AdMob In House Ad eCPM Order

Question

I'm a little confused on the matter of displaying my own in house ad's along side AdMob's ads with the use of setting eCPM values for order of importance.

I currently am just running one house ad along with AdMobs's network.

From the FAQ and AdMob help section I've come to the understanding that this is how the allocation will work.

For Example, I set AdMob's eCPM to $5.00 and my in house ad to $0.01, in this case an AdMob ad will only be shown if it's value is equal to or exceeds $5.00. If it doesn't, then my in house ad will be shown.

The issue I'm running into with that particular setup is that no in house ads are being allocated. I find it hard to believe that every ad that AdMob is able to allocate has an eCPM of $5.00. After a few days not one in house ad was allocated.

I thought I may have done something wrong in another area of my setup so I swapped the eCPM values, so AdMob now equals $0.01 and my in house ad now equals $5.00. I started to receive in house ads following the change in setup but it is opposite of which I understood.

Is my understanding of this backwards?

Ideally, I'd like to show AdMob ads as long as their eCPM value is high enough, if the eCPM is not high enough, I'd like to fill the ad space with my in house ad.

I've done some reading on eCPM Floor Beta feature but I don't believe it applies in this situation. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

So after some extensive experimenting, I've solved my question.

The idea with the eCPM settings is that you enter the eCPM performance of each network, and the mediation ordering is that the highest eCPM network goes first, followed by the second highest, and so forth. So the network I set at $5.00 got the first look.

To get the results I was seeking I needed to check the "Optimize AdMob Network" box in my mediation settings, and set my house ad's value to something reasonable, I set it to $1.00. Then at ad request time, AdMob will run an auction and automatically place itself in the correct spot in the mediation order based on what value it can get in that request. If AdMob can beat my house ad's value, it'll serve. If not, the house ad will serve first.