Company Background:
Quarter Media, an Olympia-Verlag GmbH company, specializes in digital advertising and leads ad monetization for kicker Fußball News, one of the largest sport apps in Germany.
Understanding render rate
Publishers rely heavily on render rate to boost their ad revenue. This critical metric tracks the percentage of ad requests that successfully display an ad on a user's screen. To ensure accurate measurement, an impression is only recorded when the ad creative is viewable within the user's screen. These industry standards are set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC). Since advertisers prioritize viewable placements, a higher render rate directly increases a publisher's earning potential.
Partnering with Google Ad Manager
Quarter Media discovered a disparity between the ad performance in the Android and iOS versions of their popular mobile app, kicker Fußball News. The Android app had a 38% lower render rate than its iOS counterpart.
Quarter Media partnered with Google to investigate and identify the root cause of the render rate disparity. They conducted a comprehensive render rate analysis with Google's tech consultants and support team. This included real user monitoring (RUM) with the help of Firebase log events and A/B testing. They were able to quickly identify a combination of anomalies, including slow ad requests, rendering bugs, and ad refresh issues.
Increasing render rate, CPM, and revenue
With this newfound understanding, Quarter Media implemented targeted solutions, adjusting the refresh rate and ultimately, released a new app. These steps improved the in-app render rate by 79%. By improving the render rate, Quarter Media also observed a 29% increase in Google Ad Exchange CPM and an 18% overall increase in revenue.
“By collaborating with Google experts, we identified and resolved critical issues, leading to significantly higher CPMs,” says Hannes Modes, CTO of Quarter Media, reflecting on the project’s impact. “Advertisers value and reward ad placements with a high likelihood of being viewed, and our improvements have directly enhanced these metrics.”