Felix Braberg

Ad El Dorado - Inside the Incentivized Ad Platforms Quest for Gold Gold Diggers, Welcome! The number of Incentive Ad Platforms or offerwall solutions has significantly increased in the last couple of years. I remember that back in 2017, the only options for publishers looking for offerwalls solutions were relegated to two choices: Fyber and Tapjoy. Now, it’s 2025, and according to Paul Bowen’s Data Baseon Incentivized ad platforms, you can choose from 19 companies. That’s 8x more companies in 8 years. So, this week, I want to break down the different types of offerwalls available to publishers and break down common pitfalls publishers face when chasing these golden gains. 🤔What is an Offerwall?🤔 Easy - A publisher integrates an offerwall where their users can see a list of offers they can complete for in-game currency. The offers can range […]

How to optimize placement networks on Admob? I wanted to devote this week's newsletter to some more practical information on a pain point that I frequently have to contend with. That is how to optimize placement networks on the Admob mediation platform. Admob can sometimes be confusing and clunky to use, so here’s how I optimize placement networks on Admob. You’ll need to access the mediation report tab and split up the data into useful components by App and ad type. Start by selecting for example: App → Select one Android App → Last 7 days → Dimensions → Ad Source Instance Once you have the data set up like this, click the 3 dots in the top right corner, download it as a CSV, and open it in an Excel spreadsheet. To accurately read the data you’ll need to […]

How much ad revenue should a game generate per 100k of DAU? “Quiet wealth” or “quiet luxury” emphasizes privacy and discourages overt displays of wealth that cause attention. In Mobile, once you earn IAP revenue, it’s akin to firing off a giant flare gun to the development community. Anyone with Sensor Tower access can, in real time, track your progress and if your project is worth copying or not. IAP revenue is loud, brash, and easy to track. Whereas ad revenue, the second income stream for mobile apps, is opaque, concealed, and difficult to estimate. In mobile, Ad Revenue is “Quiet Revenue”, and IAP is “Loud Revenue”. I estimate that the mobile ad monetization market pays mobile publishers between $38 and $55 million per day to show impressions in their apps. This means mobile publishers collectively receive between $14 and […]

💅Four signs that the new ad network might not be that into you…💅 Why are the two strongest mobile networks not taking on new publisher partners? Two of the strongest new mobile networks are Amazon Publisher Services and Moloco. So why are neither of these two networks accepting new publisher partners🤔? Much of my last year was spent praising Moloco and APS and their quick rise on the mobile ad monetization scene. APS is now a larger Banner partner for publishers in the EU and USA than Google. I also saw countless times how Moloco’s foray into SDK direct traffic pushed up AdARPDAUs by more than 10% on video inventory for publishers. But for the last 6-12 months, I haven’t been able to onboard a new publisher for either of these two networks. Why is that? If you’re monetizing with […]

💪Who are the 10 Biggest Networks on Mobile, and How do they make money? 💸 After Applovin’s end-of-year statement and the subsequent LinkedIn carousel of congratulations🎠 I felt like taking a step back and discussing how ad networks actually make money and which networks are currently the largest ones on mobile from a volume of impressions perspective. Mobile ad Networks, at its core, offer three distinct products: A direct SDK connection to mobile apps and their users The UA algorithms they’ve built on the traffic using their AI prowess End cards that make users more likely to click and download the advertised apps or games At its core, an ad network provides the plumbing and the algorithms that will show the best ad for the users who are most likely to convert to the content. This means that mobile ad […]

💸What’s the dollar value of an impression💸? How much is an impression worth to a mobile publisher? Honestly, it depends… It's such a boring answer, I know. I don’t like boring answers, so let's break down the factors that decide what an impression is worth and make some models you can use to factor in impressions in your game design. Ok, everyone! Off into the ad revenue Rabbit hole🐇! First, here’s a helpful formula: Ad Revenue = Fill x eCPM. Let’s start with eCPM. eCPM (effective Cost Per Mile) is the price an ad network will pay for 1k impressions. Let’s go down one more layer. How do ad networks calculate eCPM? All ad networks consider various factors to decide what an impression of a publisher’s user is worth. Google is roomered to use 94 different factors in their algorithm […]

Are Relgious-themed games the best advertising revenue niche in the mobile industry? One of the most profitable ad revenue generators are word games. Games like Words of Wonder (IAA $3m/month), Word Scapes(IAA $4.3/month), and Word Connect (IAA $400k/month) combined have about 20 million DAU and consistently top the charts for the most downloads. The genera is hyper-competitive, but one game has been able to navigate it since 2018 by appealing to a clever niche and thus avoiding going head-to-head against the other word game incumbents. Bible Word Puzzle is a word puzzle game that has been downloaded 27 million times and generated $2 million in IAP revenue since its launch. It has a massive 200k DAU, half of which is in the USA, and based on eCPMs, I estimate that it generates between 600-800k/month in ads. That means this title […]