CASE STUDY | MONETIZATION
How Zedge Used Vungle’s Ad Format Variety and Massive Scale to Drive Revenue
Since their founding in 2003, Zedge has grown into the leading phone personalization app in the world, with close to 500 million app installs to date and more than 35 million monthly active users. “Zedge Wallpapers and Ringtones” is all about identity being a hub for wallpapers, video wallpapers, ringtones, and notification sounds. Their app enables consumers to showcase who they are, what they like, and amplify their persona.
The Challenge
Given the 35 million monthly active iOS and Android users globally and the wide variety of ad formats in the Zedge app, the monetization team at Zedge knew that growing ad revenue for their app required a monetization platform with the following attributes:
- Global demand source that can provide high ad fill at multiple price points in the Zedge team’s waterfall
- Supports all of the ad formats present in the Zedge app
- Allows the Zedge team to easily jump in and adjust price points to their waterfall setup as needed
The Solution
The Zedge team turned to Vungle to help drive incremental revenue across their iOS and Android apps, integrating the entire gamut of full-screen and non-full screen mobile ad formats supported by Vungle including rewarded video and interstitial video as well as banners and MRECs.
With the majority of Zedge’s app installs coming from outside of the U.S., the Zedge team sought a platform that could deliver outsized ad revenue globally. Respective teams from Vungle and Zedge collaborated on this challenge, devising a three-tiered strategy to improve ad revenue outside of the U.S. Ad traffic was separated into three buckets depending on user value, and each bucket was further split into 3-5 separate price points per tier. The strategy proved to yield strong results for the Zedge team, seeing that 60% of ad revenue in Q4 2020 for the Zedge app came from outside of the U.S.
The Zedge monetization team now relies on the Vungle platform’s multi-ad format support and global scale to meet the ad monetization demands of their 35-million-MAU-strong app.
After scaling up, the Zedge team saw the Vungle platform improve their ad revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) by 5%+. Further, the Zedge team was able to manage and optimize their publishing campaigns within the Vungle self-serve Publisher Dashboard.
“Vungle is one of the few platforms that Zedge has found to date that can support all of the ad formats and placements in the Zedge app, meeting the global fill requirements of said ad placements with a high fill rate and quality demand from both gaming and non-gaming advertisers.”
Ignas Danielius
Ad Ops Manager, Zedge
