1. Basic Concepts
1.1 What is Head Bidding?
Head Bidding is a real-time programmatic advertising bidding technology that allows all advertisers to bid for the same ad impression at the same time. The highest bidder gets the opportunity to display their ads, which ensures that publishers can get higher revenue for each impression. Head Bidding allows developers to know the value of each impression, which plays a significant role in subsequent data analysis.
TopOn header bidding principle:
① Each time an ad is requested, the price will be inquired from the head bidding ad source, and the returned prices will be sorted by the prices filled in when creating the regular ad source. Ad sources are requested in waterfall priority order.
② The biggest difference between header bidding and regular ad sources is that each request will first inquire for a price, instead of being fixed to the price filled in regular ad source. Header Bidding allows networks to openly bid, ensuring that publishers can impression ads with the highest eCPM.
● Example:
After setting the header bidding, as shown in the figure below, when the regular base price ad source requests layer by layer according to the sorting price, the Tencent Bidding ad source will also initiate a price inquiry, and Tencent Bidding will return their bids. If the platform's bid is 160, it will use this price of 160 to participate in the waterfall sorting and request at the second priority.
● More introduction to header bidding functions >> Click to view
1.2 What is Waterfall?
Waterfall, that is, advertising layering, is one of the main strategies for advertising operation optimization.
When monetizing ads, if you integrate only one network, you often cannot achieve 100% ad filling, and eCPM is also unstable. Therefore, it is generally recommended to integrate 5-8 networks and set ad sources with different base prices. Different ad sources initiate requests according to the sorting price from high to low, which ensure the fill rate and increase revenue through advertising layering.
As shown in the figure below, the waterfall is configured from high to low according to the historical eCPM of each network. When the highest priority network A has no ads returned, the second priority network B is requested downward. And so on, until a network returns a displayable ad. This layered method can help you avoid wasting the request due to a platform not returning ads, and ensure that the benefits are optimal every time.
1.3 Price
(1) What is sorting price?
The sorting price is used for priority sorting when requesting ads: for example, if you add ABCDE 5 layers of ad sources, you need to sort these 5 layers of ad sources. This sorting will be from high to low according to the filled price, and will not affect ad filling. It is recommended that the price be as consistent as possible with the actual eCPM (i.e. eCPM API) value of the ad source, which can be used to estimate the real-time revenue and LTV of the day.
( Note: If the ranking prices of multiple ad sources are the same, then their priorities are the same, and each request is made with a random priority.)
(2) Tips for filling in sorting prices
First, distinguish whether the account has the price permission of the networks (It is recommended to contact the AM of the networks to confirm whether it has the price permission).
① With price permission: just fill in the reserve price set on the network.
② Without price permission: It can be set according to your own wishes, because the sorting price in the TopOn will only affect the order of ad requests and impression.
For example, when Pangolin ad source A does not have the reserve price permission, no matter the ranking price is set to 1 or 100, as long as its ranking is the highest among all other ad sources, Pangolin ad source A will be requested first. At this time, no matter what price the Pangolin platform returns, even if the platform returns an ad with a price of 0.01, Pangolin ad source A will be displayed first when the ad is actually displayed. This is because the ranking price set in the TopOn background only affects the priority of request and impression. If the developer wants Pangolin to request impression first and Youlianghui to request impression second, they only need to set Pangolin's ranking price to be greater than Youlianghui, such as setting Pangolin's ranking price = 2 and Youlianghui's ranking price = 1.
2. Why should we refine the advertising layering?
Since each network has high-priced and low-priced offers, displaying high-priced offers as much as possible can better improve overall revenue. As shown in the figure on the left below, the average eCPMs of networks A and B are 20 and 15 respectively. Overall, A is better than B, so A is ranked first. However, this ranking has some shortcomings: although B has a lower average eCPM than A, the top offers often perform better than the offers at the end of A, but are ranked after the offers at the end of A.
The so-called refined advertising layering generally sets the eCPM Floor to give priority to high-priced offers as much as possible. As shown in the figure on the right below, multiple advertising units are created for the two networks A and B respectively, and different networks are cross-sorted and sorted from high to low. This can give priority to high-priced offers and increase overall revenue.
3. How to set up and refine advertising layers
3.1 Choose the right third-party network
Depending on the traffic area and application category, developers can choose an network according to actual needs. (The following solutions are for reference only and are not ranked in any particular order.)
Mainland China: Pangle, Tencent ads, Kwai, Baidu, Mintegral, TopOn ADX, etc.
Europe and America: Meta, Admob, Applovin, Unity, IronSource, Fyber, Mintegral, etc.
Southeast Asia: Admob, Meta, Pangle, Unity, Applovin, TopOn ADX, Mintegral, etc.
To learn about the advantageous networks in different regions, you can browse the TopOn annual report or consult your TopOn business/operation manager.
Note: TopOn ADX does not require SDK access separately, and can be directly enabled and used in the developer backend without the need for additional releases. (For details on TopOn ADX: please refer to the documentation )
3.2 Waterfall flow settings
● Basic stage
| Case 1: If you have run other networks, refer to the historical advertising prices. |
| For example, if APP A has run Splash ad in Admob, and the Ecpm is $5, you can set up a splash waterfall from high price to low price(refer to $5). Multi-layer waterfall can be set up from $50 to no-reserve price tiers. Tip: When setting up advertising tiers, it is recommended that the sorting price of the TopOn background be consistent with the actual price of the networks to facilitate subsequent adjustments. |
| Case 2: A brand new application that has not been run on other networks and has no corresponding historical advertising prices. |
| (1) First, set up a simple waterfall and the corresponding ad source sorting price in TopOn, run it for at least two to three days, and then adjust the data.
After running for a period of time ( about two to three days, up to a week , the judgment standard is: the cumulative impression of a single-layer ad source is greater than 2,000), the waterfall is adjusted and modified according to the actual price of network backend ad source. (The reason is that the code position bid of the network requires at least a single code position display volume greater than 2,000 to have a stable bidding algorithm model) The basic principle: ● The number of layers for ad tiering can be set with reference to DAU or the estimated daily request. If there are more DAUs, you can set more and denser layers so that traffic requests can be fully utilized. ● When there are many advertising layers, you can use the parallel request function (such as setting parallel request 3) to reduce filling time. ● When configuring in the TopOn backend, try to use the actual eCPM price as the sorting price. If there is no floor price, you can set a sorting price of 0.01 in the early stage. After the cumulative display volume is large (greater than 2000) after going online, you can turn on the automatic price function. |
| Replenish |
| ● When setting up for the first time, set the weight of each network layer. It is recommended to keep it consistent with the revenue contribution ratio of the network. For example, in the historical advertising revenue data, networks A, B, and C accounted for 50%, 30%, and 20% respectively. Assuming that 10 ad sources need to be set in the waterfall, networks A, B, and C can be set to 5, 3, and 2 respectively. ● In the early stages of monetization, you can consider setting up a no-reserve-price ad source as a backup ad to ensure the overall fill rate. |
Tips: Waterfall structure reference table:
| Layer | Price Setting | Number of layers | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parallel Layer-Bidding Area | Network A-bidding1 Network B-bidding2 Network C-bidding3 Network D-bidding4 |
2-4th floor | It is not recommended to set a bidding floor price for the network. The reason is that setting a bidding floor price can easily lead to a too low fill rate for the bidding ad source. |
| head- High reserve price area |
Network A-Price 80 | 2-4th floor | |
| Central- Mid-price area |
Network B-Price 70 Network C-Price 60 Network D-Price 50 Network A-Price 40 Network E-Price 30 Network F-Price 20 |
2-8th floor | |
| Tail - Low or no reserve price area |
Network A-Price 10 Network G-Price 8 Network F-Price 5 Network B-price 0.01 (bottom line) |
2-6th floor | Bottom layer: You can set the platform to bid independently without setting a specific price. Set a lower sorting price in the TopOn background, such as 0.5, and turn on auto price. |
● Advanced settings
(1) Maximize the benefits of waterfall
In order to fully utilize traffic requests, we recommend ensuring that the overall fill rate of each ad placement is above 90%. In the stable stage, the reserve price needs to be adjusted based on the fill rate of each ad sources: the higher the ecpm reserve price, the lower the fill rate of the corresponding ad sources. The fill rate of each layer of ad sources is generally maintained at above 5%, with a minimum of no less than 1%. If the fill rate of the ad source is 10% or above, you can try to increase the reserve price of the first-tier ad source.
① High Reserve price part: increase the unit price as much as possible.
② Mid-low price part: Make full use of traffic. If there is a lot of traffic flowing to the lower tier, you need to add an intermediate tier ad source.
For example:
The second-tier ad source ecpm is $20, and the impression is 1,000;
The third-tier ad source ecpm is $10, and the impression is 10,000.
Then you can add another layer of $15 between $10-20.
③ Low price area: Set low price and no reserve price ad sources to make full use of traffic.
(2) Limit on the number of ad tiers
There is no limit to the number of TopOn's advertising layers, but more developers choose to set 10-20 layers. You can adjust it based on data such as user network, fill rate, and eCPM performance.
When setting more advertising layers (for example, 20-40, or more than 40 layers), you can set the number of parallel requests to 4-8 through Mediation-Advanced Settings to improve request efficiency and reduce the overall waterfall waiting time.
(3) Adapt practices
Refer to the above picture, based on the TopOn background, the Mediation page data is optimized, and you can refer to the recent data adjustment.
(4) Adjust direction:
| ① Adjust the price in TopOn to be consistent with the eCPM API, or turn on automatic pricing (automatic pricing needs to support the report API and will only take effect after a certain amount of data has accumulated for a certain period of time, refer to the relevant documentation for automatic pricing ). The purpose of this step is to align the data to facilitate subsequent optimization of the waterfall. |
| ② Evaluate the revenue proportion and impression proportion of a single layer of advertising sources. If the impression proportion and revenue proportion are greatly different and inconsistent, you can consider limiting the impression frequency of this ad sources or deleting it. For example, if there is a tier of ad sources with a price of 5 yuan, the impression ratio is 30% and the revenue ratio is 10%, then you can consider reducing the impression frequency of this tier. Or, you can add other ad sources with a price of more than 5 yuan. The purpose of this step is to increase the impression of high-priced ads. |
| ③Evaluate the fill rate of one ad source. For ad sources in the advanced zone, if the fill rate is high, at 10%-20% or above, you can consider adding a higher layer. For example, if the fill rate of an ad source with a price of 100 is 5%, you can appropriately increase the ad source with a price of 130. The purpose of this step is to increase the impression offers with high prices. If the impression rate of the highest level or high-level area is 1% or less than 1%, you can consider not adding it. Instead, evaluate whether the fill rate of the entire waterfall can reach more than 90%, and make corresponding adjustments. You need to focus on the waterfall area in the middle area and above. |
(5) Optimize by combining the bottom price bidding
TopOn currently supports bidding platforms >>Click to view
TopOn recommends combining and optimizing Bidding and waterfall to maximize the monetization effect. The operation is as follows:
① For platforms that support Bidding, it is recommended to configure both the platform’s bidding ad sources and regular floor price ad elements to increase revenue.
② If Bidding supports setting a floor price, you can try to set it during the stable stage of app monetization. After setting the Bidding floor price, in each auction:
- If the price of the winning bidding ad source is higher than the bidding floor price, it will be integrated into the waterfall and an ad request will be made.
- If the price of the winning bidding ad source is lower than the bidding floor price, the waterfall will not be inserted to participate in the ad request until the ad is reloaded and an ad with a price higher than the bidding floor price is obtained.
3.3 Segment Optimization
TopOn supports grouping users in multiple dimensions. Different segments can be configured with different waterfalls to achieve the purpose of refined traffic monetization. Currently, the segment dimensions supported by TopOn are as follows:
Region, city, date, hour, time zone, network type, app version, SDK version, system version, device ID, device type, device brand, installation time, channel, sub-channel, and custom rules >> Click to view
● Practical cases
Regarding the grouping of global traffic, traffic is generally divided into different groups according to user regions and then refined into layers:
(1) T1 region has a good network and good revenue performance of each platform, so it has been divided into 30-40 layers;
(2) The T2 area is reduced to 20-30 floors;
(3) T3 is for example the 10th to 20th floor in Southeast Asia. T1, T2, and T3 are groups that are differentiated based on the ecpm performance of each region. Generally, T1 regions are high ecpm regions such as Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea, T3 is Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and T2 is some regions with performance between the two (such as China, etc.).
Developers can adjust the segment of actual regions according to the actual distribution of their own traffic users. For example, if the developer's users in Indonesia and Brazil account for 40% respectively, they can set up segments for Indonesia and Brazil respectively, and perform fine-grained stratification of the regions within the segment.
3.4 Advanced settings for Mediation
TopOn supports advanced settings for multiple placement dimensions and ad source dimensions, including serial and parallel modes, impression caps, automatic ad request settings, etc. Developers can set them up as needed to improve the efficiency of waterfall requests, further improve the fill rate and impression rate of placement dimensions and ad source dimensions, and achieve the purpose of increasing ad monetization revenue.
Introduction to common advanced settings for optimizing waterfall request efficiency:
(1) Parallel requests (For more information about parallel requests , click here )
| content | illustrate |
| Optional settings | • Fixed number of requests: Ad sources are prioritized by price, and requests are made to a fixed number of ad sources at the same time. The maximum number of parallel requests is 10. •Parallel requests with the same price (TopOn SDK v5.9.20 and above): Ad sources will be prioritized by sorting price, and requests will be made to ad sources with the same sorting price at the same time. |
| Practical Cases | Background: The same waterfall contains 2 ad sources with a price of $9 and 3 ad sources with a price of $7. • When a fixed number is set to 5, TopOn will request all 5 layers of ad sources at the same time; •When setting parallel requests at the same price, TopOn will first request 2 $9 ad sources at the same time, and then request 3 $7 ad sources at the same time the next time. |
| Application Scenario | When the ad scene is displayed frequently, that is, the interval between two ad displays is short, you can set multiple parallel requests to further improve the impression success rate. For example, if you request AB at the same time and both return success, when A is displayed, B can be displayed immediately. Parallel requests can improve loading efficiency. When there are many ad layers (such as more than 15 layers), you can consider setting parallel requests. |
(2) Capping/Pacing ( Click here to view more impression limit information)
| content | illustrate |
| Optional settings | The Mediation page supports two impression frequency control functions: placement dimension and ad source dimension. You can enter 1-1000. If unchecked, it means there is no limit. • Capping (hours): The maximum number of times a single user can view an ad in this placement/ad source within 1 hour; • Capping (days): The maximum number of times a single user can view an ad in this placement/ad source within a day; •Pacing (seconds): The time interval between the current impression of the placement/ad source and the next request for the placement by a single user. |
| Application Scenario | Scenario 1: When some networks cannot set a floor price, the impression quality of each user can be improved by controlling the impression frequency, thereby indirectly improving eCPM. Scenario 2: If you integrate Facebook and admob, it is recommended to set the upper limit of impression frequency at the initial launch of the app, otherwise the account of the network may be blocked due to some extreme devices. (Path: TopOn Developer Backstage - Mediation - Ad Source - Edit - More Config - Capping) |
(3) Request fails retry: After an placement request fails, TopOn will automatically retry the request. After enabling retry after request failure, the number of traffic requests and ad requests will increase. (Supported by TopOn SDK v5.9.40 and above)
(4) Auto Request: Only recommended for developers who do not preload ads ( Click here to view more auto ad request introduction)
| content | illustrate |
| Features | Automatic ad request means automatically requesting the next ad when the previous ad show starts. Note: ① The automatic ad request function is now available for rewarded videos, interstitial ads, and splash ads. ② The ads automatically requested and loaded will not return the AdLoaded callback. You need to use the isready interface to determine whether the ads have been returned. |
| Application Scenario | Scenario 1: In scenarios where users stay for a short time, this can help avoid missing out on ad impression opportunities due to untimely caching. Scenario 2: When the user's network environment is poor, it can improve the problem of long ad request and loading time. This can increase the utilization rate of the overall impression opportunity of the application, shorten the time for ad filling, and improve monetization revenue and user experience. |
| Auto request ad logic | Step 1. Start loading ads when starting the game; step2. After each ad is played, the loading is performed after receiving the close callback (there is no need to judge the isReady status here); Step 3. Check whether the isReady status of the ad is true each time. If it is false, the ad will be loaded. If it is true, the ad will not be loaded. step4. Every time an ad is consumed, start loading the next ad. |
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