To win installs at scale, you need programmatic advertising, a fully automated, AI-driven process that segments audiences, conducts real-time bidding, and delivers impressions at optimal cost.
Mobile titles now account for 49 percent of the $188 billion global games industry, according to Newzoo Global Games Market Report, solidifying their share of digital ad spend. Advertisers have responded accordingly, driving a 60.4% year-over-year increase in mobile gaming ad campaigns to over 259,700 in 2024, thereby intensifying competition for installs.
When deploying demand-side platforms (DSPs) alongside data management platforms (DMPs), you can achieve precise control over audience attributes, from demographics to contextual signals, enabling efficient targeting of high-intent gamers. However, integration capabilities between DSPs and DMPs vary across platforms. Not all DSPs offer seamless integration with DMPs, and the effectiveness of such integrations can differ based on the specific platforms used.
Pairing these campaigns with measurement partners and attribution tools enables you to continuously refine cost-per-install (CPI) and lifetime value (LTV) metrics, thereby maximizing your return on investment (ROI) on ad spend.
Understanding Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising automates the buying and selling of digital ad space through real-time bidding (RTB) and predefined rules. While AI and machine learning enhance this process by analyzing vast datasets to optimize targeting and bidding strategies, the fundamental mechanism of programmatic advertising relies on automation and real-time bidding (RTB), rather than necessarily relying on AI-driven algorithms. It removes manual insertion orders and replaces them with dynamic bids based on user attributes, context, and performance goals. This approach ensures you reach high-value prospects at scale while continuously refining targeting using both first- and third-party data.
In mobile gaming, user behaviors shift rapidly, from session length to reward preferences, making real‑time bidding indispensable for matching ad creatives to the right players at the right moment. You can leverage dynamic creative optimization (DCO) to A/B‑test interstitials, playable ads, and rewarded videos, boosting installs and ROI.
What is not Considered Programmatic?
Any ad deal that relies on manual negotiations, fixed pricing, and pre-booked campaign windows is considered non-programmatic. Direct Insertion Orders (IOs) refer to advertising agreements where you and a publisher negotiate terms directly, securing specific ad placements, impressions, or sponsorships. These deals are typically executed outside of Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and Private Marketplace (PMP) environments. Without automated bidding engines or algorithmic targeting, these buys lack the agility and scale of programmatic.
Programmatic Advertising Channels
You can deploy programmatic across multiple formats and screens:
Display Ads: These visual ads appear on website headers, footers, or sidebars. They can be personalized and updated using user data.
Video Ads: A core tool for mobile gaming user acquisition, video ads appear in pre-, mid-, and post-roll formats and in content feeds.
Native Ads: Seamlessly integrated into websites or apps, native ads provide a natural viewing experience. Common types include in-feed, in-article, paid search, and content recommendation widgets.
Audio Ads: Programmatic audio ads on platforms such as podcasts, Spotify, and Pandora help reach users at scale, particularly in freemium environments.
Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH): DOOH offers advanced targeting and analytics, utilizing mobile tracking and geo-location to measure campaign impacts, such as in-store visits or app downloads.
In-App Advertising: Programmatic ads within games, such as rewarded ads, interstitials, and playable ads, improve user engagement and retention while driving conversions.
How Much Does Programmatic Advertising Cost?
Programmatic advertising involves multiple intermediaries, each adding their own fees to the process. These include Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), Data Management Platforms (DMPs), and ad exchanges. Each player typically charges a percentage of the media spend, which can vary depending on the campaign's complexity and scale.
Tech Fees Breakdown
DSP Fees: These platforms charge for the technology that enables real-time bidding and campaign management. Fees can be a flat rate or a percentage of media spend, often ranging from 5% to 20%.
SSP Fees: SSPs facilitate the sale of publisher inventory. Their fees, known as supply fees, can range from as low as 7% to as high as 42% per impression, with a median fee around 20% for most SSPs.
Ad Exchange Fees: These platforms aggregate supply and demand, facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers. While specific fees can vary, they typically add a layer of cost to the media spend.
The efficiency gained from programmatic advertising can outweigh these costs, making it a highly effective method for digital marketing.
Benefits of Programmatic Advertising in Mobile Gaming
It lets you deploy ads in-app and on CTV, all from one platform, so you can reach players where they spend their time. Additionally, live performance dashboards provide instant feedback on bids and creatives, allowing you to refine campaigns without delay. Here's how it benefits you:
Streamlined Operations and Cost Savings: When you configure programmatic advertising through your demand-side platform, manual proposals and middlemen disappear, driving down your average CPM. That efficiency often translates into a lower cost per install compared with legacy waterfall or direct‑buy methods.
Expanded Reach Across Formats and Channels: You gain unified access to in‑app banners, rewarded videos, playable ads, and even streaming‑TV placements, all managed in a single interface. This breadth ensures you can attract gamers with the format that best suits their behavior and device.
Real-Time Insights for Campaign Optimization: Your campaign dashboard refreshes with each auction and impression, allowing you to identify performance fluctuations in real-time. You can A/B test creatives against player segments and pause underperformers on the spot, keeping your budget focused on winners.
Smarter Targeting with Data and AI: Programmatic taps both your own user data and external audiences to identify high-potential players. Machine‑learning algorithms then adjust bids in real time, so you secure quality installs at scale and stretch your UA dollars further.
Programmatic advertising helps you target high-value players with precision, optimize campaigns instantly, and enhance ad spend efficiency, ultimately improving long-term player retention.
The Programmatic Advertising Ecosystem: How It Works
Programmatic advertising relies on a digital marketplace, known as the ad exchange, which automates media buys and sales, replacing manual insertion orders with real-time auctions and data-driven decision-making.
Buy side
On the buy side, you deploy a demand‑side platform (DSP) to purchase ad placements across multiple ad exchanges and networks. The DSP leverages your first-, second, and third-party data, organized by a data management platform (DMP), to target players based on demographics, in-app behavior, or predicted lifetime value.
Suppose you operate your own in‑house UA team. In that case, you can connect directly to DSPs, such as Google Ads or proprietary trading desks, to minimize overhead and maximize control over bids, budgets, and targeting parameters. In 2025, the emphasis is on leveraging first-party data and AI-driven algorithms to enhance targeting precision and campaign performance.
Sell side
On the sell side, publishers (including other mobile apps, gaming blogs, and content networks) list their unsold ad inventory on the exchange. Ad networks aggregate unsold placements at preset rates, often at discounted rates, and pass those into programmatic channels. At the same time, supply-side platforms (SSPs) automate revenue optimization, header bidding, and yield management to maximize the cost per thousand impressions (CPMs). When you bid via a DSP, it’s the SSP that matches your bid to available slots on the publisher’s app.
Third‑party services
To ensure your campaign runs smoothly and transparently, you integrate:
Ad verification firms for viewability, brand safety, and fraud monitoring.
Data clean rooms for secure, anonymized collaboration with publishers and partners, enabling rich audience insights without exposing raw PII (Personally Identifiable Information).
Programmatic Advertising Process: A Walkthrough
Implementing programmatic advertising for mobile game user acquisition involves several key steps:
App launch or page load triggers a bid request. When a player opens a mobile game or visits a partner app, the publisher sends an impression opportunity, along with the user's opted-in context and device data, to the ad exchange.
SSP auctions the impression. The supply-side platform evaluates the floor price, audience data, and deal terms, then broadcasts the bid request to connected demand-side platforms (DSPs).
DSP evaluates and responds. Your DSP matches the request against your audience segments and campaign rules, calculating a bid based on the predicted player lifetime value (LTV) and target cost per acquisition (CPA).
Highest bid wins. The ad exchange awards the impression to the winning bid, typically the amount of the second‑highest bid plus a cent (second‑price auction).
Ad is served instantly. Within milliseconds, the winning creative is delivered to the user’s device, ensuring a seamless gameplay experience.
Post‑impression measurement. MMP tracks clicks, installs, and in‑game events, attributing conversions back to the winning bid and feeding data into your DMP for future optimization.
Retargeting and frequency capping. You can apply dynamic retargeting algorithms to re-engage high-value players and set frequency caps to prevent ad fatigue.
Continuous optimization. AI-driven models adjust bids and budgets in real-time to maximize ROAS, reallocating spend toward the highest-yielding segments and channels.
By following this structured approach, you can effectively leverage programmatic advertising to acquire high-quality users.
Understanding RTB, PMPs, programmatic guaranteed, and spot buying helps target the proper inventory, budgets, and brand-safety needs. Your choice between self-service and managed service affects whether you control DSP integrations or delegate execution to experts.
Real‑Time Bidding (RTB)
Real-time bidding (RTB), often referred to as an open auction or open marketplace, allows you to bid on ad impressions in milliseconds, ensuring the highest bidder wins without paying more than one cent above the next bid.
Pros:
Easy setup with configurable maximum bids and budgets.
Market‑driven pricing helps you avoid overpaying and optimize your effective CPM.
Ubiquitous access to a vast pool of inventory for broad reach.
Millisecond‑speed processing aligns with your real‑time targeting parameters.
Cons:
Limited transparency on actual placement environments can expose you to brand‑safety risks.
Best suited for upper-funnel campaigns, with low visibility into guaranteed delivery risks that can under-serve your audience.
No promised fill rate, if bids fall below floor prices, your campaigns may under‑deliver.
Private Marketplace (PMP)
A private marketplace (PMP) blends the RTB auction framework with direct, invitation‑only access to select publishers. You negotiate deal IDs and audience segments up front before the auction runs, gaining more control over where your ads appear.
Pros:
Granular control over premium inventory and audience targeting.
Access to first‑party data from publishers enhances your segment precision.
Exclusive or semi‑exclusive placements can boost viewability and engagement.
Cons:
No guaranteed volume publishers aren’t obligated to deliver impressions.
Larger upfront negotiation overhead with publishers and deal IDs.
Susceptible to fraud if not supplemented with verification partners.
Programmatic Guaranteed
Programmatic guaranteed (also known as programmatic direct) eliminates auctions by locking in a fixed volume of impressions, price, and audience parameters via direct deals between you and the publisher.
Pros:
Maximum brand safety and transparency, since you know exactly where and when your ads run.
Exclusive inventory not available to competitors, protecting your reach and frequency.
Higher floor CPMs make this option cost‑prohibitive for many campaigns.
Spot Buying and Preferred Deals
With spot buying, also known as preferred deals, you receive a fixed price and a first right of refusal on inventory before it goes up for auction, providing revenue predictability and a lower risk of fraud.
Pros:
Predictable CPMs streamline budget forecasting and pacing.
Reduced fraud exposure compared to open marketplaces.
Fast access to premium inventory before broader competition.
Cons:
Negotiation time and deal setup can slow activation.
You may end up with unused reserved inventory if goals shift.
Self‑Service vs. Managed Service
When scaling your programmatic stack, assess your internal resources and the complexity of your campaigns to ensure a seamless integration. If you have seasoned media‑buyers and data scientists, a self‑service DSP integration gives you complete control over bid strategies, audience segmentation, and creative optimization.
Conversely, if you prioritize ease, holistic campaign management, and access to agency-grade insights, a managed service provided by specialized partners can offload execution, allowing you to focus on your broader user acquisition strategy.
Programmatic advertising is not just a buzzword but a comprehensive, AI-driven ecosystem that empowers mobile gaming marketers to reach high-value players with precision, agility, and scale.
By leveraging real-time bidding through DSPs integrated with DMPs and MMPs, advertisers can continuously optimize CPI and LTV metrics, eliminate manual middlemen, and access a unified dashboard to monitor performance across display, video, social, native, audio, DOOH, and in-app channels.
The result is a streamlined operation that drives down CPM and cost per install, expands reach across formats, and delivers instantaneous insights for creative A/B tests and budget reallocations, ultimately maximizing ROI on ad spend.
Ready to boost your programmatic advertising workflow and outpace the competition? Start your 14‑day free trial today and discover how Segwise AI Agents can turn data into decisive growth.
FAQs
1. How does programmatic advertising help me get more installs?
It automates audience targeting, bidding, and ad placement to reach the right players at the right time, maximizing installs while minimizing your costs.
2. Can I truly trust AI to optimize my campaigns in real-time?
Yes, AI and machine learning analyze user behavior and campaign performance instantly, adjusting bids and creatives to boost results without human delay.
3. Do I need technical expertise to use a demand-side platform (DSP)?
Not necessarily. If you're hands-on, you can go self-service. If not, managed service providers can run optimized campaigns for you while you focus on your growth strategy.
4. What's the difference between real-time bidding and programmatic guaranteed?
RTB is open, fast, and flexible, making it great for scaling. Programmatic guaranteed locks in premium inventory at set prices, better for brand safety and predictability.
5. How do I know if my ads are working?
You’ll integrate with attribution tools (MMPs) that track installs, in-game actions, and ROAS, so you always know which creatives and channels are winning.
