Huckleberry Publishing develops word and puzzle mobile app games, and operates out of Argentina and the Netherlands. The company’s WordOn game has a strong user base of more than 225,000 monthly active players. To monetize its apps and ensure it was maximizing revenue, Huckleberry switched to the Google AdMob mediation platform. Huckleberry found AdMob’s set-up and optimization easy to manage at scale, helping them incorporate more network demand - boosting competition and fill rate to achieve an overall revenue increase of 2x, overall average cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) grew 50% and fill rates improvement to nearly 100%.
An ineffective mediation platform posed several challenges
Before making the switch to AdMob, Huckleberry’s chosen mediation platform was falling short of expectations. The team found the dashboards sparse and difficult to use, which made managing the platform and extracting insights time consuming. Additionally, the platform wasn’t set up to support rapid testing and lacked effective customer support. Above all, Huckleberry was concerned that the platform was not delivering a fully optimized fill rate, hurting the company’s ability to maximize revenue – so the team set out to find a better solution.
A streamlined switch to AdMob mediation
It was important for the company to find a solution that was simple to use and easy to set up. Given that Huckleberry was already using several Google solutions, it was natural for the team to consider AdMob in its search for a more effective mediation platform.
“We were already familiar with AdMob's performance as an ad network. We were happy with the strong advertiser demand and the quality of support we were getting from the AdMob team, so it made sense to try AdMob mediation.” says Nicolas Esmede, Chief Commercial Officer.
In all, it took Huckleberry just a few days of work to make the transition. In fact, Huckleberry found the transition so easy and smooth that they decided to expand their pool of ad sources from 3 to 6. This created more competition without additional management overhead, to drive up CPM and fill.
Immediate improvement in revenue and efficiency with AdMob mediation
Huckleberry immediately saw positive results with AdMob. Not only did overall revenue increase 2x, Huckleberry also noticed a shift in revenue coming from in-app purchases (IAP) and ads. Previously, 70% of overall revenue was from IAP and 30% from ads; however, this balanced out to about 50%-50% after the transition to AdMob mediation. Huckleberry also saw overall average CPMs improve by 50% and fill rates jump to nearly 100%. User retention remained unchanged.
The switch to AdMob made a significant difference for everyone at Huckleberry. The user-friendly AdMob interface allows more people to gather insights from the platform, including those who weren’t previously familiar with monetization metrics. Team members also spend less time managing mediation or struggling with analysis, and more time improving its games. “We’ve also integrated AdMob with Firebase, which delivered new data that combined analytics with monetization metrics. With the ability to see KPIs like average revenue per user (ARPU) and lifetime value (LTV), we’re in a better position to understand the impact ads have on our business. Our next step was to use Firebase Remote Config to A/B test implementations of different app features.” commented Esmede.
On a larger scale, AdMob has helped Huckleberry grow its business by driving sustainable revenue. As a result, the company is expanding and hiring a larger team in Argentina. Thanks to the successful monetization of its apps and increase in LTV, it’s also starting to invest in user acquisition campaigns. Huckleberry is excited to continue working closely with Google and testing other functions, such as bidding, a new way for developers to grow revenue by maximizing the value from various ad partners. By allowing ad sources to bid on each impression in real time, Bidding makes sure the winner is always the highest paying advertiser.
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