By OpenX in Mobile, OpenX Innovations|March 1, 2016

Bringing the Leading Desktop Solution to Mobile: Bidder for Apps

According to a recent report from Flurry, U.S. consumers are now spending 198 minutes per day inside mobile apps, not including time spent using mobile web. This surpasses the time spent on TV, approximately 168 minutes a day.

With 3 hours a day dedicated to in-app activity, advertisers are beginning to see the full potential of app advertising and adjusting their strategies accordingly. This presents a huge opportunity for publishers and app developers looking to capture more of advertisers’ growing mobile budgets.

Our own data already shows the impact of rapid growth in mobile app. Over the past six months, mobile app revenue has increased approximately 300% at OpenX. Importantly, we’re also seeing 50 percent higher CPMs on mobile app than on mobile web.

To keep pace with consumers changing behavior, publishers and app developers must have access to the technology that will allow them to grow their app business at scale and monetize better. A great example is Bidder for Apps.

OpenX Bidder for Apps

Bidder for Apps is built on the same trusted and proven technology as OpenX Bidder for desktop and mobile web, and was created for the same reason – to maximize competition, and ultimately deliver higher revenue for publishers.

As some of you may know, header bidding allows publishers to solicit bids from buyers ahead of the call to the ad server and in parallel to direct deals and other demand sources, rather than through a traditional demand stack set up that has limitations due to the waterfall effect. Even though headers technically don’t exist in mobile apps, we’re able to take the same mechanics and technology that levels the playing field on desktop, and apply those to the app space for the same superior revenue results.

Demand for mobile app inventory is extremely fragmented compared to desktop or mobile web. There are several small players specializing in mobile, as well as many traditional DSPs and ad networks who have expanded into the space in the last couple of years. This kind of environment magnifies the inherent benefits of OpenX Bidder for Apps for developers.

Increased fragmentation in mobile app demand inevitably leads to more hops, decreasing fill rates for app developers, and ultimately an exaggerated distribution of prices and lower CPMs. To help overcome this, app developers would need to optimize the ad server’s priority, which requires them to update their app and re-submit to the store – a task developers prefer to limit due to fact that it is resource intensive and often negatively impacts yield.

Also, mobile ads have greater format diversity – display, expandable, interstitial, rich media – and all formats can compete for a single slot bringing in a wide spectrum of CPMs. Within a traditional set up the ad server can fill the impression with a display ad at $1.80 and would lose the opportunity to act on a $15 video bid from a network further down the demand stack. The implications of a traditional demand stack can lead to significant opportunity costs for the developer or publisher.

With OpenX Bidder for Apps, publishers and app developers can overcome the limitations of traditional set ups and the waterfall effect, to earn more for each impression. OpenX Bidder for Apps maximizes demand and increases competition for mobile app inventory, ultimately driving higher yield for mobile app publishers.

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