Ad network
An ad network is a middleman for ad space. It gathers placements from many apps or sites into one pool, so advertisers can buy reach without dealing with every publisher, and publishers can sell without finding every advertiser.
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Ad networks were the first answer to fragmentation in digital advertising. A small app cannot negotiate with hundreds of advertisers, and an advertiser cannot sign deals with thousands of small apps. The network sits between them, handles delivery and payment, and takes a share of the money that passes through.
How an ad network works
- Publishers integrate the network’s SDK or tag and make placements available.
- Advertisers create campaigns with budgets, targeting and creatives, and pay on a model such as CPM, CPC, CPI or a post-install event.
- When a placement loads, the network picks an ad from its advertisers based on targeting, price and predicted performance.
- The network reports results to both sides, bills the advertiser and pays the publisher after its fee.
Mobile ad networks often specialize: some focus on games and rewarded video, others on performance-based app installs. Many now run automated auctions internally and buy additional supply from exchanges, so a large network can behave much like a programmatic platform.
Ad networks vs ad exchanges vs DSPs
| Ad network | Ad exchange | DSP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Role | Aggregates and resells inventory | Neutral marketplace running auctions | Buying tool for advertisers |
| Inventory | Its own publisher pool | Many sellers, including networks | Whatever connected exchanges offer |
| Pricing | Set or optimized by the network | Auction per impression | Advertiser’s bid per impression |
| Buyer control | Campaign-level settings | Via DSPs connected to it | Impression-level bidding and targeting |
In short, a network sells you access to its pool on its terms, an exchange is where impressions are auctioned, and a DSP is the software a buyer uses to bid across exchanges. The boundaries overlap in practice, but the question “who controls the price and targeting?” usually tells you which one you are dealing with.
Mediation in brief
Publishers rarely rely on one network. A mediation platform lets an app connect several networks and decides, for each ad request, which one serves the ad, either through a ranked waterfall or through in-app bidding where networks bid at the same time. The goal is higher fill and higher revenue per impression. For advertisers, mediation means the same placement may be reachable through several networks.
On the publisher side, the result is usually judged by eCPM, the revenue earned per 1,000 impressions, broken down by network, format and country. That is also why a subscription app that shows ads to free users ends up working with several networks at once.
Ad networks for subscription app UA
For a subscription app buying users, networks offer reach that search and social channels do not. They also bring familiar risks: opaque placement lists, traffic quality that varies by source, and attribution that relies on the network’s own reporting plus aggregated privacy frameworks on iOS.
- Optimize toward the deepest event the network can use, such as a trial start or purchase, rather than installs.
- Ask for source- or app-level reporting and exclude placements whose installs never convert.
- Compare networks with each other and with Apple Ads on cost per trial, cost per subscription and cohort revenue.