Use impression-level ad revenue

You can review data for impression-level ad revenue. This data can help you:

• Evaluate and optimize user acquisition (UA), learn how to set UA budgets effectively, retarget users or acquire similar users, and evaluate and optimize monetization.
• Check the average CPM for more accurate user lifetime value (LTV) calculations. 
• Conduct business intelligence analysis.

How it works

After showing an ad, Ad Manager sends back an estimated, publisher provided, or precise value (dependent on winning ad type) for the impression. You can use this data in your internal systems or other third-party tools to better understand your users’ activities. 

The Google Mobile Ads SDK will provide a new API to listen for these pingbacks. Once a pingback is received, the publisher’s custom code will be executed. The custom code can then forward data to your analytics tools. Here’s an overview:

• Impression-level ad revenue pings go directly to the SDK. 
• The pings can then be captured by a publisher-implemented listener function. 
• Publishers can then forward the data to their business intelligence (BI) tools. 

Note that USD is always used as the currency for impression-level ad revenue.

About the levels of precision for ad values

The following table explains the available levels of precision:

Level of precision	What it means
Precise	The precise value paid for the ad. This level is only available for Ad Exchange, bidding ad sources, and programmatic transactions. If Ad Manager is unable to provide a precise value for the bidding ad source, the precision will be estimated. Note: We expect discrepancies between the estimated ad revenues and the actual values to be within a 10% range.
Estimated	An ad value estimated from aggregated data.  If you’ve entered the ad source credentials for your third-party ad sources in waterfall mediation, Ad Manager uses an average based on historical data to approximate the value. Note: We expect discrepancies between the estimated ad revenues and the actual values to be within a 10% range.
Publisher provided	The publisher-provided ad value is the manual CPM entered for your standard, sponsorship, and remnant line items and waterfall ad source instance in a mediation group. If you haven’t entered the ad source’s credentials or ad unit mapping information, or Ad Manager is unable to collect enough data to estimate the ad value for the third-party ad source, it will use the manual eCPM you’ve entered.
Unknown	Unknown is used when there are no sources of data available for Ad Manager to calculate a revenue value. This occurs for bidding ad sources for which Ad Manager provides an estimated revenue value, if there is not enough data to calculate it.

Get started

To use impression-level ad revenue, complete the following steps:

1. Make sure you’re using the minimum required Google Mobile Ads SDK version:
   • 21.1.0+ for Android
   • 9.10.0+ for iOS
   • 5.0.0+ for Unity  
2. Turn on impression-level ad revenue in your Ad Manager account:
   1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
   2. Click Admin Global settings.
   3. Under “Network settings,” scroll down to “Video and mobile settings.” 
   4. Next to “Impression level ad revenue,” turn the switch On .
   5. Click Save.
3. Implement the paid event handler in your app. Use the instructions for Android, iOS, or Unity.

FAQ

How should I use impression-level ad revenue data?

Impression-level ad revenue will provide you with total revenue and impressions. Total revenue is the sum of ad_value from all impression-level ad revenue events (also called paid events in the SDK API). Based on what you collect from the SDK, you can view this data by ad source, ad unit, ad format, or more.

Note: To determine which ad source served a specific paid event, use the MediationAdapterClassName() method on any of the ad formats. Learn more about testing with mediation for Android, iOS, and Unity.

The total impressions is the number of LTV pingback events. Make sure to include any events with zero ad_value to prevent underreporting. 

Why do I see a discrepancy in the data? 

Some level of discrepancy is expected with impression-level ad revenue for Ad Manager and third party networks. Depending on your calculation, the comparison of the impression-level ad revenue data to your Ad Manager reports or another data source may vary. Make sure you’re not filtering out any events when collecting the impression-level ad revenue data and calculating LTV. 

If you’re seeing a discrepancy on values with estimated precision, this can be caused by: 

• Floor changes and eCPM fluctuations: Since values with estimated precision are calculated using an average based on historical data, ad unit floor changes or other CPM fluctuations can cause overestimation or underestimation. 
• New ad source instances: If optimization is enabled, Ad Manager may take up to 5 days to generate data for a new ad source instance. In the meantime, publisher-provided precision will be used.

If you’re seeing a discrepancy on values with publisher-provided precision, this can be caused by a mismatch between the manual eCPM and the third-party ad unit floor.

If you use manual eCPM in the mediation waterfall, this eCPM value is used to calculate the impression-level ad revenue data. If this eCPM is primarily used for ordering waterfall ad source instances or does not match the 3P ad unit floor, this can cause discrepancy, since the manual eCPM will not be reflective of the actual CPMs the third-party delivers.

We recommend that you enter the credentials for the waterfall ad sources to enable Ad Manager to estimate the eCPM value and reduce discrepancies.

Additionally, Ad Manager may apply invalid traffic filtering after the impression has served. In those cases, you may find discrepancies between what is shown in Ad Manager reporting and the data that was captured via the impression-level ad revenue data API prior to the filter being applied.
 

Why am I seeing ad_value = $0?

Ad Manager will report a value of $0 when there are no sources of data available for Ad Manager to calculate the revenue. Precision will be reported as Unknown in those cases.

This occurs for bidding ad sources for which Ad Manager provides an estimated revenue value, if there is not enough data to calculate it.