Top 7 Ad Monetization Platforms for Your Android Mobile App

The goal of the owner of any application is to earn money using the created program. There are a variety of monetization models, but the easiest way to make an app extremely profitable is obviously to take advantage of mobile advertising.

Statistics claim that the mobile ad market is constantly growing. According to forecasts, by 2021 its volume should triple. It would be nice to grab your slice of such a cake, right?

We’re ready to share with you our experience on how to monetize the app via in-app ads. Also, we’re going to describe all the pros and cons of 7 popular Ad monetization platforms for Android applications.

Get ready to read a detailed article about the best Ad monetization strategy and find out the most up-to-date information that we've already tested in practice.

Mobile app monetization models

Our article is devoted to mobile advertising, but first, we'd like to tell you what monetization options you have. We want you to be completely savvy about the matter. In addition, sometimes it's helpful to use a combination of monetization models - this is the most optimal way to get the maximum profit.

paid apps. Of course, the method is extremely simple but the task of convincing a user to buy the unknown program would be uneasy.
subscription and freemium. These are similar app monetization models, the essence of which is providing free basic functionality with the offer to buy an advanced feature package.
in-app purchases. The owner of the program can sell users virtual goods, paid app features, etc.
sponsorship. Users receive bonuses after performing some simple tasks (from the sponsor of the mobile service), and the app owners get a percentage of profit. In the case of fitness apps, such a task might be the necessity to perform a certain number of steps per day (or something of the sort).
data monetization models. In this case, the user allows the application owner to take advantage of their personal data in exchange for the opportunity to use the program without payment. Usually, the data monetization platform sells such information to other interested companies (which consider the user a potential consumer).

And of course, the main item of the list is the possibility to monetize apps via advertising. And we’d like to discuss this matter separately.

Want to learn more about choosing the monetization model? Read our article!

Advertising as a monetization model

To understand our further description of mobile monetization platforms, you need to get a rough idea of the main types of advertising. Therefore, we'll give you a fill-in before proceeding to the next point.

Banner

app monetization platform

Banners are the most common type of software monetization models when it comes to mobile advertising. They come in different formats and sizes, and the most productive ones are expandable banners (those that need to be taped or pulled around a corner). On the one hand, they aren't annoying (because they're always minimized), on the other hand, they ensure a high conversion (because they can only be viewed by interested users).

In general, banners have fairly low CTR (click through rate) and CPM (cost per mille) with a high fill rate (the ratio of ad impressions to requests). Moreover, according to the VentureBeat study, in games, banners are the most irritating type of advertising (even paid apps are preferable in this case). However, in the utilities, users are more loyal to banner advertising.

Native

mobile monetization platform

Native Ads belong to powerful monetization tools. Such mobile advertising fits well into the application design and looks like part of the app interface or content. Native advertising conversions are higher because users sometimes don't realize that what they see is actually ads. This is confirmed by numerous studies including the Contently experiment. Even the note “Sponsorship Content” or “Advertising” doesn't change the situation (of course, provided that Native Ads design is no different from the design of other publications).

Native Ads are of two types: News Feed (In-Feed) and Content Stream.

choose mobile monetization platform

The first is disguised as a news feed (as the name implies), and the second is a video or an analog of a post in social networks and photo galleries. In essence, this is a kind of content monetization platforms: on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, such commercial publications are very common, and they're perceived by users as one of the posts.

Video

monetize apps via advertising

According to global world trends, one of the most effective formats of ad monetization models for apps is video. As statistics claims, 64% of users perceive video advertising better and are more likely to buy the promoted product.

The advantages of video advertising in social networks include, for example, their ability to automatically playback: the user scrolls through his news feed, and the video immediately starts playing. Even if a person sees only the first 2 seconds of the video, this may be enough to memorize the brand.

App monetization platforms offer various video formats of ads, such as:

Full-screen video (the name speaks for itself);
In-stream, a short promotional video that plays before the main video;
Out-stream, a special format of video advertising, which allows you to increase brand awareness through wider audience coverage. Having noticed your ad while reading news on his smartphone, the user can easily start playing the video, scroll the page or tap the video and go to your website;
Rewarded, a form of video advertising that encourages users to watch it if they want to get a special reward. Usually, it is shown during an online game: after watching a video, players are given equipment for heroes, additional bonuses or lives, virtual currency, etc.

Playable

advertising as a monetization model

Playable ads are a relatively new way to monetize apps via advertising. In fact, they are just video games, short (lasting no more than a minute!) and fascinating. The user is prompted to play the demo version of the game, and then he is welcome to perform the target action: say, install the application.

Such mobile game monetization models are generally very popular with users. They provide a pleasant advertising experience, while not only showing how the advertised application looks, but also fully involving and intriguing users.

Variety of monetization

Interstitial is one of the types of advertising which overlaps the entire app screen. And although not all users approve of this approach, it provides advertisers with more space to promote their products. It can be implemented in the form of a banner or video played during a few seconds. To close it, a person needs to tap the button.

This is not the best option among a variety of monetization methods, but sometimes it's useful anyway.

Rich Media (MRAID 2.0)

As the name implies, rich media include many various elements: video, audio, text, etc, and can take the form of pop-up windows, lightboxes, video stories. Such an approach arouses the user's interest and motivates him to interact with the ad more actively.

monetize the app via in-app ads

Studies have shown that in terms of conversion, rich media are much superior to regular ads. This is an essential argument for adding them to your monetization strategy.

Dynamic Product Ads

powerful monetization tools

Dynamic Product Ads are among the incredibly efficient ad monetization models. Just imagine: a certain user visited your e-commerce project and viewed several products, but he didn't buy anything. It is logical to assume that this very person is your potential customer. And if he subsequently will see ads of similar goods in his news feed (in various social networks), then the probability of making a purchase would be quite high (so is the conversion rate).

Best app monetization platforms for Android apps

And now it's time to share your professional opinion about 7 top mobile app ad networks. In fact, many of them work on both platforms, but we're going to tell you about our experience regarding Android applications. You'll learn all the pros and cons of these popular monetization platforms first hand.

Appodeal

Appodeal is focused on application developers, and not on advertisers. Its goal is to save the developer (or app owner) from the need to solve problems related to mobile traffic monetization and provide him with a service to do all this routine job. And he'll be able to devote his time to coding (or managing business) instead of working as a salesman.

Appodeal features

Now let's talk about our experience with Appodeal. So, what are you getting by choosing the monetization model in question (this is about the Android platform, as you remember)?

Types of advertising:
- Video rewardable. Though, it’s not skippable which is a pity;
- Banner: top, bottom, view;
- Native: a banner with a choice of templates to show;
- Playable: it would be a good option, but, as we’ve seen in practice, it works intermittently;
- Interstitials.
Filters. The app monetization platform offers to filter and sort ads by the following criteria:
- age
- sex
- segmentation (including by the number of in-app purchases)
GDPR support: availible
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own. There 2 options:
- A separate View banner that can be placed on the application screen during the layout process;
- Use of ready-made banner templates (with SDK request)
Distinctive features of the platform:
- Admob integration
- The possibility of logging and enabling test mode
- Placements allowing you to track an advertisement and manage it depending on its location
- Android, IOS (Swift, Objective-C), Corona, Unity, Amazone
Payment system: terms of monetization include the following options:
- payment on demand;
- payment once 30 days from $ 100
Analytics capabilities: Appodeal has a very convenient and flexible analytics system with a large set of controlled parameters in the Dashboard.
SDK and documentation:
- There is documentation in Russian and English;
- In addition, a test version of the application is available.
Opened/Found Issues: loading examples in the test application works irregularly, with interruptions

Leadbolt

Leadbolt is one of the emerging Australian companies. Founded in 2010, it is today the world leader in advertising, attraction of users, and mobile traffic monetization. The app ad network works with different advertising formats and has won a lot of loyal users. Leadbolt has customers from 165 countries and 10 billion impressions per month.

Leadbolt features:

Types of advertising:
- Video fullscreen
- Native (banners or custom options)
- Playable
- Interstitials
Filters:
- Native ads can be loaded as a list from the server;
- Video ads are available in two types: "in-app" and "reward"
- In addition, there is filtering by age and gender.
GDPR support: available
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own:
- Banners (100dp and 300dp high);
- The ability to create your own banner layout, different from templates, based on the data of an advertisement received through the SDK. However, unfortunately, there is no complete documentation on the structure of this object.
Distinctive features of the platform:
- The presence of the referral system
- In addition to Android, SDK is also offered for:
  1. Cocos2d-X
  2. Phonegap / Cordova
  3. Titanium
  4. Unity
  5. Corona Enterprise
  6. Xamarin
  7. B4A
- Integration with:
  1. Heyzap (Fyber)
  2. AdobeFlash
  3. MoPub
  4. AdMob
- Features we didn't approve of (while testing the programmatic monetization platform):
  1. The callback listener for loading and displaying ads to allow managing these processes is implemented as a singleton, globally for the entire application.
  2. Video ads (such as "rewarded") cannot be closed before the timer expires.
  3. Video advertising can be closed, either in a built-in way or by tapping "back". Both ways in the listener are shown as normal ad closure.
  4. SDK is obfuscated.
Payment system:
- On request (payment within 60 days)
- Speed on demand (payment next Monday, tax 20%)
Analytics capabilities. There is a personal account with a dashboard for viewing analytics with simple types of filtering, as well as analytics of the referral system.
SDK and documentation. Leadbolt offers both SDK and documentation, but the latter, unfortunately, cannot boast of detail (which is its undoubted disadvantage).
Opened/Found Issues:
- Native ads can't be loaded from the server if video advertising is being cached at the moment. Therefore, in such cases, it's impossible to start native advertising without completely closing the program.
- Instead of video ads, a black screen can sometimes be displayed. The service doesn't respond to touch and tapping the "back" button, but ANR doesn't appear either. And again, the only thing which helps is closing the application.
- In addition, when testing the mobile monetization platform, we noticed that sometimes, under unexplained circumstances, the standard View with a height of 300dp can only display video (without other UI elements) and doesn't respond to touch.
- Another problem is the bugs associated with advertising caching, which is why all native advertising has to be stored in-memory.

PubMatic

PubMatic is a programmatic monetization platform which aims to unite users, application owners, and advertisers by providing them with a convenient advertising tool. PubMatic is owned by a company with offices in a great many countries around the world, which only proves its huge success and effectiveness.

PubMatic features:

Types of advertising:
- Banner
- Interstitial
- Rich Media (MRAID 2.0)
- Native
Filters:
- Location (manual or automatic)
- Device definition
- User targeting options
The possibility to regulate the ad cost. PubMatic uses convenient and original bidding technology (Header Bidding with DoubleClick for Publishers). It allows you to improve the terms of monetization and get the best price you can possibly find.
GDPR support: availible
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own:
- A separate View banner: when requesting, you need to select its dimensions from the list; you cannot use your parameters.
- Multisize Ad Request which allows transferring an array of sizes in the request
Targeting. The system supports 2 targeting types: user data and app information.
Analytics capabilities. PubMatic offers very detailed analytics, with customizable reports on the parameters you specified, a notification system, and other important nuances necessary to obtain complete information about the campaign.
SDK and documentation: available
Opened/Found Issues. In the process of testing and working with the platform, we faced the application crash on Galaxy S7 Edge and waited more than 2 weeks to get a response from the support team.

Facebook Audience Network

Now we're talking about one of the top mobile app ad networks, it's a kind of monetization platform for your website and business application (and note, all applications can take advantage of such an opportunity, not just Facebook apps).

Advertisers get an excellent chance to advertise products or services not only among Facebook users but also among those who prefer other mobile programs. And app owners benefit from getting some of the Facebook ad revenue. So this is a classic win-win situation.

Facebook Audience Network shows a very good result because the renowned social network has detailed information about its users and therefore can provide a tool for accurate ads targeting (remember, we discussed data monetization models?).

Facebook Audience Network features:

Types of advertising:
- Native advertising
- Native scroll
- Ad cut-ins
- Banners
- Ad cut-ins in video
- Bonus Video Ads
GDPR support: available
Targeting. As we've already mentioned, Facebook provides ideal conditions to target ads in the best possible way. Moreover, user data obtained by this social network can be combined with third-party data and information the advertisers themselves have.
Distinctive features of the platform:
- Large selection of types of advertising and the possibility of its free configuration on the server.
- Hardware acceleration for video ads. Otherwise, a black screen may appear instead of the video.
Payment system. Payments are made monthly (minimum USD 100)
SDK and documentation: available

InMobi

InMobi is a global app monetization platform which specializes in providing the best ROI in mobile marketing and advertising. It helps brands, marketers, and application owners attract users at different stages of their interaction with the program.

The company that owns InMobi was founded in 2007. Its headquarters is located in Singapore, and service users are evenly distributed across the world: Asia 38%, Europe 24%, North America 19% and Latin America 10%.

According to the company, the average user contacts InMobi six times a day, and 6 billion ad impressions are being served per day. These are primarily applications from the categories "Entertainment", "Games" and "Lifestyle".

InMobi features:

Types of advertising:
- Video:
  1. Full-screen;
  2. In-stream;
  3. In-feed;
  4. Rewarded;
  5. Out-stream;
  6. Splash;
- Native:
  1. In-feed;
  2. In-article;
  3. In-stream;
  4. Splash;
- Playable;
- Interactive Rich Media Ads;
- Dynamic Carousel Ads;
- High-Impact Interstitial Ads.
- Banner
Filters:
- On the server side, you can create separate types of advertising (placements). For each individual ad, you’re allowed to set the following content display filters:
  1. Domain (to block competition);
  2. Category and subcategory (like Food & Drink, Personal Finance) - about 20 categories with subcategories;
  3. Landing page URL;
  4. App(via store URL) (to block competition).
- On the client side, you can set the following filters:
  1. age group
  2. location by coordinates, city, zip code
  3. gender difference
  4. education
  5. hobby
GDPR support: availible (On the client, you can enable/disable GDPR support).
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own:
- Banners: the app monetization model offers to choose what you need from several predefined size options (you're not allowed to use your own sizes).
- Native advertising allows you to set the aspect ratio of advertising on the server side and to display ads in any size (in the application).
Distinctive features of the platform:
- Large selection of types of advertising and the possibility of its configuration on the server
- The SDK allows preloading ads for future display.
- SDK out of the box can:
  1. automatically update banner ads
  2. show native advertising of any custom size, given the selected aspect ratio
- It is possible to complain about the advertisement and its advertiser.
- SDK automatically collects geolocation data
- Sending data to the server can be controlled from the server
- Integration with:
  1. Heyzap (Fyber)
  2. Appodeal
  3. AdMob
  4. ironSource
  5. MoPub
- In addition to Android, SDK is also offered for:
  1. 1. Cocos2d-X
  2. 2. Unity
- Features we didn't like (they should be considered in order to choose a mobile monetization platform correctly):
  1. You're allowed to use only predefined sizes of banners (you cannot set your own proportions)
  2. SDK is obfuscated.
  3. To download images, the Picasso library is being used, and it must be specified properly.
Payment system. Payments are made monthly within 60 days from the end of the current month. It is possible to withdraw funds to:
- 1. PayPal (minimum 50 USD)
- 2. Bank account (minimum 300 USD, minimum 50 USD if it’s about India)
Analytics capabilities. You can set up convenient analytics not only for the application itself but also for each individual advertising placement.
SDK and documentation. InMobi provides a quality SDK accompanied by detailed, clear documentation. In addition, there are examples on the GitHub resource.
Opened/Found Issues. In the process of testing, we've been faced the problem of a nonworking banner XML integration (the issue is now being solved by the support service).

AdForm

In 2002, the Danish IT company Adform developed a full-fledged, comprehensive mobile monetization platform specialized in digital advertising. Today, the company has offices in 15 countries.

The Adform success is largely due to the ability of its owners to draw the right conclusions and derive insights from their campaigns. They analyze user behavior and try to understand what will make people click on advertisements in the future. In other words, they carefully think over the ad monetization strategy.

AdForm features:

Types of advertising:
- Inline (like banner or video) - in fact, it’s an analog of native advertising
- Full screen;
- Interpage advertisement for ViewPager (an element that serves to manage multiple screens of the application).
GDPR support: available
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own: interactive inline types of ads without customization support.
Distinctive features of the platform:
- The possibility to add keyword phrases and search words to individual ads
- Controlling the collection of geolocation from the application
- Managing HTTP / HTTPS data transfer protocol
- SDK isn't obfuscated
- AdMob integration
- Adform provides SDK for both Android and Unity
- Features of the content monetization platform which we didn't like:
  1. There is no way to save downloaded ads for later display.
  2. Also, there is no customization option.
  3. Full-screen advertising can be closed, either in an integrated way or by tapping "back". Both ways in the listener are shown as normal ad closure.
  4. AdInline isn’t compatible with DataBinding. When using DataBindingUtil.setContectView, the application crashes.
  5. For all types of advertising, you must manually call the life cycle methods (such as onResume, onPause, onDestroy).
  6. To implement full-screen advertising, you need to call onSaveInstanceState and onRestoreInstanceState.
SDK and documentation. Adform offers good SDK and detailed documentation.

MoPub

MoPub is a tool to help mobile sites that have chosen the advertising as a monetization model to manage their ads as efficiently as possible. Initially, the company worked as a mediation service and was engaged in the collection, initial processing, and transmission of information on the availability of advertisements and their prices. With the introduction of the RTB protocol, the ads display algorithm has become unified. And now MoPub handles several billion advertisements daily.

Among the resources which monetize apps via advertising using MoPub are such famous brands as WordPress, Tunein, Halfbrick, Сom2us, and many others.

MoPub features:

Types of advertising:
- Banner
- Native
- Native Video
- Rewarded Video
- Interstitial
Filters. The dashboard can be filtered by the following variables:
- Status: Running, Paused or Complete campaigns
- App: individual or multiple applications
- Ad Unit: individual or multiple ad units
- Ad Source Type: Networks, Promotional, Guaranteed, Non-Guaranteed, Marketplace, Marketplace Line Item, Backfill.
- Ad Format: full screen (320×480, 728×1024), banners (320×50, 728×90), medium rectangles (300×250), custom parameters
- Platform: Android, iOS
GDPR support: available
Types of banners and the possibility to create your own. The big advantage of the platform is customization support.
Targeting.
- Supported Types, or Targeting by:
  1. Country
  2. Region
  3. City
  4. Zip Code
  5. Device
  6. Carrier
- There is also Advanced Targeting which allows you to target users with (or without) specific applications.
Distinctive features of the platform:
- Benefits of the monetization platform:
  1. Mopub has its own DSP which competes successfully with other app ad networks.
  2. It is possible to launch direct campaigns and target them by applications, places or cities;
  3. MoPub SDK can mediate in most ad networks through ready-made adapters, server integration, and user events.
  4. You can set a lower price threshold by country (forming segments). There are also 12 levels of prioritization, which allows you to more effectively optimize both direct campaigns and MoPub Marketplace itself.
  5. Integration with:
    1. Facebook Audience Network
    2. AdColony
    3. Yahoo! Flurry
    4. AppLovin
    5. Chartboost
    6. Vungle
    7. ironSource
    8. One by AOL
    9. Tapjoy
    10. Google (AdMob)
    11. Unity Ads
- Key cons we’ve noticed:
  1. Slow work of the support team;
  2. Low speed of loading your own pages and calculating reporting.
Payment system. MoPub makes monthly payments, 60 days from the invoice date when your cumulative balance exceeds $ 100.
Analytics capabilities: MoPub provides a Dashboard with various types of settings and filters.
SDK and documentation. There is quite good documentation on SDK implementation. In addition, the platform has its own Education Center, more focused on marketers.

Of course, there are much more ad monetization options, but we've described the most top ones. And we hope this information would come in handy if you decide to monetize the app via in-app ads.

Perhaps you have any questions left? Contact us, we're ready to advise you in detail! And we’d be very happy to help you monetize your app and choose mobile a monetization platform you really need.

Looking forward to our collaboration!

The Mobile advertising industry landscape consists of two major parts – Supply, that is presented by publishers and a SSP (stands for Supply Side Platform) that aggregates mobile inventory across hundreds of thousands of publishers and Demand, that is presented by a DSP (stands for Demand Side Platform) that allows advertisers to place mobile ads in publishers desktop or mobile inventory.

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A Mobile Ad Network function is to serve a middle point between these two ends of the value chain, moving inventory across both supply and demand, either directly or via reselling or re-broking of inventory.

On some occasions, companies register with an ad network as both advertiser and publisher. Such double registration allows these companies to account traffic it generates as a publisher to cover fees it needs to pay for traffic it acquires as an advertiser.

Ad networks involvement into advertiser – publisher dynamics isn’t always limited with mobile traffic delivery and providing performance stats, sometimes, when advertisers budget is high, ad networks get involved into ad creatives production. For instance, in a case of video ads, that today run supreme of digital advertising efficiency, ad networks can substantially improve advertiser’s ad campaign efficiency and increase its revenue.

The pioneer in the mobile ad networks space was AdMob , that really took off after its acquisition in 2009 by Google, Inc. Over the course of more than 10 years since, the advertising networks space has grown with a small number of top tier companies have been controlling the market. Apart from AdMob by Google, which later become part of the Google Ads ad platform, these are Facebook, Twitter and, in a smaller degree, Snapchat and Pinterest. The paramount advantage that allows these companies to occupy the top tier of the mobile ad market is how much data they can accumulate on their registered users and leverage this data for ad campaigns precise targeting.

Now, the recent newcomers Reddit and TikTok present an interesting case. The former has one of the most diverse online communities on the planet to reach and monetize and the latter is the brand new China-based social media that is like no other US counterpart. Both are worth of advertisers attention as an alternatives (or extra options) to Facebook and Google.

The next tier, that has survived competition with aforementioned companies and continues to compete for mobile advertisers budgets, consists of Applovin, UnityAds, ironSource and Vungle. Compared with the Google and Facebook duopoly, these four have much less data points for a mobile user profile and therefore can not target mobile ads as precise as the top tier companies. To partly negate this limitation and help advertisers achieve their goals, these companies provide account managers to handle low-level ad campaigns management.

One of the most profound shifts in the mobile ad industry is that mobile apps have become the major inventory for ads to be displayed in, replacing traditional mobile web. This shift has even coined a new term – in app advertising. There is a simple reason behind this transition – multiple researches demonstrate that people spend most of the time with mobile devices, using apps, not browsing web sites as they used to. With the number of mobile apps that continues to increase exponentially, mobile in app advertisements have a potential to replace mobile web ads completely. Today all highest paying mobile ad networks are laser focused on mobile as the fastest growing digital advertising sector.

As mobile advertising industry continues to grow, it becomes more and more apparent that moving all operations into programmatic area is the only way to go. This is how you can accommodate greater and greater advertising volumes, allow ever increasing number of advertisers to manage their ad campaigns efficiently and mobile publishers to maximize their inventory monetization.

The downside of the programmatic approach is that it produces lower engagement rates, introduces advertisers to risk of a fraud, generally it’s less relevant compared to manual ad campaigns and can even be harmful for brands in cases when their ads occasionally being placed on websites next to questionable content.

Continue the trend on advertising automation, Artificial Intelligence algorithms are praised as the way to tackle multiple challenges that digital advertising faces. In fact, AI is the technology that many industries embrace to handle big data volumes to search for patterns and valuable insights to increase its efficiency. For mobile advertising it is also a brand new way to better fight off mobile ad fraud.

Speaking of mobile ad fraud, according to Jupiter research this year it’s the advertisers fate to loose $42 billion because of a fraud. There are two kinds of digital ad fraud – technical and compliance one. The first one covers all sorts of technical ways to trick ad network into considering fake advertising events as genuine ones and the second covers multiple tactics to break the rules established on a specific advertising platform. Examples of technical fraud are ad stacking, attribution fraud, faked postbacks. The compliance fraud has to do with viewability, cases of placing ads in areas it rarely can be seen but still reported as seen, tricking users into clicking on ads, re-brokering ad offers from one publisher to another and more.

Now, before we’ll start profiling top mobile ad networks, let’s define several characteristics to describe a mobile ad network.

Mobile Advertising Business Models

All mobile ad networks provide users with several types of business models to run ad campaigns with. There are 5 major types – CPM, CPC, CPI, CPA and CPV.

With CPM (cost-per-mile) type, an advertiser is charged each time her or his ads are shown 1,000 times (so-called ‘a mile’). It’s the best business model for publishers, because it allows to make money every time an ad was displayed. If they have a stable predictable traffic, it allows publishers to forecast their revenue. The down side is that they may loose some extra revenue, if their app or website audience is really interested in a product or service they advertise. For that case CPC model would allow them to make more money.

With CPC (cost-per-click) model an advertiser is charged for each click made on her or his mobile ads. This model works better for advertisers, because it allows them to pay only for instances when an interest to their product or service is explicit (their ads were clicked) and, as mentioned above, in some cases may work for publishers as well. For a publisher this model always presents a certain risk of him serving lots of ad impressions for free.

CPI (cost-per-instal) model implies that advertisers are charged only when a click on their ads resulted into an actual mobile app install. It’s a specific case of a more generic CPC business model. Cost-per-install price has become one of the most important metrics for mobile app marketers to measure and keep track of, because essentially it represents a price they pay to acquire customers and hence it should be factor into ROI calculations.

CPA (cost-per-action) type is more advanced version of CPI, when an advertiser is charged for specific action (in-app sale, subscription, form submit, sign up and more) users take inside an app that is advertised on a mobile ad network. This type of a business model presents more opportunities for publishers to monetize their inventory on one hand and more options for advertisers to grow their business on the other.

And finally CPV (cost-per-view) type is applicable to mobile ad networks that provide advertisers with video ad campaigns. With this model, advertisers are charged for each instance their video mobile ad was viewed. With the current pace of a video advertising growth, this model becomes more and more popular.

Top Mobile Ad Networks

PubMatic - The Future of Programmatic. Delivered
Remerge - Growth Specialist for App Businesses
URLgenius - Codeless App Linking and QR Codes
Growth FullStack - Custom BI for advertisers of all sizes
AdColony - The In-App Marketplace for Brands
RevX - Made for Growth, Built for App Marketers
Performcb - #1 Performance Marketing Network Worldwide
HUAWEI Ads - Mobile Marketing Platform tailored for HUAWEI devices
AdsCompass - Global Ad network for Publishers and Advertisers
Zoomd - Know More, Do More
Adikteev - Data-driven app marketing platform
Smadex - Mobile-first DSP For Transparent Performance (Apps/Branding/VAS)
Hitapps - Expert in digital advertising and app development since 2017.
3.14 Mobitech - Mobile Advertising the way it should be
JustControl.it - Get Your Digital Marketing Under Control
Bidease - #1 DSP for mobile app marketers
Mobupps - A One Stop Shop For All Your Mobile Marketing Needs
AdQuantum - Revenue Acquisition for Mobile Apps
Adjust - Mobile Measurement Partner
InMobi - Driving Real Connections
Entravision - Entravision is the leading Performance One-Stop-Shop Digital Marketing Company
Kevel - Build a custom ad server in just weeks.
myAppFree - High Quality Mobile Traffic & Exclusive Placements on SONY Xperia, Native SDK
SocialPeta - Ads Intelligence Tool For Marketing Strategy
Adlane - Ad Network for Publishers and Website Owners
AppsFlyer - Mobile marketing attribution and analytics

Mobile Ad Formats

There are 5 major formats supported by top mobile ad networks – interstitial, banner ads, native ads, video ads and offer wall.

Interstitial ads

A full screen ads that cover the interface of their host application. This mobile ad format is most frequently used to display an ad between different app screens and it’s quite often displayed between different levels in a mobile game app.

Banner ads

A classical static or animated image ad, which is placed inside an app’s interface. Such ad may advertise a third party product, other digital or physical goods, as well as an option to expand an app’s functionality.

Native ads

Either a banner image or video ad that matches the form and function of the app interface it’s displayed in. The core concept of native ads to mimic an app’s interface to be least intrusive compared to other ad formats.

OfferWall ads

It is an ad unit within a mobile app that provides end users with lots of offers to engage with. The most frequent use case is mobile games, where offerwalls may either advertise third party games or a series of games from the same game developer.

Video ads

Video ads consist of a short, usually up-to 60 seconds, video clip to advertise products and services. This mobile ad format is most often used within media apps. There are two major types of video ads – in-stream and out-stream. With in-stream type, video ads are displayed full-screen before, after and within video content that is streamed inside an app. With out-stream type video ads are displayed on a web page, displayed inside a mobile app.

Mobile Ads Reporting

An advertising campaign performance data reporting is one of the key components that is crucial for its success. This information is provided by mobile ad networks to advertisers via an online dashboard. It includes data on such parameters of ads performance as number of impressions, clicks, installs, video ad views, platform, country, ad format and so on.

Mobile Ads Targeting

There are number of parameters that allow to narrow down a mobile ad campaign reach to a specific audience. These parameters are called targeting options, there are a number of such options but the majors are the following:

Geo

It allows to narrow down an ad campaign within a specific country or region. It enables mobile marketers to advertise a product or service that is relevant only within a specific region.

Device

It allows to show ads on specific models of mobile devices only. This type of targeting lets advertisers to display ads on devices with a specific screen size and other hardware requirements, which allows to avoid a mobile ad experience degradation.

Carrier

With this option, it’s possible to show ads only to mobile users, who are served by a specific mobile carrier. It presents advertisers an opportunity to display ads to mobile users, those mobile carrier provides a better mobile signal reception in a specific area.

OS

it allows to show ads on mobile devices running specific operating system or even particular versions of OS. It gives advertisers a benefit of displaying ads to mobile users on devices that are best to display those ads software wise.

Connection

By applying this targeting option, it’s possible to show mobile ads on mobile devices when they are connected to the Internet either via Wifi or 3G/LTE connection.

Interests

mobile ad network that collect mobile users data and build their profile allows to narrow down an ad campaign on an audience segment with specific interests only.

Gender

This option allows to narrow down an ad campaign to mobile users of a particular gender. Naturally, just like with any kind of advertising such targeting is aimed to market goods specifically to females and males.

One of the best sources to check a particular mobile ad network performance is the AppsFlyer semi-annual Performance Index. Below you can see the snippet from the H1, 2019 edition and it covers media sources performance for both gaming and non-gaming apps for iOS and Android operating system.

In the table, Volume Ranking based on the total number of non-fraudulent installs each was attributed for, Power Ranking based on the normalized and combined number of non-fraudulent installs, the number of apps running with each media source and the weighted retention score.

Mobile Advertising rankings

Top 10 Media Sources [both iOS and Android]

Gaming Power	Gaming Volume	Non-Gaming Power	Non-Gaming Volume
1	Google Ads	Google Ads	Google Ads	Google Ads
2	Facebook Ads	Facebook Ads	Facebook Ads	Facebook Ads
3	AppLovin	ironSource ironSource ironSource	Apple Search Ads	Apple Search Ads
4	UnityAds	UnityAds	Twitter Ads	TikTok Ads
5	ironSource	AppLovin	Google Marketing Platform	Snapchat Ads
6	Apple Search Ads	Vungle	Snapchat Ads	UnityAds
7	Mintegral	Mintegral	Liftoff	ironSource
8	Vungle	TikTok Ads	ironSource	AppLovin
9	Snapchat Ads	Tapjoy	AppLovin	Liftoff
10	Twitter Ads	Snapchat Ads	TikTok Ads	Twitter Ads

Source: AppsFlyer Performance Index Edition X

Another company that provides data to measure mobile ad networks performance is Singular – the mobile marketing analytics platform that issued earlier this year the Singular ROI Index. It’s compiled based on the data Singular derived from more than 550+ mobile media sources, 2.2 billion installs with matching ROI, $6.3 billion in advertising spend. The index factors in a number of metrics, such as mobile user retention, revenue per install and what is the most important – the cost to drive app users engagement.

This year Index does’t rate the companies that got on the list due to really narrow margins in their performance.

Singular ROI Index Top 10 [iOS app data]

Aarki	AdAction Interactive AdAction Interactive
Apple Search Ads	Applovin
Chartboost	Facebook Ads
Google Ads	ironSource
Liftoff	MOLOCO
Snapchat Ads	Tapjoy
Twitter Ads	Unity Ads

Source: Singular ROI Index 2020

Singular ROI Index Top 10 [Android app data]

Aarki	AdAction Interactive AdAction Interactive
applike	AppLovin
Facebook Ads	Google Ads
ironSource	Liftoff
MOLOCO	nend
Snapchat Ads	Tapjoy
Twitter Ads	Unity Ads

Source: Singular ROI Index 2020

Now let’s take a look at the list of top mobile ad networks of 2020 we’ve compiled for app developers and mobile business owners to find the right one to work with. To compile this list we researched the major players in the mobile advertising field, included companies that offer the wide range of ad formats and targeting options, as well as robust statistics and good technical support.

List of mobile advertising networks

AdColony

The In-App Marketplace for Brands

Sunday, January 30, 2022