Pedro Miranda, Director of Product Management, FairBid at Fyber – a Digital Turbine company – writes for PocketGamer.biz on the company’s approach to mediation – and the value it brings to publishers.
Mediation is a key part of successfully growing a publisher’s app, but it’s not so simple. Developers crave more insight and clarity into their inventory. Unfortunately, many solutions still operate within a black box, leaving app publishers in the dark, never knowing if they are really getting the best possible performance.
This leads to a common distrust with their monetisation engines leaving little room to “not sweat the little things” and get to bigger picture initiatives. When I first began my career in mobile gaming, these were the pain points I experienced myself. To some, they are still a thorn in their side.
I was at Rovio during the rise of the freemium model for mobile games. There, I felt the frustration of developers wanting to hone their games and grow them, but the manual work and software development kit (SDK) fatigue held them back.
In those days, premium models were the main source of revenue, but popping that bubble meant reaching a broader audience and including ads as a complementary revenue source. The more the industry started to scale, the more I believed that free-to-play was here to stay and I was determined to try my hand at building that solution.
We had a different vision, based on putting the publisher first and having no hidden agenda.
Pedro Miranda
Building an alternative to black-box solutions
During my time as Head of Ad Operations at Unity Ads, I got to walk on the demand side of the ecosystem. I heard more about what publishers wanted from networks – greater visibility into the ads being delivered – to have a greater sense of control around end-user experience.
When I moved to Lab Cave Games, I gained experience on how to build a mediation platform that’s completely transparent with no direct demand behind it.
We had a different vision, based on putting the publisher first and having no hidden agenda – ultimately creating more value for everyone. Lacking resources, our project didn’t take off but left me wanting to pursue a transparent solution, led by a company that has no hidden agenda or is directly competing with app developers.
This multidisciplinary experience helped me realise the necessity of trust between publishers and their monetisation partners to build the best player experience down to the finest details. It soon led me on a path to joining the FairBid team – I was excited to join talented developers building a powerful publisher-first platform that makes integrating ads more intuitive, reducing the ad monetisation manager’s workload required to launch with confidence.
Since Fyber FairBid’s inception, the mediation landscape has seen generational shifts. With our vision to improve revenue for publishers by creating fair, transparent, and optimal competition for their inventory the team has been delivering on this promise. Here’s how:
Finding success in today’s landscape depends on making real-time, data-driven decisions…
Pedro Miranda
Putting the app publisher first
A mediation platform with nothing to hide
While mediation is the backbone of a publisher’s ad monetisation stack, transparency and trust in data is the beating heart. Finding success in today’s landscape depends on making real-time, data-driven decisions, monitoring KPIs, and giving publishers the freedom to control exactly how they want to sell ad inventory – whether it’s through a waterfall, unified auction, or somewhere in-between.
What sets Fyber FairBid apart is exactly this – its full visibility into exactly what’s going on under the hood. With tools like Dynamic reports, our auction audit, and waterfall visualisation, developers can take the guesswork out, act fast, and easily tap into where the gaps are to maximise revenue and improve performance – in just a click.
Transparency you can trust and use to optimise
Similarly, the most important practice when it comes to using your app’s data is how you use it to fire up your game growth. By introducing pre-impression level data, we want developers to make data-informed decisions on what to do with their monetisation – leaning on detailed information for every impression, where it’s coming from (such as the network, or the eCPM) and whether to actually show it or not – before the ad is even shown. It’s a game changer that gives you complete control over what to do with that impression.
The same goes for testing. Our multi-testing capabilities allow you to run several tests (up to five variants) so you can compare the impact of waterfall vs bidding, test different banner refresh intervals, or decide on different floors. In addition, optimising multiple hypotheses in a fraction of the time directly on FairBid gives you more time to work on growing your game.
If it’s manual work, we’re automating it
Our continuous developments and investment in automation are geared towards helping developers reduce manual work, free-up more time to focus on their games, and maximise their app business. So whether you’re new or experienced in mediation, we’ve made sure that our platform is designed for you to quickly master mediation with its intuitive interface and automated setup.
The north star guiding our product was always something more than just building the default bidding solution for our partners and their app business. It’s independent, built from the ground up, and completely designed for the in-app programmatic era. FairBid’s foundations are transparency, enhanced performance, and ease of use – everything you need to power your app.
FairBid’s foundations are transparency, enhanced performance, and ease of use
Pedro Miranda
So what’s next?
Our solution is already giving developers the integral tools that I wish I had back then, still with major updates to come. While we aim to continue creating a culture of transparency within the ecosystem by sharing more upcoming features on our roadmap – here is a peek into what’s to come.
Our ad transparency interface is in the works to provide you visibility into exactly what your users are seeing across your mediated demand stack. This means having a front-row seat to Fyber Marketplace and mediated network creatives so you can fine-tune your player experience. Combine that with our upcoming analytics solution to monitor SDK performance across your stack and you’ll have full control over your app from a centralized command centre.
In addition to expanding our support of more third-party demand through waterfall and SDK bidding networks, we are also bringing you direct-sold and cross-promotion campaign delivery tools to run in-house campaigns seamlessly in your bidstream to scale and compete more efficiently.
I’m proud of the fact that our solution is already giving developers the integral tools that I wish I had back then, with even more transparency and confidence than before. Working closely with our partners, listening to their needs, and continuously developing the mediation platform that ticks all the boxes is why I’m excited to be here.
