Rewarded video: swapping waterfall for in-app bidding lifted eCPM 27%
A puzzle app ran a 14-tier rewarded waterfall in ironSource. Top tiers were starved because manual eCPM floors were stale by weeks.
They moved 9 networks into LevelPlay in-app bidding and kept only 3 high-floor direct deals as waterfall.
Over 21 days, 2.1M rewarded impressions:
— eCPM +27% (bidders competed in real time instead of fixed floors)
— latency to fill dropped 340ms median (fewer sequential calls)
— fill rate flat at 94%, so the lift was pure price, not volume
✓ Kills the stale-floor maintenance treadmill
✓ Latency win improves completion rate on rewarded
✗ Lost per-tier transparency — harder to debug a bad advertiser
✗ Three networks still don't bid, so hybrid is mandatory
Verdict: use bidding for the long tail, keep direct deals as a floor.
Best for: pubs hand-tuning waterfalls weekly.
In-App Bench
@InAppBench
Rewarded video: swapping waterfall for in-app bidding lifted eCPM 27%
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