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Ad Units

Waterfall algorithm explanation​

Whenever a user opens an application, we send a list of ad units (or waterfall) to the device. All the ad units in the waterfall are prioritized based on historical eCPMs. While caching we fire all ad units one by one until one of them returns with an ad creative. With this approach, we ensure the best possible eCPM. Moreover, this guarantees a solid fill rate.

Actually, we have two waterfalls. The second one is the waterfall that is described above. And another one is used to serve ads as soon as possible. This waterfall contains the cheapest ad units with the best fill rate performance. So if you call “show method” right after the initialization of our SDK, ads will be shown almost immediately. Otherwise, we will initiate the ordinary waterfall to fill an app inventory with the most profitable ads.

In-App Header Bidding algorithm explanation​

In-App Header Bidding works as a unified auction aimed at finding the highest-paying ad among all the demand sources in real time, making their opportunities equal. In-App Header Bidding provides closer access to the actual highest price per impression for publishers.

In addition to that, in-app header bidding significantly reduces latency and invigorates the ad delivery process. The ad requests and the auctions are processed on the server side.Therefore, devices no longer need to run consecutive client-side ad requests.

Ad Units tool provide an opportunity to create and manage enable or disable ad units for each Ad Network.

Priorities give you the power to create custom waterfalls. With this functionality, you can manage Ad Units order using one of four modes: in-app header bidding, manual, eCPM, and automatic, or you can use all of them at the same time. Moreover, you can create waterfalls for each of the countries, or you can even target the waterfall for certain user segments.

note

Priorities setting is available only with Appodeal SDK 2.6.1+

Ad Units​

To find this tool:

  1. You should navigate to the Apps page

  2. Choose the app you want to manage Ad Units for

  3. Click on the three dots on the right to see the options

  4. Select the Mediation Settings tab. For your convenience, we divided Ad Units by the ad types.

This tool enables you to create and manage Ad Units for all the supported ad networks, but it also gives you the power to turn the ad networks on and off when you need to.

Here you can find our special ad network with zero eCPM - Backfill. It is needed only at the start of mediation to increase

the fill rate while other ad networks connect. You don't get any revenue for these impressions. Backfill is automatically disabled after 1000 impressions.

To create a new Ad Unit for the specific ad network & ad type, you should extend the list of Ad Units for this ad network and click the Add Ad Unit button, or you can click on the gear icon to manage the settings for existing Ad Units.

For every Ad Unit (including those created by Appodeal), you can specify the countries where this Ad Unit will be added to the “waterfall”. Choose countries from the list for even more precise targeting.

Default eCPM settings determine the start position of the ad unit in the waterfall. Once we have enough data from the ad network side, we're able to analyze their eCPM tendencies and predict which eCPM would be more effective.

In the code field, you should fill the unique identifier of this ad unit.

Priorities​

This tool is located right next to the Ad Units tab.

Priorities is a feature that allows you to move Ad Unit positions around with the “drag and drop” function and organize them into country/segment groupings that are easy to create. In other words, you can manage your waterfall configuration in a number of ways. Whenever you create a new app, we automatically add “Default configuration,” where all the Ad Units are located in the Automatic Priority section. By default, this configuration is applied to all countries/segments. If you add the Ad Unit to the custom priority, it will override the "countries" setting for this Ad Unit. Thus it can work for the country which isn't selected in the settings of this Ad Unit. You can create new configurations for the specific ad type by clicking the “New Configuration” button.

First, you need to add the name of your configuration. We advise you to name it by the countries/segments names you want to target this priority to.

Then you need to choose whether you want to target this configuration to a range of countries or for some segments. You can select one country as a group or a number of countries for the configuration. However, you can't use the same country in several groupings (for example, if you choose Canada, USA, and Australia for one of the country groupings, you can't feature Canada in another grouping).

The same principle applies to the Segments targeting.

Finally you need to configure the ad units positioning in the waterfall for the selected ad type. There are four modes you can utilize:

  • In-App Header Bidding
  • Manual Priority
  • Automatic Priority
  • eCPM Priority

On the left, you can see the tab Unused Ad Units — that's where the newly created and previously unused Ad Units are placed, so you can drag all the Ad Units you'd like to use for Priority Modes. Keep in mind that in this section you can't create new Ad Units. For that, you'd need to use the Ad Units tool.

In most cases, it's recommended to add Ad Units to the Automatic Priority, where they are positioned automatically (based on the statistics at our disposal). You can also use the “Move all unused line items here” button to move all the ad units from the Unused Ad Units section to the Automatic Priority. Note that Ad Units in this section are sorted by their names.

eCPM priority is in-between Automatic and Manual priorities and allows specifying eCPM for each Ad Unit for further automatic positioning.

In Manual Priority, you can arrange top positions: Ad Units that go first. Manual Priority is basically for your preferred Ad Units that you want to “release” as a priority in the waterfall. You can choose up to 3 Ad Units for one position. In fact, it means that every time will be randomly selected one of the specified ad units and placed in the corresponding position in the waterfall.

In-App Header Bidding priority should be used only for in-app header bidding Ad Units if you have created them previously in the Ad Units section.Here you can either set up price floors manually or select the Auto Price Floors option.

caution

Please choose Auto Price Floors option for In-App Header Bidding for now.

info

Not all ad networks support in-app header bidding.

All four modes are functioning simultaneously.

If a Ad Unit is displayed in the list in a muted state, that means it can't be added to the waterfall associated with this priority for the reason this Ad Unit was switched off in the Ad Units tool.

In this section, you can find some basic use cases of our Networks Setup separated by tools.

Priorities

  1. If you have a direct deal with an ad network, and you agreed on the position of the network in the waterfall, you should use the manual section to obtain the necessary results.

  2. Sometimes ad networks cannot display your statistics for different reasons. In this case, the positions of Ad Units for this ad network will be automatically changed by our algorithm unless you put them in the manual or eCPM sections.

  3. If you are not sure which section suits you best, use the automatic priority section.

  4. You can use segment targeting to conduct A/B tests of two waterfalls for one country (by adding “country” and “part of audience” filters in the segments).

  5. To use the same waterfall configuration for a range of countries, you can target priority to these countries instead of creating priorities for each of them.

Ad Units

If an ad unit performs poorly, you can easily disable it using Line items, and this change will apply for all of the priorities.