A few weeks ago Appodeal approached my and told me about their platform, offering higher eCPMs, instant payouts and all the other benefits, you probably know the marketing stuff. After a bit of research I thought I could give it a try and implemented the Appodeal SDK.
Because a lot of people are trying to figure out if Appodeal is trustworthy (and performant), I thought I'd let you know my experience.
I am in no way related to Google or Appodeal, here's my dev account on Google Play: Steppschuh
Coming from AdMob
I do use AdMob in all of my apps and feel happy with it. Here's an overview of my AdMob revenue from the last 30 days, filtered by the app that I used to test the Appodeal SDK.:
The drop at the end of June is where I rolled out the update with the Appodeal SDK, leading to less requests for AdMob of course. The remaining revenue after that point is generated by users that use other app versions. The average eCPM is at $1.85 (I use interstitial ad units only).
Switching to Appodeal
Account setup and SDK integration is straightforward, the Appodeal SDK for Android is very similar to the AdMob SDK. It took me just a few hours until everything was setup.
The reporting has a delay of only a few minutes, which is an advantage compared to AdMob. Here's an overview of the Appodeal revenue, generated by the exact same interstitial placement (I just swapped the ad request from AdMob to Appodeal):
So far, Appodeal is performing well (as of my understanding). Because their magic basically relies on ad mediation, I wanted to check which ad networks are outperforming AdMob here. I dived into the stats, just to find out that - surprise - AdMob is responsible for filling almost all the ad requests.
Because of AdMobs arguably low eCPM, I thought Appodeal would use AdMob as a backfill network only. But it turns out that the Appodeal in-house network can't serve a lot of ads yet (although they perform good).
Miscellaneous
If you have any questions regarding AdMob or Appodeal, let me know.
Because a lot of people are trying to figure out if Appodeal is trustworthy (and performant), I thought I'd let you know my experience.
I am in no way related to Google or Appodeal, here's my dev account on Google Play: Steppschuh
Coming from AdMob
I do use AdMob in all of my apps and feel happy with it. Here's an overview of my AdMob revenue from the last 30 days, filtered by the app that I used to test the Appodeal SDK.:
The drop at the end of June is where I rolled out the update with the Appodeal SDK, leading to less requests for AdMob of course. The remaining revenue after that point is generated by users that use other app versions. The average eCPM is at $1.85 (I use interstitial ad units only).
Switching to Appodeal
Account setup and SDK integration is straightforward, the Appodeal SDK for Android is very similar to the AdMob SDK. It took me just a few hours until everything was setup.
The reporting has a delay of only a few minutes, which is an advantage compared to AdMob. Here's an overview of the Appodeal revenue, generated by the exact same interstitial placement (I just swapped the ad request from AdMob to Appodeal):
So far, Appodeal is performing well (as of my understanding). Because their magic basically relies on ad mediation, I wanted to check which ad networks are outperforming AdMob here. I dived into the stats, just to find out that - surprise - AdMob is responsible for filling almost all the ad requests.
Because of AdMobs arguably low eCPM, I thought Appodeal would use AdMob as a backfill network only. But it turns out that the Appodeal in-house network can't serve a lot of ads yet (although they perform good).
Miscellaneous
- The highly advertised "Immediate Payout" works fine (I used PayPal), but comes with a 2% fee. If you don't need the money, you can still wait for the regular payout, which doesn't contain any fee.
- Appodeal offers a free JSON API that you can use for reporting to your own, custom dashboards.
- You can't manually configure the accounts that Appodeal creates for you in the different ad networks. Personally, I think this would be really nice to have.
- They have an affiliate program, so if you want to give Appodeal a try, please use my referral link: http://appodeal.com/+65e439ded9c0fadc41b8af37514f600a
If you have any questions regarding AdMob or Appodeal, let me know.