Ad mediation: Waterfall mediation, ad mediation networks, and mediation platforms

What is ad mediation?

Ad mediation is an app monetization solution which lets app developers manage and optimize multiple ad networks in one place, with just one SDK integration.

Ad mediation platform

Ad mediation platforms give multiple ad networks access to an app’s inventory, creating an arena in which ad networks must compete for their ad to be served. Higher competition among ad networks means competitive eCPMs and more ad revenue for app developers.

Waterfall mediation

Traditionally, ad mediation platforms use a ‘waterfall’ approach to optimize its ad networks, prioritizing and ordering ad networks according to total potential ad revenue. In this approach, when an app developer requests an ad to fill, the highest performing ad network is called until its ad bidding pool is completely used up. Then, the system moves onto the next ad network until its pool is used up, and so on.

Ad mediation networks today

Today, however, advanced ad network mediation platforms use a ‘weighted waterfall bidding system,’ assigning and prioritizing ad networks by weight. The ad network’s weight is determined by the performance of one network in relation to others. This results in only the top pool of ads from each network being requested, which ensures that developers fill high-performing ads from each network first before moving on to lower paying ads.

In fact, developers report an average 40% increase in overall ad revenue from a weighted network mediation system.

Read our in-depth guide on mobile ad mediation.