Introduction to ad mediation
What is ad mediation?
To maximize fill rates and sell more of their inventory, most of the publishers work with multiple ad networks. But integrating multiple networks SDKs can often be quite complicated and this is where ad mediation is useful. Indeed, the ad mediation is a process of acting as a mediator between a publisher and several ad networks.
Publishers just have to implement one SDK (the primary SDK) that will display the ads from several different ad networks.
How does it work?
When it comes to ad mediation, there are two types of SDK involved: the primary SDK and the multiple third-party SDKs.
When the primary SDK makes an ad call that returns a list of mediation placements, this primary SDK will subsequently make several ad calls to the different third-party SDKs (following the order within the first response) and display the first mediated ad returned. The third-party SDK integration logic is handled at the primary SDK level, hiding that complexity from the publisher
For example:
By using Smart Display SDK as primary SDK, let us assume that a Smart premium insertion and several mediation insertions are programmed on a given placement.
When making an ad call on this placement, Smart ad delivery might return:
- only a Smart premium ad
- only mediation ads (in a specific order). The primary SDK will try to display an ad from the first responding mediation SDK, in a waterfall scheme, respecting the first response order
- mediation ads and a Smart premium ad. In that case, the mediation ads (still in waterfall scheme) have the priority over the Smart premium ad , which acts as a backfill in case of mediation no fill.