According to senior program manager Parth Pandya, advertising is still instrumental in the monetization of apps. In a blog post, he explains: “In-app advertising continues to represent over one-third of the revenue that developers make from writing apps for the Microsoft Windows platform. As part of our continuous commitment to maximize developer monetization through ads, today we are excited to announce Microsoft’s ad mediation service.”
Ad Mediation Service Benefits
Though Microsoft already has several solutions for advertising, this new release provides some unique benefits. It comes as a single SDK, unlike the current Ad network SDK. It also optimizes yield and ad network provisioning automatically, while other solutions required manual configuration. It does so via machine learning algorithms, which pick the best ads from networks to ensure the highest payout. It pairs with data on past performance, user context and more to ensure the best click through rate. However, perhaps more important is its security and reporting mechanics. The ad mediation service has built in risk and fraud protection, as well as unified reporting and payouts. It supports video, banner, and native ad formats. Microsoft has upgraded all UWP apps to this service automatically. It should be a vast improvement over the current system. You can find more details about the Ad Mediation Service on the Windows blog.