ironsource without a company?

zarzir

Hi, does anyone know if you can use ironsource without owning a company ?

in their dashboard it says:

"Important! to receive revenue, you must first enter your payment preferences and company info"

Also would love to know which network are best to use in ironsource is someone willing to share.

Thanks

adriangomez

1. Yes. You can use it without a company.
2. What are the best network depends on a lot of factors including the type of games you make. I would do A/B testing which luckily is easy to do with Ironsource.

zarzir

Thanks @adriangomez , I will try them all.

adriangomez

Since Ironsource has so many bidding networks and I hate doing waterfalls. Lately, I have only been using the bidding networks and Admob as a stop-gap. So Ironsource, Facebook, Adcolony, InMobi, Tapjoy, Vungle, and Pangle bidding and then just Admob non-bidding. But honestly, you can waste 1000s of hours playing with networks and waterfalls for only marginal improvements in eCPM and revenue. In my opinion, that time is always better spent on user acquisition.

zarzir

Hi @adriangomez, I was just about to ask about in-app bidding and saw your answer, Isn't the eCPM should be higher with in-app bidding?

also I'm not sure I understand, how ironsource choose between the winner and admob it will use admob if the eCPM is higher then the winner ?

Thanks again

adriangomez

In-app bidding should produce higher eCPM and it probably does almost every time. From my experience, a well-crafted traditional waterfall (with all things being equal) is usually competitive to in-app bidding. But creating a traditional waterfall is a lot more work. I state "all things being equal" because some networks like Facebook and Ironsource have switched to bidding-only. Once I have time next year, I'll try to prove this with A/B testing in Ironsource.

Yes. Ironsource will prioritize a non-bidding network if the eCPM is higher, but I don't bother with creating a waterfall under the bidding because as stated before the effort required does not translate into additional revenue. To better explain what I mean I going to show what my waterfall looked like before and after switching to bidding. Notice that I no longer use Unity or Applovin because they don't support bidding in Ironsource. Applovin only supports bidding in their own mediation solution (Max) and Google. And Unity only supports bidding on their mediation solution.

Before bidding my network waterfall would look like something like this:

USA /Banner (in the past I would also have 1 entry for Facebook, Vungle & Ironsource at each level).

1. Applovin 0.40 (applovin always guarantees the floor for the ad unit so they go first)
2. Unity 0.40 (doesn't always guarantee the floor but comes close).
3. --- Other networks at 0.40 (Vungle, Facebook, Ironsource).
4. Admob 0.40 (does not so comes last).
5. Applovin 0.20
6. Unity 0.20
7. --- Other networks at 0.20 (Vungle, Facebook, Ironsource).
8. Admob 0.20
9. Applovin 0.10
10. Unity 0.10
11. --- Other networks at 0.10 (Vungle, Facebook, Ironsource).
12. Admob (no floor).

After:

All countries / All Ad types if network available:

Bidding Networks:

• Facebook
• Inmobi
• AdColony
• Ironsource
• Tapjoy
• Pangle
• Vungle

Non-Bidding:

• Admob (no floor)

Hope this helps to clarify what I stated previously.

zarzir

Thanks that's really helpful,

I need to do some testing but I will probably do the same and maybe add chartboost and Applovin to the waterfall.

zarzir

Hi again, I'm trying to test ads on my app via testflight but I can't see any ads.

I'm not sure If I can test, I'm not approved by ironsource yet but I enable test mode and put all keys, should I see ads?

@adriangomez any idea?

zarzir

Ok, it's working, I don't really know what was wrong but I'll take it.

adriangomez

It takes a little time. Also make sure you have a location for you app-ads.txt file before going live. Otherwise your fill rate will be very low.

zarzir

Hmm any chance you can explain? I don't really understand the app-ads.txt

Thanks again

adent42

It takes times for things to activate and for video ads, IronSrc ask we cache them first before showing them. So even when ads are enabled, it may take a second to show them.

zarzir

working fine for me now, thanks