We are excited to announce Helium SDK 2.9.0, released on April 21, 2022, with a new feature, Keywords Targeting. Keywords are essentially key-value pairs that enable real-time targeting on waterfall line items. Helium offers publishers flexibility and full control of user targeting and waterfall setup to maximize ad revenue. Publishers can target their line items using pre-existing reserved keywords or define their own custom keywords.
How does it work?
Step 1: The publisher plans its waterfall strategy and targeting needs. Where custom targeting is needed, the publisher can create custom key-value pairs and choose what type of data to pass.
Step 2: Add these key-value pairs to the Helium SDK by creating a Helium ad object and then using the setKeyword method to add key-value keywords pairs.
Step 3: Go to the Helium Dashboard > Keywords Management page to set up custom keywords. Keywords input here must match the key set on the ad object and the data type of the value. Helium supports four types of keyword value types: String, Boolean, Number, and Version. There is also a list of 40+ reserved keywords that a publisher can use immediately, such as Helium SDK Version, Device OS, Device Language, etc.
Step 4: Add new rules to line items that require keyword targeting. Targeting rules allow publishers to create groups of keywords. Each row represents an “AND” group where all values must pass. Multiple rows allow for “OR” functionality in case there is more than one rule that can pass for the line item to serve.
After you have successfully set up the SDK, Keywords Management, and targeted your keywords on the desired line items, the Helium SDK will retrieve available keywords from the Publisher app and send them as part of the ad request to the Helium Auction server. The Helium Auction server will process the keywords and use the targeting rules defined by the publisher via the Helium Dashboard to decide which line items will participate in the waterfall.
The flexibility of Keywords Targeting enables publishers to create dynamic and powerful ad serving rules. Here are two common Keywords Targeting use cases.
- Publishers, especially IAP-focused publishers, might be concerned that showing ads to paid users will lead them to drop the game and lose monetization revenue. For paid users or users who have paid an amount of money, publishers can set up keywords targeting of “payer_type” and, in the line item setting page, set up a rule of “payer_type” != “Whale”, so when Helium defines the ad request as coming from a whale user, it won’t show them any ads.
- When an ad crash occurs on a particular version of an ad network’s SDK, publishers normally will disable that ad network entirely until a new version of the application is available. That’s a 100% revenue loss until the issue is resolved. To avoid this, publishers can set up a rule of “Adnetwork_sdk_version” != “2.5.0”, so that publishers can still receive ad revenue from the other versions of AdNetwork SDK. This allows the publisher to surgically cut out the bad version from the overall meditation and ship a new version of the app with a patched network SDK version on a less frantic schedule.
Keywords Targeting is a feature that publishers can’t miss. Ready to get started? Integrate the latest Helium SDK and enhance your waterfall management by making it more granular today!
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