How in-app ad revenue works
Many apps, especially games and utilities, earn money by showing ads. Advertisers buy impressions through ad networks; the app sells its ad space through one or more networks, often managed by a mediation platform that picks the highest-paying ad for each slot.
The basic formula is:
ad revenue = impressions x eCPM / 1,000
A worked example: a puzzle game has 100,000 daily active users who see an average of 12 ads a day. That is 1,200,000 impressions. At a $2.50 blended eCPM, daily ad revenue is 1,200,000 x 2.50 / 1,000 = $3,000, or $0.03 per daily active user.
Common formats are banners, interstitials shown between levels, rewarded video that users choose to watch for an in-game reward, native ads, and app open ads. Rewarded video usually has the highest eCPM because users opt in and watch to the end.
Aggregate versus impression-level revenue
Ad revenue can be reported two ways:
- Aggregate: total revenue per network, format, country and day. Easy to get, but you cannot tell which users or campaigns produced it.
- Impression-level: an estimated value for every impression, tied to a device or user. This makes user-level ad LTV possible, and from there ad revenue by acquisition campaign.
Impression-level data is estimated, since networks settle final amounts later, so totals can differ slightly from invoices.
Ad revenue and user acquisition
For an ad-supported app, ROAS has to include ad revenue or every campaign looks unprofitable. A hybrid app that sells coins and shows ads needs both revenue streams per campaign to judge it fairly. The challenge is that ad revenue arrives from monetization tools while installs and purchases come from your MMP, so the two have to be joined per user or per cohort.
Where Linkrunner fits
Linkrunner does not import in-app ad revenue today, either aggregate or impression-level. It attributes installs, in-app events, in-app purchases and subscription revenue (through RevenueCat) to the campaign, ad set and creative behind each install. Ad-supported apps can join that attribution data with ad revenue from their mediation platform using a raw data export, the Data APIs or the reporting API, keyed on user or install date.