Mammoth Media creates and monetizes short-form entertainment apps for Generation Z. Their apps, Yarn and Wishbone, reach more than 30% of teens in the US.
Benoit Vatere is the Founder & CEO at Mammoth Media. Read on to hear why his team switched to ironSource’s mediation platform and how we work in close partnership to scale their apps.
Closing the loop between monetization and UA
Previously, we had little guidance on user acquisition strategy, and our monetization efforts were siloed from our UA activity. From a UA perspective, this made it challenging for us to understand the real value of each user and determine not only the best channels to acquire from, but also how much to bid per campaign.
After evaluating the major mediation solutions in the market, we decided to make the switch to ironSource, since it gives us a full picture of ironSource’s user base, which made sense given ironSource was already one of our top user acquisition partners. The fact that ironSource shows us our LTV, ROAS and overall growth data all in one place enables us to better optimize our monetization stack, while simultaneously optimizing our bidding strategy.
"We decided to make the switch to ironSource, since it gives us a full picture of ironSource’s user base."
- Benoit Vatere, Founder and CEO at Mammoth Media
Specifically, we appreciate how easy it is to monitor ROAS over time. The platform interface is extremely user-friendly and the reporting dashboards make it easy to analyze performance at a granular level, which is how we’ve already been tackling it internally.
Optimizing our monetization strategy
Once we made the switch to ironSource mediation, our account manager at ironSource worked side by side with us to improve our monetization strategy - providing us with waterfall setup best practices, tips to increase LTV, strategies for using their in-app bidding solution, LevelPlay, and video placement recommendations.
"ironSource worked side by side with us to improve our monetization strategy."
- Benoit Vatere, Founder and CEO at Mammoth Media
For example, our account manager recommended we add a rewarded video placement in our micro-storytelling app Yarn, which is primarily subscription-based, to help retain users who would normally churn after hitting the paywall. We’re currently testing this new placement and find the early results exciting.
LevelPlay, ironSource’s in-app bidding solution, also improved our monetization strategy by automating our waterfall, increasing competition, and reducing the manual optimizations that lead to human error - all of which have led to an increase in eCPM.
Doubling our IPM with Playworks
ironSource’s automated bidder, or ROAS Optimizer, has been incredibly helpful as its sophisticated algorithms support our UA efforts in a similar fashion to how we’ve managed it in-house. The tool automatically bids on relevant channels, and determines a CPI that will be profitable based on our LTV. We learned, for example, that even though we build non-gaming apps, our user acquisition campaigns perform exceptionally well on gaming inventory, and vice versa - likely because our target audience is Gen Z who enjoy having interactive elements in their mobile content.
We’re also working to increase our IPMs with ironSource Playworks - their in-house creative studio. ironSource made a playable ad for our app Yarn that delivered 2x the IPM of our regular video on Android. The playable was key in scaling our campaigns, and reaching the volume of acquired users.
Part of the team
Our ironSource team is incredibly hands-on and collaborative. The level of involvement they provide is really impressive - it makes them feel like an extension of our team rather than a third-party company.
"ironSource feels like an extension of our team rather than a third-party company."
- Benoit Vatere, Founder and CEO at Mammoth Media
Not only are we interacting with our day-to-day manager, but we have access to multiple experts in different fields. We constantly engage with up to 8 different people at ironSource, which makes us feel like we’re part of their team.
The bottom line is, ironSource is always open to making things better and they move fast, which makes them the leader of the pack. They’ve even offered to build a product just for our unique needs. That’s teamwork.
