Types of Yandex Mediation
Yandex Mediation uses two methods to receive bids from ad networks: Smart Waterfall and In-App Bidding.
Smart Waterfall
Smart Waterfall is a machine learning-based technology used in Yandex Mediation to predict the ad network with the highest bid. For a list of ad networks connected to Yandex Mediation using Smart Waterfall, see Ad sources.
How it works
The ad network and best impression price are picked automatically based on the floors. The app owner sets multiple floors for each ad network manually.
Smart Waterfall uses this floor information for two weeks to create a base for future predictions on which ad network is mostly likely to buy your request for the highest price. This type of analysis is based on multiple factors, such as historical data, device type and user location and behaviour.
Based on this data, the platform composes an ad network request plan and first selects the ad network that's most likely to buy an impression for the highest price. If this ad network is unable to pick a suitable ad, then the platform selects the next one. This goes on until one of the ad networks responds with an ad.
These predicting capabilities enable you to increase the fill rate for your placement because no time is spent sending requests to all possible networks within all possible floors, which speeds up ad serving.
In-App Bidding
Unlike Smart Waterfall, In-App Bidding enables you to receive actual bids from ad networks in real time. In-App Bidding makes it easier to set up Yandex Mediation: unlike networks that don't support bidding, you don't have to spend time setting up multiple floors.
This feature is currently supported by the following networks:
- Mintegral is used for apps running on Android with the SDK version 5.0.0-alpha.2 and higher and on iOS with the SDK version 5.0.2 and higher.
- VK Ads (ex. myTarget) is used for apps running on Android with the SDK version 4.4.0 and higher and on iOS with SDK version 5.0.0-alpha.2 and higher.
- BIGO Ads: Used for apps running on Android with SDK version 6.2.0 or higher and on iOS with SDK version 6.2.0 or higher.
- Pangle: Used for apps running on Android with SDK version 6.0.0 or higher.
How it works
When the user goes to the ad screen, the app sends a request to Yandex Mediation. The platform begins to determine which ad from which ad network will be the most profitable.
For networks that use In-App Bidding, Yandex Mediation requests bids directly from all networks at the same time.
Ad networks connected via Smart Waterfall also compete for impressions. After the bidding networks respond, the ML algorithm predicts whether other networks can offer higher bids:
- If the algorithm determines that it's possible, Yandex Mediation sends an ad request to the network.
- Otherwise, it immediately serves the most profitable ad from the bidding network.