Dave Edwards, VP of Revenue at Audiomack - a popular music app publisher - discusses their experience monetizing with the ironSource ad network to boost revenue while balancing user engagement.
Seeking a monetization partner with high CPMs and competitive fill rates
The ad-supported business model for streaming apps like ours is a delicate balance of increasing profit margins while reducing cost to our users. But maintaining a quality user experience with this monetization strategy is a challenge: overload the user with ads or irrelevant creatives and they’ll leave, or serve too few ads and fail to earn a profit and scale. So, we need monetization partners that can provide stability and quality creatives, all while respecting user data and not interfering with the user experience.
To achieve this, we look for networks with diverse demand, from gaming to major consumer brands.
We thoroughly investigate all of our networks before working with them, and ironSource was no different. Doing our due diligence ahead of time, we heard only positive things about ironSource but we were nervous that it was primarily a gaming demand network.
Relying on ironSource to diversify the ad experience
We’ve seen a meaningful and substantial lift in our fullscreen monetization since our integration with ironSource began. Although we initially believed ironSource was exclusively gaming advertisers, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much of the demand is non-gaming, which helps us diversify the ad experience for our users.
"The competitive fill rates, constant optimizations to our waterfall, and quality creatives from a range of advertisers on the ironSource network helped us sustain an increase in overall revenue."
- Dave Edwards, VP of Revenue at Audiomack
Our top advertisers have been major consumer brands with creatives that respect the user experience. ironSource proved that we didn’t need to be concerned and has lived up to our expectations - and then some. The competitive [tooltip term="fill-rate"]fill rates[/tooltip], constant optimizations to our waterfall, and quality creatives from a range of advertisers on the ironSource network helped us sustain an increase in overall revenue. They’re now a top ad network on iOS and even though we just launched with them on Android in September, they’re already among our top 5 networks.
A reliable SDK and support team
A major highlight of working with ironSource has been how easy it was to integrate their SDK, and since then we’ve had no technical issues. It’s truly a rock solid network.
The team is also extremely attentive and responsive, listening to our concerns and goals, and helping us successfully execute on those. We consistently meet with the ironSource team to track our progress and optimize our waterfall placements, testing new placements that help significantly scale our revenue.
