How to Boost Your eCPM... And Why You Should Care

So you?ve signed up for your free Chartboost account and started a publishing campaign, but you?re not making as much money as you expected. Low eCPM is the likely culprit of your diminished revenue, but you?re not sure how to fix it... or what it even means. Don?t worry, we?re about to give you a crash course in eCPM optimization!

What is eCPM?

In a nutshell, eCPM (effective cost per mille) is the metric that determines the health of your campaigns on the Chartboost network. For advertisers, eCPM is calculated through a combination of install rate (IR), clickthrough rate (CTR), and bid type. For publishers, eCPM represents the estimated amount of revenue your game could earn per every one thousand impressions.Even though advertisers control their campaigns? bid types and the quality of their creatives, you as a publisher can still make the most of those one thousand impressions in your game. Here?s how to boost the performance of ads in your game and drive more traffic for higher conversions, a higher eCPM, and, ultimately, more coins in your piggy bank.

?Control where and how ads appear in your game

Showing ads doesn?t have to be jarring or intrusive! Think of ads as part of the user experience instead of hard pauses in your game. Show ads at different points in your game and use Chartboost named locations to tag and control them. The most popular spot is at bootup, but you can experiment with showing ads at natural points during your game. Control your named locations through your Chartboost dashboard without having to push multiple code updates to your app store, then use analytics to figure out which named locations perform the best. (We?ll get to analytics in a bit.)

Don?t spam your players with ads! Use frequency caps to limit the number of ads your game shows per day or per hour. Avoid showing ads back to back. Users want to play your game, so let them. Also, use caching to preload ads on your gamers? devices. Ads will load faster, and your game can verify that an ad is available before displaying it.

? Don't restrict your campaigns too much

Although Chartboost offers a variety of campaign targets such as country, device type, or OS version, our ad servers work more optimally when you stick to fewer campaigns with less restrictions. We highly recommend that you experiment with different ad formats. Reward users with in-game bonuses for watching a video ad. Let users test-drive an advertiser?s game with playable ads. Don't forget to always keep a lower-priority ?catch-all? campaign without any filters to reach all possible users!

? Use analytics to decide what to do next

Your Chartboost dashboard comes with a comprehensive analytics suite that gives you a convenient bird?s-eye view of your campaigns? and apps? performances.

Use these tools to identify trends, research demographics, or see what works and what doesn?t. You can also export data reports as spreadsheets, or get reports automatically emailed to you whenever you want.

Learn more at chartboost.com/help

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