Waterfall vs. in-app bidding: An expert’s take

Summary

The article compares in-app bidding and waterfall approaches for app publishers, highlighting that in-app bidding is gaining traction with about 80% of publishers using it. Waterfall requires manual pricing and sequential network calls, leading to latency and inefficiency, whereas bidding allows all buyers to bid simultaneously, driven by machine learning models that optimize in real-time. This reduces latency, improves ARPDAU, and frees up resources for other growth areas.

However, some publishers stick with waterfalls for control over pricing, especially for brand advertisers with different KPIs. Yet, poorly configured waterfalls can limit effectiveness and deter performance-based advertisers. In-app bidding provides cleaner data with single bid requests, enabling better ML model training and smarter bidding.

Moloco’s platform exemplifies this cycle: better performance leads to more learnings, smarter models, and increased ad spend, benefiting both advertisers and publishers. The shift towards bidding is expected to grow as more networks adopt it.