Flash for web videos appeared first on Fyber Blog.

After Fyber acquired Heyzap in January 2016, the two companies united to build the industry’s most powerful, scalable and flexible mobile monetization platform. As co-founder of Heyzap, Immad Akhund has been deeply involved in helping to build that platform.

Bringing the best of both platforms to our publishers — starting with the launch of banner mediation, Hybrid Interstitials, increased dashboard speed, and with many more enhancements to come — we asked Immad about how the engineering and product teams worked together to make them happen.

Q: What were some of the developer pain points that the combined Heyzap and Fyber product teams worked to address?

In joining our teams and technologies, we sought to answer two questions: What were the features that developers needed most in a single platform? And how could we make it so that moving to the upgraded platform was fast and simple?

Q: How did you work to identify those key features?

It was a combo of intelligence and data analysis.

We relied on our deep relationships with publishers first, getting feedback from key customers across both Fyber and Heyzap. We talked to them about the features that mattered most, what they loved about the existing platforms, and what they thought could be better.

We also used our collective industry knowledge. Where did we see publishers’ needs evolving over the next 12 to 24 months, and even further into the future? We combined that knowledge and direct feedback with data on which features publishers were already using, and how.  

Q: How did you solve the challenge of making the update as smooth as possible?

We thought about it in terms of what would give developers the best “upgrade path.” For example, we wanted to make sure our users could continue to access the Heyzap and Fyber dashboards in the way they were accustomed to, even as we made them faster.

The other thing was to get iterations built quickly so that developers could give us feedback on the experience as soon as possible. We started with a benchmark for how much time it should take, as well as a more abstract concept of making sure it was “as simple as a standard SDK update.” It took a few iterations to get there, but we’re proud that it’s really very quick and efficient.

Q: Are there specific features in the unified platform that you think best represent solving these challenges for developers?

Yes. The first upgrades that come to mind are some improvements to reporting. Developers need data to optimize their monetization — so the easier it is to access, interpret and act on, the more revenue they can generate. We worked on making the unified platform’s reporting tools faster for developers that want an all-in-one dashboard view, as well as teams that use the API to visualize their own data. We’ll have more to share on that soon.

We also upgraded the mediation stack to help developers capture even more demand, specifically from programmatic sources. Moving forward, the unified platform will give teams more control and flexibility in terms of how programmatic demand is factored into their existing mediation flow.  

Find out more about Fyber’s unified feature-rich monetization platform in this blog post, or reach out to the team at developers@fyber.com.

The post Fyber & Heyzap: How We Built a Unified Platform appeared first on Fyber Blog.

With programmatic advertising spend expected to reach $21.2 billion next year, the industry becomes more complex and advanced. So does fraud. In fact, according to the Association of National Advertisers, ad fraud will cost the industry $7.2 billion this year.

Monica heads the Fraud prevention team at Fyber, with a goal of maintaining the industry’s most robust, brand-safe programmatic video marketplace — one where DSPs and media buyers are assured of the quality of ad placements, and publishers and app developers get the most value from their inventory.  

Fraud has been one of the top concerns for advertisers, how serious of a threat is this?

Fraud is part of the discussion about quality — and yes, I think there are areas where both buyers and sellers are rightfully concerned. But first, we have to take a step back and remember that fraud is an issue with all digital advertising, not just programmatic.

We’ve learned quite a bit at Fyber in recent years. For example, the realization that while you do need third party providers to combat fraud, you can’t only rely on them. Ad tech companies like us have to be diligent — that’s why we have a dedicated team on board to check each and every impression, to analyze strange patterns, and prevent bad inventory from getting into the system in the first place.

Anti-fraud tools are getting better, but the bad guys are getting smarter, too, meaning you have to constantly invest in beating them. And we firmly believe that only tech vendors and suppliers who are willing to make that investment and stay ahead of the curve will survive.

What are some of the programs and partnerships that Fyber has in place?

We are proud of our new partnerships with Forensiq and Pixalate, two of the industry’s leading traffic quality and verification providers.

With pre-bid programmatic traffic monitoring through Forensiq, all of Fyber’s inventory is graded before any ad request converts into an impression. On the other hand, Pixalate helps Fyber track strange patterns or behaviors post-bid, in order to ensure that ads only run on premium sites and apps. In addition to these third-party verifications, Fyber’s Fraud Prevention team also provides 24/7 traffic quality monitoring through a combination of human and machine-based analysis in order to preserve inventory quality within the entire Fyber stack.

What is the difference between pre-bid and post-bid verification?

Pre-bid verification entails sophisticated machine-learning techniques that grade the inventory before an ad request is sent to the DSPs for bidding.

Post-bid verification is the combination of human and machine-based analysis that helps track strange patterns or behaviors to ensure that ads only run on premium sites and apps, and that interactions are real.

How does Fyber hold other members of the ecosystem to similar high standards?

It really comes down to education. At Fyber, we are regularly in discussion with our networks and publisher partners on what standards we have, what we expect from our partners, and we make sure to share best practices.

We also set the bar high for our app publisher partners. Our selection process for partners is strict and it is something that we see as necessary in order to create an honest marketplace. For app publishers, we ask for proof of SDK integration, test the quality of the traffic, and we test every app that goes live with us.

On the programmatic side, we review every single site and application before it goes live. We require our partners to work with third party verification tools so that they feel responsible for the quality filtering as well. We measure our partners using such indicators as quality of their traffic or fill rate numbers. Therefore, the more they can filter on their end, the more beneficial it will be for their numbers as well.

How long have you worked in ad tech and fraud prevention? What changed in the ecosystem in that time?

I started in AdOps four years ago, moving into Support Operations and taking care of integration projects such as Salesforce Cloud later on. Then my career path took me into Ad Quality and Malware Detection, which is how I got interested in the topic of publisher fraud detection and prevention.

The primary change I’ve witnessed is that fraud tactics have become more advanced. The industry is definitely taking it more seriously, but there is still a lot more for the industry to do to address fraud. For example, viewability has become an important issue for advertisers.

The product and ecosystem would be cleaner if all the companies agreed to certain standards. I know it sounds utopian, but the money that each ad tech company loses to fraud could be used instead for innovation.

Do you think things can improve and how?

It is going to take more knowledge sharing across the industry to stop fraud globally. For example, a single shared database of fraudulent players would significantly help reduce fraud. Unfortunately, as of now the members of the ecosystem don’t share this information readily. Let’s see if that’s a step that companies in the ecosystem are willing to take, I am hopeful for a change.

The post Fyber Faces: Monica Vazquez on the Complexity of the Programmatic Ad Ecosystem and Fighting Fraud appeared first on Fyber Blog.