Mobile app monetization glossary – part two

• Gacha and Loot Boxes – to put it simply, it’s a mobile gaming mechanism that resembles that of toy capsule vending machines. In order to receive random rewards, players have to spends in game currency or real money. If you want to learn more, we recommend our article about Japanese mobile games monetization that exploits this method a lot;

• Hard currency vs. soft currency – the first one lets the player buy special items needed in the game for “real-world” currency, while the other is “game money” that the player earns just by playing, as coins or points are earned for winning a level;

• IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) is assigned by Apple to every iOS device, such as an iPhone. Its main aim is to help in delivering personalized advertisements. Since the iOS’s version 14.5, users can decide to opt in or out of their identifier sharing in settings;
• Indie developer (short for independent developer) – it essentially means an individual or a smaller team that designs thanks to self-funding, grants, or crowdfunding without the aid of a large publisher;
• Interstitial – these are full-screen ads that pop up at natural transition points, like when a player finishes a level in a game or changes a page in an app. They are a powerful revenue driver, but over-saturation can lead to higher app uninstallation rates;

• LiveOps (Live Operations) is the process that takes place after the app has been released, and refers to the ongoing management of a game as a service to improve player engagement and monetization effects over its entire lifespan. This involves running limited-time events, introducing seasonal content, and adjusting the game economy based on how players are actually behaving;
• LTV (Lifetime Value) is the projected net profit of a single user – from the day a user downloads an app, until the day he deletes it. It might help to project how much you can afford to spend on acquiring users;

• Mediation platform, unlike an ad network, serves as a centralized hub that aggregates multiple demand sources to maximize the publisher’s fill rate and revenue. Instead of relying on a single provider, the platform allows various networks to compete in a “waterfall” or “unified auction” for the available inventory;
• Mobile banner ads are rectangular display units that occupy a fixed portion of the app’s layout and often refresh every 30 to 60 seconds. While they have lower engagement rates than full-screen formats, they provide a steady stream of impressions without disrupting the user’s flow;

• Premium model – in contrast to Freemium mobile app, requires the user to pay upfront for the app, before even downloading it;
• Progression-based monetization is a monetization approach in which designers consider players’ progression in the game. The primary assumption that helps to earn more revenue from is that players’ ad tolerance increases with progression in-game;

• Rewarded ads are an opt-in ad format, where users choose to engage with an advertisement in exchange for some in-game goods. By implementing Rewarded Videos, publishers can significantly boost user retention and eCPMs because the value exchange creates a positive, non-intrusive experience for the player. To build a diversified revenue stream, we suggest reading our articles about alternative mobile ad formats and playable game ads;

• SDK (Software Development Kit) is a collection of software tools, libraries, and documentation that developers use to create applications for specific platforms. Instead of writing every single line of code from scratch, a developer can use these “shortcuts” to add things like maps, ads, or login buttons. It saves a huge amount of time and ensures the app works correctly across different phones. Developers rely on SDKs for ad monetization because they provide the “client-side” logic needed to request, cache, and render various ad formats like Rewarded Videos or Interstitials. An SDK serves as a reliable bridge that communicates with an ad server;
• Soft launch – it takes place when a product is released to a limited audience or specific geographic region to test its performance, retention, and monetization. During this phase, the team gathers real-world data to see if the game’s economy is balanced and if players are staying engaged for more than a few days;
• Supply Path Optimization (SPO) – the main purpose of this method is to reduce waste and inefficiency in the ad-buying process, by working with fewer partners to make the whole process faster, cheaper, and easier to track. By cutting out the “middlemen” who take extra money, more of the advertiser’s budget actually goes toward showing the ad;
• Supply-Side Platform (SSP) is a platform that helps website or game owners automatically sell their ad space to the company that pays the most. It acts like an automated auctioneer, showing the available space to many different buyers all at once to get the highest price;

• UA (User Acquisition) is simply the process of getting new people to download and use an app. A successful UA campaign finds the right audience at the best price to keep the app profitable and growing;
• Unity Level Play is a popular mediation platform that allows developers to manage multiple ad networks through a single software integration. It uses an automated “unified auction” where different ad providers compete against each other in real-time to show an ad, ensuring the developer gets the highest possible price for every impression;

• Waterfall – it’s a step-by-step process that tries to sell an ad slot to the most profitable network (historically) first, before trying the next best option, if necessary.

Your partner in the ad-tech maze

We’ve cleared the fog on the technical side, but remember: these terms are just tools in your belt, not the house itself. The goal of mastering this second wave of terminology isn’t to make your life more complicated; it’s to make your decisions more obvious. Whether it’s optimizing your waterfall or fine-tuning your floor prices, optAd360 and Bidlogic are here to translate the complexity into clarity, so you can get back to what you do best: creating!