Roman Garbar
We’re thrilled to announce an update to Tenjin’s Ad Monetization Suite designed specifically for advertisers promoting apps with ad monetization.
The latest update enhances ad revenue attribution in the Tenjin dashboard, offering user-level or impression-level data fetched from ad mediation providers via the Tenjin SDK in the User Acquisition Reports. This new set of ad mediation metrics empower advertisers to optimize their advertising campaigns precisely and confidently.
Ad revenue attribution is the allocation of earned ad revenue to different ad networks, campaigns, and individual ads to identify the most profitable sources.
Why do mobile app publishers need ad revenue attribution?
Whether it’s an app solely monetized via in-app advertising (IAA) or a hybrid one combining IAA with in-app purchases (IAP), Ad Revenue Attribution plays a pivotal role in the success of all user acquisition campaigns.
For IAP, the ad revenue attribution process has always been pretty straightforward. Once the install is attributed to a campaign via a MMP like Tenjin, all of the in-app events, including the revenue, are at the developer’s fingertips as all events go directly through the app.
In contrast, IAA presents a different scenario. Advertisers lack access to data on how much revenue an acquired user brought in through interacting with ads. While publishers may see how many ads a user viewed or how much a particular app earned, key dimensions for advertisers, such as ad networks or campaigns, are missing.
This is where ad revenue attribution comes into play.
What are the types of ad revenue attribution?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to ad revenue attribution. Advertisers typically have preferences regarding the type of ad revenue attribution they would like to use, each with its own pros and cons.
Choosing the right type of ad revenue attribution is akin to laying a solid foundation for your home. Regardless of the sources used to promote your app, all are assessed using metrics built upon the chosen ad revenue attribution method. Furthermore, having the option to compare data collected via different methods provides advertisers with valuable insights.
There are various perspectives to consider when talking about the types of ad revenue attribution. We offer some of them below:
1. Aggregate-based or Session-based Ad Revenue LTV
Aggregate-based ad revenue LTV was first introduced by Tenjin. This type of ad revenue attribution played a crucial role in enabling the first cohort of hyper-casual developers, like Voodoo, to dominate the user acquisition world many years ago. Today, it’s still utilized by leading publishers in the mobile industry. More details can be found in the following case studies:
How does aggregate-based ad revenue attribution work?
Simply put, Tenjin collects aggregated data from your ad monetization partners and divides it by the number of sessions your acquired users had in a segment (e.g. country). Tenjin then uses this data to calculate metrics like LTV & ROAS for advertising dimensions in Tenjin’s dashboard.
Even though this method existed way before the privacy-first era of advertising on mobile, it has become increasingly popular since its onset. This is because it operates at the aggregate level rather than the granular level.
Anyone can sign up for free and try it out on the Tenjin ROI dashboard.
2. Custom-events-based ad revenue attribution
This type of ad revenue attribution was quite common among large publishers before the introduction of Ad Mediation Revenue (to be discussed next).
How does custom-events-based ad revenue attribution work?
A publisher manually maps the estimated revenue to corresponding ad formats (such as rewarded video, interstitial, etc.) and calculates metrics like LTV and ROAS based on the number of triggered events in a user cohort.
The setup may vary depending on the publisher. Some might couple the ad formats with countries in the mapping. This has the potential to become quite complicated, and the accuracy of the estimated numbers tends to degrade over time, making it the most challenging attribution type to maintain.
In some cases, this method may still be viable for large publishers with sufficient resources who are not using ad mediation that supports the passing of ad revenue data at the user or impression level.
Custom-events-based ad revenue attribution is available via Tenjin’s product GrowthFullstack.
3. Ad Mediation Revenue / User Level or Impression-Level Revenue Data
Advertisers frequently use this type of ad revenue attribution because of its precision and the additional use cases it can unlock.
How does Ad Mediation Revenue / User Level or Impression-Level Revenue Data work?
In this method, user-level revenue data (ULRD) or impression-level revenue data (ILRD) is extracted from the ad mediation and joined with Tenjin’s attribution data to calculate ROAS and LTV for advertising dimensions in the Tenjin dashboard. The high-level granularity of the data guarantees utmost precision in ad revenue metrics for user acquisition.
The most common additional use case for ad mediation revenue is enabling ad networks’ ROAS campaigns. Here’s how ROAS Campaigns work: ad revenue is sent from a mediation provider to an ad network, allowing for automatic optimization of advertising campaigns.
The list of ad mediation providers and ad networks that support this is available here.
You can also read about it in the following case study:
Learn about the best practices of the campaigns mentioned above from:
If advertisers also have access to granular user or impression-level data, it can be utilized for other purposes beyond optimizing user acquisition campaigns, such as user segmentation or A/B testing.
Ad Mediation Revenue is available as a part of Tenjin’s all-inclusive plans, or as a separate add-on.
If you’re unsure about which type of ad revenue attribution to choose, we’re here to help. Just drop us an email at support@tenjin.com.
Build the foundation for your user acquisition campaigns
This update not only empowers advertisers to fine-tune their campaigns with precision but also provides them with the flexibility to choose the ad revenue attribution that best suits their needs, whether it’s aggregate-based, custom-events-based, or utilizing user-level or impression-level revenue data.
As we continue to innovate and refine our suite of tools, our goal remains clear: to provide app developers with the insights and flexibility they need to succeed in today’s competitive landscape. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, Tenjin is here to support your journey.
