CASE STUDY | MONETIZATION
Rocket Studio Achieves 99% Fill Rate, Increases ARPDAU by 38% With Vungle In-App Bidding and ironSource LevelPlay
Rocket Studio is a top 3 leading game developer in Southeast Asia. Based out of Vietnam, Rocket Studio was founded in 2015 and has since launched over 200 games with more than five million daily active users.
The Challenge
Rocket Studio has been working with Vungle for about eight months and considers it one of our top monetization partners. Until six months ago, we were manually optimizing our waterfalls to deliver the best monetization outcomes, but we still saw poor performance in key markets like the U.S. We also started receiving feedback from our users saying they couldn’t always see our video ads.
We needed a solution that required less overhead, generated higher revenue, and improved the user experience by quickly filling all our ad requests. We’d seen great success with ironSource’s LevelPlay in-app bidding solution, so our account manager suggested that we also move to Vungle in-app bidding for rewarded and interstitial video.
The Solution
Vungle made the move to in-app bidding incredibly easy. Full integration with ironSource allowed our Vungle account manager to streamline the process and enable in-app bidding for us with a few simple clicks.
However, our team wanted to be confident that switching to in-app bidding was the right move for our monetization goals. Shortly after integrating in-app bidding, we compared the performance between our manual waterfall and in-app bidding in an A/B test using ironSource LevelPlay. With Vungle in-app bidding, we saw a significant increase in LTV and revenue.
The transition to in-app bidding also saved us valuable time and resources. At first, it was challenging to adjust to a system we couldn’t manually regulate. Our team was used to having a more hands-on approach, especially in determining our demand sources. We asked Vungle to look into more opportunities to manually enhance our revenue and manage our eCPMs. However, we found that in-app bidding as an automated solution was easier to manage than the waterfall, and filled almost every ad request at the highest possible bid without us having to do anything on our end.
Combined with the positive revenue results we saw from our A/B test, we decided to fully lean into Vungle in-app bidding with ironSource mediation and were impressed by the results that followed.
After we transitioned to in-app bidding, we quickly saw a decrease in ads not showing to users. In fact, our fill rate jumped to 99%. A large part of this is due to reduced latency. In-app bidding inherently reduces latency because you no longer need to work through multiple line item IDs in a waterfall to determine a winner and return an ad. As a result, our interstitial and rewarded videos are shown instantly.
Over the past six months, we’ve also seen a steady increase in all our key revenue metrics. ARPDAU increased by 38% and we saw notable increases in LTV and eCPMs on iOS in the U.S.
As a result, I can confidently state that in-app bidding is the best solution for every publisher to enhance their revenue. To any publisher who wants to improve their performance, I’d say the faster you switch to in-app bidding, the sooner you will see performance gains.
“After we transitioned to in-app bidding for rewarded and interstitial video, we quickly saw a decrease in ads not showing to users. In fact, our fill rate jumped to 99%.”
Thế Bảo Lương
Head of Monetization, Rocket Studio
