Using AI to Power Customized Ad Messaging – A Q&A with Aarki

We had the opportunity to sit down with Nicol Cseko, VP of Product at Aarki to get her perspective regarding programmatic buying in 2020.

Q: What do you think makes Aarki’s demand especially attractive? 

We are focused on delivering performance at scale across the entire marketing lifecycle from acquisition to re-engagement, which means that we work with many of the biggest and most successful developers, especially in the gaming space. As a DSP we bring established, high-quality advertiser demand to our supply partners.  

We have very discerning advertiser clients, which coupled with sophisticated creatives and finely tuned models mean we also deliver great ad experiences to the right audience segments on each of our supply partners. This makes Aarki not just a strong buyer, but also a strong partner to publishers that want the best quality demand in their inventory. 

Q: Why is the Chartboost supply a good fit for your advertisers?

Aarki takes advantage of the Chartboost robust Exchange to find the premium mobile in-app inventory that best matches our clients’ campaign objectives. Their global in-app inventory and high-quality users are a perfect fit for our advertisers. In addition, Chartboost’s total transparency lets us know where the spend is going, and how it is performing.

We have seen the Chartboost supply grow throughout our integration while maintaining a high level of quality in publishers, users, and a well-vetted supply stream.

Q: Any recommendations for publishers to help them make their inventory more attractive to DSPs like yourself?

As a DSP, we value publishers’ inventory based on three factors – quality, appropriate pricing, and data sharing.

We evaluate publishers on the quality of their users (i.e. are they engaged) and if they make top tier quality users available via their supply-side integrations, and the quality of their ad experiences. 

We also monitor publishers to ensure their metrics track with the market such as CPI, CR , ROI, plus other post install client KPIs, and then work actively to vet out publishers whose inventory and performance does not meet our expectations. We work closely with partners like Chartboost to ensure they provide access to only the best app developers. 

We support publishers wanting to set pricing for their inventory that reflects the quality of their audience, however, very high price floors can hurt the competitiveness of the market for that inventory leading to lower fill rates from DSP partners. Looking at and testing different price floors can help publishers maximize their fill. With appropriate controls in place, they can maintain access only for high-quality advertisers even at increased inventory availability. We work directly with many publishers to discuss monetization potential.

And last but not least, advertisers aren’t just buying media these days, they’re in the market for addressable audiences. By adding to their ad request specific characteristics or parameters such as demographics, location information, device ID, and user interests, publishers can increase the value of their inventory and offer a richer picture of their users to interested advertisers.

Q: What do you think are the benefits for DSPs as the monetization stack is switching to unified auctions? 

We see unified actions and in-app bidding providing a fairer market environment for DSPs by knowing that we are competing equally against all demand sources.  

We want publishers to receive a fair price for their supply and not hesitate to place high-value inventory into the open marketplace. We see first-price auctions as a way for publishers to achieve this. As a DSP, we don’t think first-price auctions are necessarily detrimental to the bidder. With our first-price partners, we have seen significant campaign performance and we support more exchanges shifting to a first-price model that benefits the entire ecosystem.

As we are bullish on in-app unified auctions we naturally also started testing buying on Helium inventory and working on scaling and benchmarking.  

Q: Where do you think mobile programmatic advertising is headed in the future?

Mobile programmatic is moving towards enhanced user experience, personalization, automation, and AI-powered technology. We expect wider adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in mobile marketing paired with careful personalization and a focus on retention.

With the help of AI, we are able to understand our audiences better, which leads to more customized and relevant ad messaging. From tracking the entire marketing funnel to collecting data on customer behavior and tendencies, AI is an ideal tool to be investing in right now. 

However, marketers need to be more judicious about how they collect and use data. Personalization is still important, but users are savvier now and are aware that their data is being used to target them. Approaches to personalization should become subtler in order not to negate the user experience. 

As retaining users is as important as acquiring them, we believe we will see more ad spend going into partners that are capable of both user acquisition and retargeting since they can guide the users through their entire lifecycle.

To keep up with mobile advertising trends, we continuously develop our bidding models and automate creative optimization tools to be sure that our target audience, be it active or a lapsed user segment, sees only the ads that are catchy and relevant to them.   

Q: How do you see Chartboost and Aarki partnership grow in the next couple of years? 

We trust Chartboost will provide a good supply to align with the needs of our demand, as we are growing our demand in specific key markets in which Chartboost is also focused on growing their supply. We work hand in hand with them to evaluate supply, new product releases, and other initiatives to the betterment of the mobile app industry. 

We’re looking forward to the further growth of this partnership, be it integration and coordination of new products or client-facing initiatives like the events we organized together, and many more.

“Over the course of our partnership, Chartboost has proven to be a valuable partner,” said Nicol Cseko, VP of Product at Aarki. “Their high-quality, global user base extends our programmatic reach and we look forward to further scaling our partnership.”