A dynamic Ad mediation service based on current eCPMs by top ad providers

UPDATE: It looks like what I am describing below may be what they have created at MoPub (http://www.mopub.com). If the idea below sounds interesting to you, give their service a look.

Picture this… I’m about to launch my first app, I can’t figure out which ad provider to use, so I go to this site— we’ll call it eCPMReport.com. From here, I can see in real time eCPMs from all the the top ad provder’s. I then decide which one(s) I think are for me and incorporate them into my app as well as incorporating the ad mediation API from eCPMReport.com. Now, every day I log into eCPMReport and I can see how my various ad networks are performing and how much total revenue they generated for me. I can decide to tweak the ratio at which different services show ads, add or remove networks on the fly, or I can just let the service handle this for me based on what it determines will be most profitable.

This is something the developement community needs. The app market is moving more and more to this “Freemium” model that thrives on the use of ads to earn revenue. When we’re preparing to launch our apps to the app store, one of the last things that we figure out is “what ad provider are we going to use?” and the real question is “Which one will give us the most money”?

The problem is that this answer is constantly changing. The first time I tried Revmobs full screen, “FREE GAME” ad mechanism, I wasn’t impressed. A few months later I swore by it, as it was pulling me amazing $20-50 eCPMs that have now dropped down to more like $4 and I’m looking for new alternatives.

The reality I’ve come to is that we cannot just pick one provider and stick to them, or we will lose out on all kinds of revenue. We need to incorporate a variety of providers into our app and cycle them in at given intervals. This helps to hedge our bets and diversify in order to maximize revenue when one particular provider is falling flat. But, all this tweaking is tedious. Having to do a full app update every time I want to change something minor is just a pain in the butt. Not to mention the pain of having to check ad revenue in 3-4 different places daily. All of this needs to be handled by a GOOD mediation API. Not only that, we need to keep our ad providers in check by reporting their eCPMs publicly in real time.

In this an easy task? Not really. But it isn’t a terribly difficult one either. Its something that could be accomplished, and its something that I could lead… but not without a few developers that would probably want to get paid. Or hell, someone else do it, that’s fine too. Let’s just get this created, because it is something that in the end will make us all much more profitable.