Inside In-App Ads: Past, Present, and What’s Next?

Yeah, like how do we get you asked about like what is a DSP?

I wish I had this when I joined the industry.

This is exactly what you can't find anywhere.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm glad you enjoyed this.

So initially when the apps, you know, apps and companies launched, you know, publishers were like, I got these cool apps.

People are playing.

How on earth am I going to get like advertisers to like spend on me?

And advertisers who have web products and TV are like, wow, there's these cool mobile apps who have great direct access to users and

distribution.

How do I connect?

KUA, master eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackets crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey stick, got your back.

Ads are beautiful, they like the way.

Click it fast, don't delay.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Hello, and welcome, everyone, to another very special episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast, where you can stay two and a a half steps ahead of the mobile gaming industry today i'm joined with matte and a very special guest but before i get started i'm felix brauberg my name is matte lancherich

and we are

your hosts

so like i said uh we're joined with a very special guest shobert uh do you want to introduce yourself and then maybe talk a little bit about the topic we're going to talk about today because it's a good educational topic that we have for everyone today yeah well uh thank you everybody for having me i'm shober shaberi i'm the director of publisher sales at Maloco.

You know, I've known Felix for several years now, and I met Mate recently as well.

I joined GDC.

And, you know, when I was honored to be part invited to this, I was like, hey, what could be cool to discuss that people would like to learn and be collaborative with you guys.

And I've been fortunate enough to be in the industry for a while.

Let's talk about like what mobile ad in-app advertising is all about and when did it start and where it is now.

Almost like a quick crash course.

So, yeah.

The crash course I wish I had when I joined the industry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Our solo episodes regarding similar topics went amazingly well.

So this is a very good starting point.

People love it.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So let me kind of get this going, everybody.

Oh,

nice.

Yes.

We have presentation as well.

We love presentations always.

And we always love to ask questions during presentations.

Once we get started, Shabret, do you just explain for the audience before we get started, like what is Moloko and what is Moloko do?

Yeah.

Moloko,

it means machine learning company.

I'm just a quick backstory is the founders were ex-Googlers.

They

joined to help like YouTube monetize

the early days when YouTube was acquired by Google and then like

learn about business models around the Google Android and Play Store when they acquired Android.

What they noticed was like a lot of businesses did very well within Google and within the walled gardens, but there's this like 70% of the open web.

That's basically people running company and businesses are just not making relative business and revenue.

So they left to start Maloco.

They literally raised like some money for the first few years, like worked on this machine learning product.

And then the go-to-market was what they're very

specialized in is like, you know, the DSB.

which is like an ad platform they launched, which is now like a unicorn, you know, well over 2 billion in ads spent last year in 2024 on.

So that's kind of just a quick nutshell about Maloco.

And I'm here to kind of describe more on the supply angle.

It's just kind of my specialty.

They launched an STK, and I'll explain more about like how I got involved and when I joined.

And, you know, Felix and I kind of specialize in this space.

I know you guys talk about cool games, like the game structure, a lot of UA stuff, but I was like, Felix, we need to talk about more admon.

Let's kind of

deck will show you kind of a quick history about like this space and what led to this because I think it'll confuse it without showing that background.

All right.

Perfect.

So let's get into it a little bit here.

Advertising has been around since ancient Egypt, actually.

So if people think it's like a new thing,

it's been around for centuries.

And like in the US, it's been around since like the US has been formed for 300 years.

It's part of our fabric, of our culture, part of capitalism, and now around the world.

And I have like the example of like Times Square.

Times Square is like since like 1900 basically, and since the New York Times moved there, it has had this like kind of real cool culture of like massive billboard and ads.

And it was neons

signs.

And then it basically became digital, digital signage and now like connected to the internet and interactive.

And about a couple hundred thousand people a day see this when they go there.

Mad Men, the show that came around 2007, I think it lasted about seven, eight years, about 100 episodes.

Again, this described like the boom of the ad tech, excuse me, the advertising industry in America in the 1960s when radio and television and newspaper were taken off.

So it almost feels like, you know, you guys and us are in this like madmen or mad women of digital advertising.

What's going on in mobile?

So what is mobile?

Yeah, right?

There's about 8 billion plus people in the world and almost 60% of the world right now has a smartphone.

So we're pretty much interconnected to these devices.

There's about 9 million ads, or excuse me, applications.

I'm so like addicted to ads that I'm talking ads, but it's really applications here.

There's way more ads than

yes.

Live and breathe at you almost,

right?

But there's about like 9 million apps, and there's about 2 million and iOS and 2 million active on both stores.

And then within everybody's devices, there's about 80 on average and like 30 per month that you use and about nine per day.

And I mean, look at this.

This is like at a concert live.

Everybody's just like, instead of being present, there, that's the part of you.

Like this is part of your life now.

So, you know, it's very important to kind of really get the gist of this

because everybody is now extended to these devices.

Just a quick little background about, you know, myself.

I've been, so my friends and I moved to San Francisco.

We tried some apps when the app store launched when steve jobs announced the app store they didn't work out but i was like well i think this is the evolution what's happening from what tv was to the web and really to these devices and you know i was fortunate enough to understand that's the future uh in the early days around 2010 and 11

um If you guys don't remember, it was pretty much two ways to monetize.

It was like premium apps for like 99 cents or free.

And a lot of the game studios that were launching were like their ex-console people, were really like deep game experiences that came on mobile

and were hesitant to work on creating apps with ads.

And so I came in like, hey, I would play the games, I would understand it.

And I'm like, look,

let me help you out create some like cool ad placements.

And it's not intrusive.

It doesn't really interrupt the flow of the game.

And you could create a business model around it.

And I was very fortunate during my time at Mopclicks to work with like game studios like Halfbrick and Fruit Ninja, you know, come to us.

Yeah.

And one of their founders said, Hey, I want to create this for everybody else.

And that's where he launched Addiction.

I went to join him.

And I went on the other side.

So I went on Mate's side to help with distribution and growth in the early days when CPI launched in 2012 and 2013.

And this is the

wild west of like the app store.

Like everybody wanted to get on the top charts.

Because once you're on the top charts,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Incentivize apps and installs, right?

Like I was working on this App-A-Day app and then OfferWall is expanding.

And kind of crazy to think this is cyclical where Offer Wall is a conversation again.

And I'd love to again pick your brain about that.

But like, you know, back then it was like booming, right?

You would do anything possible to get your application in the top 10 because like you would get.

hundreds of thousands of installs a day or top 50 or 100 to get tens of thousands of installs.

So that organic uplift of like spending, you know, $10,000 and you get 10,000 installed, but then you got 100,000, that cost went from like, say, a dollar an install to 10 cents an install.

I briefly left to join Pebble, the smartwatch company.

It was a completely different thing.

I just knew the founder.

I loved their Kickstarter campaign.

It was a different form factor of like, you know, the phone to the watch and the wrist and how brands and...

could connect to a user on a much smaller and faster way.

And so that was like fun.

I helped with the apps for curation, form factor of apps that are just like simplified, like weather, or even like just clicking an Uber ride from the watch.

But I missed mobile so much, kind of like that Al Pacino scene where it's like every time you try to leave, they grab you and bring you right back in.

Well, I came back back to mobile.

Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, I mean, I came back because I just really love working with primarily game companies and the supply side and helping them, you know, with the business model last few years of minte goal.

And this kind of leads to my next topic is, you know,

what, and you guys know this, the landscape the last three to six to 12 months has been very difficult for publishers.

The walled gardens and the mediation providers are taking a massive amount of a thing.

When I joined and what I saw in the last few years, like bidding ad stacks was kind of a way to be democratized.

And

any ad network could have become a formalized ad network.

So it was awesome.

And

now it's become more and more challenging.

And I was like, what is the best way that I could help my current publishers, along with publishers that are out there compete in Ad Stack without any changes, like nothing dramatic?

And I was like, I've been following Maloka, my friends who've been working here the last couple of years, and the fact that they had an incredible direct access to advertisers.

With my background in supply for 15 years, I was like, okay, maybe it's time to come more on the

demand side platform and help the publishers monetize in the ad stacks and create a healthy share of voice and share of wallet

with the ad platform like Moloko and the new DS, the new SDK that they have.

And so now I'm trying to help focus on a really healthy bidding stack.

And

I'm excited.

And I'm here to explain a little bit more about the industry, what's going on.

And by the way,

oh, yeah.

Jesus, Chris, this is amazing.

No, no, no.

Like, I love it.

I love this because this explained everything.

Yeah, I don't know if you guys know.

Lumo Partners is kind of like a, I think they're like a private equity who focuses on ad tech and primarily mobile.

And they did a great job here.

I mean, this is like an infograph of like hundreds of like companies.

If you're a publisher looking at this right now, like Shaber, why you're showing this, this is so overwhelming.

It can't be.

Like, where do you fit in as a game studio?

Where does the ad tech companies fit in?

Like, who do I work with?

So it could be daunting.

But what I want to share is that kind of relates to this space is we're a mature industry now.

I mean, this is a $200 billion market in your revenue spend.

I mean, that's incredible growth in like 15 years.

It's growing over 21% year over year.

So this year, about 262 billion.

And by 2030,

over a trillion dollars in ad spend just in mobile, which is pretty crazy.

How are ways publishers can monetize?

There are three key ways generally.

Now there's more, but these are the main ones.

Like in-app advertising, it's basically, hey, if you have apps, they're free.

Most of your users are free.

Let's help you put ads and generate a business model around that.

Second is in-app purchases.

So a lot of times this is more for mid-core to hardcore to casino, a little bit more refined games who encourages users to upgrade or buy products within their stores to just kind of compete in their applications.

And lastly, is a subscription model where a percentage of users are just really addicted to primarily non-games like music players, dating apps,

educational apps.

Yeah, apps business primarily.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there are some not like game and game companies who may be able to do this.

We know like some,

but yeah, like this is primarily non-games.

And there are other means of like revenue.

I've been hearing the likes of people testing like crypto and NFTs, and

you know, we're past that.

Yeah, we're past that already.

We're past the hype, yeah, yeah.

It's AI now, it's AI now, yeah.

Yeah,

I love it, I love it.

Yeah, let's do the follow the hype train, right?

So let's talk speaking of this work.

Yeah, like, how do we get you asked about like what is a DSP?

I wish I had this when I joined the industry.

This is exactly what you can't find anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, and uh, I'm glad you're enjoying this.

So initially when the

apps and companies launched,

publishers were like, I got these cool apps.

People are playing.

How on earth am I going to get advertisers to spend on me?

And advertisers who have web products and TV are like, wow, there's these cool mobile apps who have great direct access to users and

distribution.

How do I connect?

So a lot of times it was manual.

And then what happened was ad network startups popped up.

And these startups basically had these software development kits that are SDK that were plugged in natively into apps.

And then

the advertisers could basically target applications.

The problem was,

there was goods and bad.

The good was like, oh, I could access.

The problem was there was a lot of cross-pollination.

What does that mean?

A lot of ad networks are doing the same thing.

and competing against each other.

And so,

you know, like, where can I find direct access to like the bundles and the users?

And

then the publishers will be like, I want the best type of ad inventory that's qualitative and things of that nature again.

And then the exchanges appear.

They're middlemen platforms

that

connect basically the ad networks with the ad inventory that they have.

with publishers and the targeted publishers.

And this helps streamline qualitative ad performances.

And now networks could specialize more on certain things.

Like if you're more on games, you want performances, you're on non-games.

The exchange could understand that.

Oh, I have these publishers who are just hyper-casual.

Why don't you target these?

And

what happened was it became so specific

that it became more and more complicated that it's like, all right, the exchanges, Those are maybe too complicated for a server, too expensive to do all everything.

Let's specialize, like, hey, Moloco, like Moloco launched to be an ad-specific demand-side platform where they have like, we have like 2,600 direct advertisers from like game studios like King to DraftKings and many others who want to target publishers, but are like, man, there's so much challenges to do it.

Like, you know, Moloco is like, hey, we have a really good machine learning product.

Let's just target.

And we target through multiple ad networks and we could find the right performing publisher for you.

On the flip side, for me, I have the supply-side background.

I have relationships with publishers who have incredible access to like inventory.

And I've been able to resell that to like networks and exchanges as an SSP for the last 15 years.

So I'm bringing that kind of understanding to Moloco.

So yeah, like I was mentioning, where do we find the best access?

How can we sell that access to publishers?

So what do most publishers hear, right?

They're not very familiar with SSPs usually, right?

They plug in to their ad network, right?

Why don't a lot of publishers know what an SSP is?

And maybe you can explain what an SSP is.

Right.

Okay.

So

there are,

that's a great question, by the way.

There are

pub-based networks that are supply side that are only like an SDK that plugs into you.

There are networks that are an exchange server side and focus on publishers and connect either directly or through that SDK network to have access to you.

There are also both, where there are like some of the SDK networks we all know of who have

a network, but they also have an exchange.

What does that mean?

Basically, it's allowing you, the publisher, to have as much opportunity to monetize.

without being constrained to just like a performance ad or a game ad.

For example, in the last 12 months, I have seen an increase of non-game ads within games.

So, and a lot of that access has come directly from the exchanges.

Now, there are a lot more smarter, performance-based advertisers coming in, which is awesome, that are non-games.

But that's an example of this, right?

Because all many years, the game studio is like, everybody talks about brands and things, and it's like, okay.

But that the exchange and the networks are able to do that and target these publishers.

And I guess publishers see this, like how you see it is through the Adapts.txt file, through the reseller lists that you actually see, right?

So that's when you actually see who's actually behind the networks, actually allowed to buy your inventory, which is exactly this diagram, right?

Yes, exactly.

And there's a little bit more here I want to share.

And I think it kind of caters to what we're discussing more on the supply setup.

Here we go.

I think Felix, you're very familiar with this setup.

And

so what has happened, again, I'm kind of going backwards and I'll come to where we're at now.

In the early days, it was, again, direct access, publisher's manual.

Then you had like SDKs and you're like, there's multiple SDKs, the files were big, it's interrupting the game flow.

I can't fit to scale to put this and publish to the App Store.

What do I do?

Some game studios create their own like way to mediate that when they're not specialized in this.

And then finally, companies like Motclicks or Mopub, which was acquired by Twitter,

they created this mediation provider.

And now they're bidding solutions that Mac started initially and everybody does now, where it allows you to add one major SDK.

That software development kit will pipe and allow everybody to bid in real-time all these other networks and then get the best quality ads to serve in your application.

I don't know if you guys have any questions here, or Felix, you have any thoughts?

Yeah, great.

So

before this, publishers essentially had to add a bunch of SDKs.

And when the mediations came along, it just simplified it and put it all into one unified place

where you had all your auctions take place, which meant that it's fair.

And I guess maybe you can talk a bit about how mediation was done in the 2015 around then when it was pretty much only on placements and kind of the the Wild West it was around then and what kind of deals you you could make?

Because it's hilarious.

Correct.

So there was this thing

called the waterfall auction

that led to bidding.

So I think I was reading your mind.

Yeah.

So what does that mean?

So when you were setting up your ad stack, again, going backwards, you're like, oh,

just let the SDKs bid.

And then it was like, oh, it was the same price point.

And you're getting the same revenue.

And then what happened was,

you know, the publishers getting more sophisticated, getting ad quality people to come and say, no, you need different levels of pricing minimums for the CPM and the ad networks to bid on.

So, we create these waterfall, as you can see here, different CPM price points.

The good thing was a lot of people saw a nice increase.

So, instead of being like $250 on average, for example, this ad unit would increase to $320.

The challenge with the waterfall was it was cumbersome.

It was super manual.

servers would call ads because we're like, everybody, all these ads were being served at the same time, and then, like, and then, like, the ad server would think it would get the best ad, but in reality, because it was like capped, it would just serve an ad that it was priced out.

You would put like 500 or not 500, excuse me, like 100 CPM levels from anywhere from like three dollars to a hundred dollars.

And that's not just with one ad network, that's with all your ad networks.

You had to put ad tags,

it was a lot, right?

And then what happened was again, bidding came.

Bidding, I call it like the stock trading for like ad networks and publishers.

It allows any ad network to, you know, bid in real time 24 hours a day into your inventory when we have campaigns.

And the best price point always wins.

I guess I want to add here, like, I guess this is the equivalent of when we had the waterfall placements.

It's the equivalent of the Madman era in mobile, because that's essentially when you get ad colony which was the biggest network back then reach out to you and be like hey i'll give you a ten thousand dollar bonus if you put me top of your waterfall for the next month do we have a deal

we want first look

and this is when you could play around some of the big networks were able to you know spend for full screen ads like 20 20 to 100

not everybody could um that's one the other was like some ad networks were like you know they can't even compete at all uh within like the ad stack but now with again header bidding

in real time

everybody everybody should have a healthy uh percentage of like your your overall revenue like share of wallet basically um so yeah i do remember those days of like the the premiums and the minimums.

Also, like people negotiating, like, oh, we want minimum revenue guarantees or things of that nature.

And and now it's like there shouldn't be because a lot of times ad networks are giving the publisher more margin so that we could win in your ad stack and so the advertisers probably could perform better and sell better quality ads in your ad stack

what are the ad units wait wait can i can i go back to the one before this because i had a really interesting question that i think the audience will really like one more

So how did these different players earn money?

Because I don't think people realize that because it's quite interesting.

Nobody knows.

If we can go in and talk about that, like SSPs, ad exchange, and DSPs, like how did these companies make money?

We all know how publishers make money.

We all know how advertisers make money.

But

yeah, let's talk about the middle.

Yeah, so basically these are platforms that are like serving ads between like multiple ad networks and they take a cut in percentage.

They charge those other networks to serve within their platform.

Right.

So like I have the best ability to serve ads to this, you know, this publisher.

And you're like, okay,

I could try to do it direct, but in reality, then like they have the access to all the publishers.

Let's serve through that SSP.

And then we'll just pay a fee to that SSP because they have like access to all these other publishers.

All right.

Like, for example, we're not an SDK or if we have an SDK, we don't have that reach.

You could do it through them.

Right.

So that's kind of the thing.

On the DSP side, it's pretty much like the best performing ad unit.

And then they pay the exchanges,

like a percentage or the campaign fee and all that stuff.

And then just take so these reselling fees, do you know what the percentage typically is?

Is it between 20 or 30 percent, or is that kind of just

it varies?

It varies on all the platforms, really.

All over the place.

It's all over the place.

Yeah.

Ad units.

Ad units.

So there you go.

There's generally like five like ad units that like publishers right now are serving on their applications.

The banner comes from traditional web where it's this 320 by 50 kind of small ad unit between the bottom or top of your real estate of your screen.

And usually users could

tap on it.

It's easier to find when it's on those locations.

It's

next to the button always, right?

Yeah, yeah.

There's reasons for that.

Yeah, of course.

Right.

Like you swipe and you're like, oh, this is interesting.

You see that ad and you're like, okay, now I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, and or you go to the bottom of the article and you see that ad unit that's relative.

That's probably why it's on the bottom of the screen.

Interstitials are full-screen ads that generally pop up.

A lot of times in games, you place it in like the beginning of the game when before you start

or like at the end when you like lost.

Something like that, where it's not really interrupting the game flow that you're playing.

And it's, it's a nice premium application.

You can see it's like qualitative and it's relative this is like another game it's an analyst runner there's native which is fit to scale this is more on non-games like social networks news applications travel sites all this stuff that is like fit to scale and it's in the stream and doesn't interrupt the flow of those applications now there are video ads primarily we call this rewarded um in games you know like uh you're incentivizing users instead majority of users probably do not spend in app purchases so uh you could incentivize them to do the similar action, to do some sort of premium action to continue playing your game.

Give them a rewarded ad to watch.

The ad unit is watched for 30 seconds to a minute long.

And then you get a premium CPM because you're displaying this in your game.

And users are happier because they opted in and got a reward and they're continuing playing your game.

And then lastly, is this playable ads,

which has only been around, I think, for like six, seven years.

But it makes sense.

It's like play a game as an ad unit that's very relative what your game means so this one's like oh I have a you know a fly an airplane fighter or a spaceship kind of game you could play it being displayed and then I like that type of game let me download it so it's actionable yeah but that ad unit is kind of shown in the same placement as the video or reverted video right kind of yes right now it's pretty much in like an opt-in

because you don't want to interrupt the game flow and it's a premium ad unit.

How many of your I'm curious, Mata, like how many of the people you work with, like actually do playables versus like

Well, all of them, because

as soon as you are kind of running UA outside of Facebook and Google, you need them.

So I absolutely need them.

And I mean, I have a U I have a playable team as well, so it's it's very easy.

It's very easy.

Because like

always when we discuss this, it's a higher engagement, it's always qualify the user, and it's always way better post-install metrics as well, and scalable format.

So, yeah.

And

how about you from the other?

Do you kind of encourage all game companies to have like a reward ad placement?

100%.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the easiest one to, it's the easiest one to get in there.

Yeah, but how many, how many play, like, I'm curious on a placement level, you know, how do you guide them or adjust or like on as far as interstitial reward?

Because look, this is the pay, the best paying ad units.

Honestly, like, it's what I hear from the mediation platforms right now, it's the segment of ads formats that's growing the quickest.

So, basically, out of the whole pool of all

impressions that's being shown, like the biggest growing segment is rewarded ads and is growing quite a lot.

So, it's the easiest one to convince because essentially you're giving out

non-intrusive and gives an award, right?

So, it's the one that makes the most sense.

And yeah, it's the best format, I would argue.

Okay.

And what genres of like, I mean, obviously, like, we're Repreaching Inquired, we're on this podcast talking about it.

Like, I'm curious, like, you work with a lot of type of game studios, right?

You know, what is like some good placement suggestions?

The best placement suggestions, I think the most interesting one I saw recently is like

PlaySimple.

They basically move the rewarded ad placements that's usually in the store.

That's usually where you find a lot of rewarded ads, but they moved it to show if you don't buy anything in the store and leave the store, it becomes a pop-up saying, Hey, do you want these coins for a rewarded ad?

But yeah, there's so many examples there.

I'm pretty sure that we can agree, Felix.

Like, the best use of the placement is Hexasort when it's actually on the board, where you can get it.

On the board in the board,

yeah, yeah, which is insane.

So, it's getting super advanced how to use it, right?

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, I mean, again, like the opt-in and performance is there, so that's great feedback.

So let's talk about like how these are priced or like the history about like where this has been as far as like

the terminology and the pricing.

Initially, it's cost per mile.

So this means that for every thousand times this ad unit is being displayed, that's the price point, the CPM that's being shown.

Or a thousand times, like a thousand people watch it at once.

And it's like, oh, okay, we'll pay $15 for that interstitial.

The problem there historically has been is just, it's more of display, didn't have performance, and it's just like, you know, price point.

Okay.

Let's, then it became more performance with click, cost per click.

A lot of times this is catered more for like a branded experience where you want to like, hey, there's like,

you know, I'm just making an example here.

Like it's a Super Bowl and like it's like.

Do you check out the new pizza by Pizza Hut?

I feel like the Super Bowl is like a good example to test anything because it's, you know, American culture and all the money.

But like

good excuse to spend more, spend a lot of money, yeah.

Or I would say a good example is cars.

Go like, check out more of this car, um, and click on it, and it pops up to a full screen of like the ad unit that is more relatable.

The click for install is really what our industry, like, in my opinion,

like evolutionized.

Where, like, as I mentioned before, and we, you know, we've all experienced this, like the early days of like getting up the charts, getting quality users.

How do we see that?

Like, just pay for the install, pay for the user get the rank

the

positivity was like oh you you know what you're getting you're you're targeting and you had like mobile measurement you know platforms mmps who track this the challenge was like understanding this to drop off the quality so again more advanced with like certain things uh which i'll describe at the end but the next one is cost per action generally these are more

Again, cater to more like premium products like subscriptions and others where you pay for the subscription, you pay for like the first purchase of like some sort of like premium item like an e-commerce product and then lastly is kind of the you know the dcpm where like the better a campaign is performed you know the more premium you pay for that performance-based campaign and if it doesn't perform you won't pay for it it's kpi driven and it and and these there are like specific stuff like return on ad spend or

you know like event-based stuff that game studios are now doing that are more sophisticated

I am curious, Mate, like what are some like, you know, ROS or I guess event-based stuff you see that are pretty usual?

All the Adroas or In-AP ROS

optimization on the campaign side side that you, well, you might think of there is also like the

event-based campaigns depends on like the actual monetization structure of the game, but it's all ROS.

Just either if it's Adros or even blended ROS to that certain extent, because if you have fifty-fifty split, I mean, that's the best for me.

So I use uh the best from b both worlds.

Yep.

And these are like obviously been really well for

um, you know, it's a

variety of genres, right?

Like honestly, like the if if I have uh like eighty percent IIP versus twenty percent S split, still hav rely heavily on in a p ROS, in a purchase RAS.

If it's the other way around, obviously it's Aldras.

Yes,

50-50 split is always the best.

Yeah,

it's not that usually.

No, it's not.

I mean, like,

ROS came in for premium, you know, in-app purchase-based product and games.

And then, like, over time, the hyper-casual and the casual game studios got

acclimated to like that model and created a post-pack model of IAA, which is in-app ads, and were able to scale and pretty much have dominated the charts the last few years with that.

So, they've, yeah, everybody's kind of on board with this now.

So,

let's just explain a little bit more.

As I mentioned earlier in the conversation, Moloco means machine learning company,

over 2 billion in ads spent last year,

primarily through the DSP.

They did release Slash DK, which I'm excited to be part of that team.

On the supply side, yeah, and then there are two other products.

There are an e-commerce product where it helps companies who specialize in selling with real items, like Wayfair, for example.

You know, they want to just sell products and they want to monetize their website and they're not specializing in it.

We help them out.

Or CTV, if you're a streaming service company and you want to sell ads and you just don't have the time or you don't specialize in stuff, we could do the same thing.

So, pretty much like what we do on mobile, we're now kind of creating that on different verticals as well.

Can I ask a question here?

Because our most popular episode ever that we've done ever.

Yeah, ever was

when you mentioned like Moloko SDK, by the way, and like everybody just lost their minds.

Yeah, because

basically, like here, right?

I don't think people understand really what this means.

So let me just break it down, right?

So there's two billion of spend that's going through a DSP.

And what we talked about earlier is that majority of that spend is through SSPs and like not going directly, right?

How come

every time I add the Maloco SDK in a client's basically ad stack with direct ad ARPDA goes up by either 8 to 15%?

Okay, thank you for that plug-in, actually.

Yeah, but honestly, it's a true.

Like, it's like I've done it now like 12 times and it's 12 out of 12 the same results.

Yeah, so again, like Maloco,

We're already ser as a DSP, we're already serving ads primarily to these publishers.

What the SDK does and our machine learning product does is it's basically prioritizing you now.

The ads that we're serving going to you directly.

It's not to say we're turning off the DSP, no, because that's still our biggest revenue driver.

It's just you're getting both now.

You're getting the SDK as your priority and you're getting the DSP ads from other channels.

And so you're getting all that revenue combined.

So the uplift comes from the direct revenue you're getting from our SDK.

That's an additional value from what you're already receiving from Moloco.

So that's where you see, you say, like 8% to 15%.

I've seen up to like 20%

uplift, maybe even more, depending on the publisher partner.

Okay, wait a second.

So what do I need to do?

Just implement the SDK and that's it?

I mean,

I'm not an admon person.

So, I mean.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So we're, we're, what do you call it?

We're certified like on, you know, Macs by AppLoven, LevelPlay.

by IronSource and Admob and Gam by Google.

And you just have to like update the SDK with Malocos.

And generally, most publishers have anywhere from six to, I generally like the 12 plus, where you have more allowing the networks to bid into your ad stack.

And our SDK will bid directly to your, to you now versus like just through the exchanges.

And what it helps you

specifically, and obviously UA people, is you're getting more direct access now without paying like such a premium and you get a lot more ROI as an advertiser through the SDK side of things.

So, we've seen like ad buyers see themselves like 7% uplift increased revenue since we turn on our SDK as another additional revenue, like a ROAS campaign.

Yeah.

So, this actually goes into kind of what we're next, sorry, the next slide.

We call it the flywheel, and you probably heard this from everybody else, but it's true.

Again, like the Malacca ads has been really targeting high-quality users for our advertisers.

And those quality users now are monetizable with their SDK,

especially if they're like obviously free users.

And now we've seen publishers see that uplift in profitability, but they instead they could probably reinvest that and keep increasing their revenue share in their portfolio of applications and games that they have.

The additional percentage on LTV.

Do you know like puzzle games or if you're 90% ad revenue, if you get a 10% win,

all the way to bank?

Because your margins are probably 15%.

Yeah, and so you can just pretty much reinvest and just kind of keep doing that.

You know, you just keep the profitability going and hopefully sustain your rank, the users, and the quality of your products.

So, like,

yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell.

Can I also, can I, if you go back to the market, like coming to all publishers in Q4,

my question was like, why?

Everybody should do that like yesterday.

Come on.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the next question because sometimes you reach out to Moloko and right now you can't work with you guys, right?

All the time.

Correct.

So we basically released a bidder and we're testing a certain amount of publishers to make sure it works and it's been working great.

The public announcement is.

Now I'm here and like there's the reason why I've been here and talking about it.

Okay.

And

we're going live in the next quarter and we'd love to work with publishers that are around the world.

And primarily, I'm here because there's gamers.

We love to record

that are out there, and you're generating revenue through ads.

So, yeah, please reach out to us, to me.

We have teams worldwide.

So, happy to connect you guys.

It's a no-brainer.

Drop the mic.

Yeah.

It's a no-brainer.

And honestly, it's like, yeah, it's a number that gets thrown out a lot.

But honestly, this is like one of the things I always tell publishers when I start working with them.

Like, check if you're on Macs, go into the DSPs and and see which DSPs are bidding.

It's always Maloco that's the biggest.

So, yeah, it makes complete sense to start bidding, like working with Maloco, because you just get so much more inventory.

I'm a bit curious as well, what happened with banners?

Because Maloco, I remember testing like a year ago with banners, and it was no fill.

And now it's like crazy amounts.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, look, like the SDK came out a year ago, and now it's since like since really when I joined GDC, it's there's this brand new SDK, it's 3.7, 3.9 now, and like everything is a lot more extensive.

We have like inventory for banners, we have inventory for even native.

You know, if we have inventory, as you saw, all the other ones, so we have inventory for all that.

Do we have more on like a full-screen ad unit?

Yeah, I mean, like, that is like what most game studios perform on, but we're mindful that a lot of both games and especially non-games monetize with you know banner or native.

So, yeah, we're we've extended to those products

awesome troubert this was this is amazing thank you very much for like the whole history and then guys

you should you know what you should do just uh reach out to trouber

or just reach out to us and we will uh we will lead you to the right path obviously so we will include uh all the information in the show notes obviously and again thank you very much for coming listeners thank you very much for listening.

Until next time, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Cheers.

Bye.