In-app advertising is currently the most common and direct monetization method. However, for small and medium-sized developers and utility apps, traditional ad monetization is facing severe challenges. Users' tolerance for ad interruptions is declining, and ads that disrupt core operations may directly lead to app uninstallations. At the same time, privacy restrictions are becoming increasingly stringent—third-party cookies are being phased out, and device ID collection is limited. These factors directly affect the effectiveness of targeted ad delivery and revenue.
Dilemmas and Challenges
The current monetization difficulties for developers are multi-dimensional. The primary issue lies in the conflict between ad revenue and user experience. In-app advertising requires a delicate balance between revenue and user experience; improper ad placement not only fails to generate income but also causes user churn.
In-App Advertising: A Traditional Path of Drinking Poison to Quench Thirst
As the most mainstream monetization method today, in-app advertising dominates the market with its characteristics of "low threshold and wide coverage." Its core logic is to obtain payment from advertisers through impressions, clicks, or conversions, eliminating the need for direct user payment and lowering the monetization threshold. Various forms such as rewarded videos, interstitial ads, and banner ads are suitable for different scenarios like casual games and utility apps. When the traffic scale is sufficiently large, it can quickly amplify revenue, serving as a supporting monetization tool in the user acquisition ecosystem.
However, the drawbacks of this model are deeply rooted, becoming a bottleneck restricting the long-term development of developers. From the perspective of user experience, the intrusiveness of ads is an inherent flaw—frequently popping interstitial ads and banner ads occupying the interface seriously disrupt the app usage scenario. Especially for immersive games and utility apps, ad interference directly leads to a decline in user retention. Although rewarded videos can improve acceptance through incentives, over-reliance on them distorts the product design logic. In terms of revenue, in-app advertising has an obvious "black box effect," with intermediate links eroding 20%-30% of the link value.
Developers cannot access real bidding data, and their revenue is highly dependent on traffic scale and user quality. They also face risks such as ad fraud and malicious clicks, making revenue settlement stability difficult to guarantee. In addition, developers need to continuously invest energy in optimizing ad creatives and delivery strategies; otherwise, eCPM (Effective Cost Per Mille) will decline rapidly, further compressing profit margins.
The Unique Path of SDK Monetization
This is the most intuitive difference between PacketSDK and in-app advertising. No matter how optimized the delivery timing is, in-app advertising is essentially an "invasion" of user experience, inevitably facing a dilemma between "monetization efficiency" and "user retention"—the more ads delivered, the higher the short-term revenue, but the greater the risk of user churn. In contrast, PacketSDK operates silently in the background throughout, without displaying any pop-ups, banners, or video ads. It does not interfere with users' normal app usage nor affect device operation speed, achieving "non-interference between monetization and experience." For products with high experience requirements such as immersive games and utility apps, this non-intrusive model is undoubtedly the optimal solution, as it can both retain user stickiness and open up additional revenue channels.
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