App Open Ads and More

Recently, there has been a lot of chatter in the industry about app open ads. I also couldn’t help but notice a decent amount of confusion when it comes to this particular ad format. This has partially been caused by Applovin’s recent announcement that they have enabled mediation for app open ads on their MAX mediation. Per their documentation, app open ads have been available since mid-September, and for the time being, it remains an invite-only feature.

For this reason, I thought it would be worthwhile to share my experience and insights and hopefully shed some light on this topic.

This short post will try to cover all the main characteristics of the app open ads, including the following aspects:

• What are app open ads
• Key attributes
• What does user experience look like
• What does the performance look like
• Are app open ads compliant with Google’s recent Better Ads Experience policy
• Which ad networks offer app open ads
• Can multiple ad networks be used to show app open ads in a mediation setup
• Are interstitial ads suitable for your game

What are app open ads?

App open ad is a relatively new ad format that was made available in the Western world by AdMob. I’m not sure about the timeline, but the format has been available for at least two years now.

What are the key attributes of app open ads?

• Not a full-screen ad format. Instead, they take over 80% of the screen
• Can be both static (image) and video ads
• Skippable during the entire duration of the ad
• Always shown in parallel with the app’s loading/splash screen
• They generate up to 70% of the eCPM of interstitial ads, although, in my limited experience, the eCPM was significantly lower than that
• In the tests we performed, they did not have a significant negative impact on retention
• App open ads have so far been primarily used in non-gaming apps, and they had higher adoption in eastern than western markets

What does user experience look like?

• The user clicks on the app’s icon on their phone
• The loading/splash screen is shown for a split second across the entire screen and then the ad takes most of the screen or to be more precise 80% of it while the remaining 20% shows parts of the loading/splash screen and a clear skip button
• During the entire duration of the ad, the user has the option to skip it and move on to the actual content of the app
• The same experience goes for the cold start (the user starts the app that wasn’t previously running in the background) and for warm/hot start (the user starts the app that was previously running in the background and was now just brought forward)

What is the performance like?

When it comes to eCPM, during some of the online sessions, AdMob shared that they can reach up to 70% of the eCPM that interstitial ads would generate. In my limited experience with this format (used it only in one non-gaming app, at scale, though), eCPMs were much lower than that. Below is the example for a couple of tier1 countries and a couple of tier3 countries. This also covers a long period of time, Q3 2021 – Q3 2022 (including these Qs as well).

Turn this into % of the eCPM that is generated on interstitial ads and we get the following results.

So the eCPM for app open ads was as low as 13% and as high as 39% of the eCPM generated by interstitial ads

*You might notice that these eCPMs are quite low, but this is simply because of the nature of the app and its users

Are app open ads compliant with the new Google interstitial ads policies?

Yes, since the policy applies to full-screen formats only, that means that automatically, app open ads are compliant. Additionally, they explicitly mentioned on one of their webinars that app open ads are compliant.

Which ad networks offer app open ads?

The only networks supporting this ad format are AdMob by Google and, starting recently, Pangle.

Can multiple ad networks be used to show app open ads in a mediation setup?

No, they cannot. Or, to be more precise, none of the main mediation providers in the market support this ad format yet, but developers could create their own setup where they mediate AdMob and Pangle.

Applovin recently started communicating that app open ads are now available on their mediation platform MAX and that all networks can be used to run competitive mediation setups. Here is why this is not quite correct (if we stick to the definitions explained above). What MAX offers is:

• Full-screen ads
• Skippable after five seconds, like any other interstitial ad
• Ads are shown after the loading/splash screen but before any content of the app is shown

Basically, what MAX offers is an interstitial ad that is shown in the placement of the app start and not an actual app open ad.

The advantage is that multiple networks can be mediated to increase competitiveness and achieve higher eCPM.

There are several downsides to naming interstitial ads that start at the beginning of the session as app open ads and using them instead:

• It creates confusion among developers because these are essentially two different things
• It removes some of the “seamless” experience that app open ads are supposed to offer (showing an ad at the same time as the splash screen since the user would have to wait anyways for the app to load)
• On the operation level,  it is somewhat unclear whether it was necessary to separate interstitial ads shown at the start of the app from other possible placements (after the level, etc.) This certainly creates additional work for Ad Monetization Managers since they have to mediate and optimize the performance on separate waterfalls
• It is not clear if this implementation is in line with Google Play’s Better Ads Experiences policy. Per these guidelines: As long as it complies with Google Play’s Ads policy, you can show a static interstitial ad after your app has loaded. If your app does not have a splash screen, wait for your app home screen to load before showing ads. This clearly states that static ads are allowed. However, there is no mention of video ads.

Are app open ads suitable for your game?

This depends on what kind of game you have. Similar to interstitial ads, this ad format is more suitable for casual games, although app open ads do have a somewhat less intrusive experience than interstitial ads. You should probably carefully consider your segmentation setup (show app open ads only to non-paying users that have spent more than X days in your game) to make sure you are maximizing your ad revenue without hurting retention (and consequently LTV).

With eCPMs going down, stores and regulators imposing more and more privacy restrictions, app open ads are definitely something worth considering.