In 2026, the in-app advertising market is changing. It is no longer about connecting as many ad networks as possible. It is about understanding how your auction works, how your users behave, and how advertising supports your overall business model.

The ecosystem is consolidating. Strong networks are becoming stronger. Smaller ones are struggling to compete. For publishers, this means one thing: monetization is becoming more technical and more strategic.

It is less about “adding more demand” and more about engineering the right auction.

Rewarded Video Remains the Strongest Format

Rewarded video continues to deliver the best performance across many app categories, especially in games and increasingly in apps.

The reason is simple. Users choose to watch these ads. They receive something in return extra lives, premium features, in-app currency or unlocked content. This creates a fair value exchange. My belief is that we will finally need to truly take care of users and offer them an experience where they choose how to reward you as a publisher without hurting their own experience. If we put it into one simple trend phrase: “user-first ad monetization strategy.”

But rewarded video only performs well when it is placed correctly. Timing matters. Context matters. Triggering it at the right moment inside the user journey is what protects retention and increases revenue per user.

Bidding Only Is Not Always the Best Strategy

For several years, bidding was seen as the future of mediation. Many publishers moved to bidding only setups.

However, in practice, hybrid waterfalls often perform better in some cases.

Why?

Because a hybrid setup combines real-time bidding with traditional waterfall logic. This allows better control over fill rate and price competition. In some cases, bidding only can reduce performance if demand is not strong enough or if floors are not optimized properly. There is no secret sauce that you just put on the meat and eat. There is more to it. Based on the format, audience and platform, you need to test your hybrid waterfalls and see what works best for your app or game.

The idea that “bidding fixes everything” is still not true. Don’t be lazy :)

The KPI That Matters: ARPDAU

Many publishers still focus too much on eCPM or fill rate, which has been the case for quite some time. But ego in the ad monetisation industry is one of the biggest problems: “I have the best ad monetization stack” often kills publishers’ ARPDAU performance :(

In 2026, the real metric to monitor is Ad ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User).

eCPM shows how much advertisers pay per thousand impressions.
Fill rate shows how often ads are served.

But ARPDAU shows the real business outcome, how much revenue each active user generates.

This connects monetization directly to product performance and growth.

Demand Diversity, But With Discipline

Having many SSPs integrated does not automatically mean better performance.

If a partner brings only €100 per month and adds technical complexity, reporting noise and slower auctions, it may not be worth it.

In 2026, strong publishers regularly review their demand partners. They remove underperforming networks and focus on partners that truly compete in the auction. If you have an SSP that contributes less than 4–5% of your total revenue, run an A/B test and see how your auction performs without them. Most likely, the auction will perform the same or even better. Many of us simply stick with SSPs that we integrated two or three years ago. The market has changed significantly lately. Many small SSPs are just resellers or middlemen in the auction, and this often hurts publishers.

Quality of demand is more important than quantity of integrations.

Monetization Must Serve the Business

Ad monetization is no longer just an ad team activity. It is part of product strategy.

If your app is subscription-first, ads must support that model.
If retention is weak, aggressive monetization will damage long-term value.
If you scale DAU but ARPDAU drops, growth is not sustainable.

In 2026, the strongest publishers are not those who install the most SDKs.

They are the ones who understand auction mechanics, user behaviour and lifetime value, and who use their mediation stack as a business tool.

Ad monetisation has become engineering, and engineering requires strategy.

So let me know if you need my help on any of these topics.