Latest / Mobile Signal / The AppLovin Unity lawsuit, Tencent announces AdSurge, CloudX releases Orchestrator.

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The AppLovin Unity lawsuit, Tencent announces AdSurge, CloudX releases Orchestrator. · Mobile Signal

• Josh Chandley: Greetings and welcome to Mobile Signal. I'm Josh Chandley and joining me today is not Warren Woodward, who's out, but we do have Vincent: Vincent from fifty two entertainment, happy to be here. Good to see you, Josh. Josh Chandley: Three stories for you today. AppLovin and Unity go to court. Tencent launches AdSurge a new in-app ad network. And finally, CloudX launches Orchestrator, a solution for managing multiple ad mediation solutions. We'll explain what that is and what the impact is as well. But before we talk about the lawsuit, Unity was just on the pod last week with Felix Thé the chief AI officer. How was that, Vincent? Vincent: I really enjoyed the pod. we don't really hear often, someone who is, you know, operational or just from the grow slash advertising, you know, business unit or involved in this business unit talking publicly and sharing, you know, what's going on under the hood. How do they see, you know, their progress, obviously on vector. So just for that, it was great to understand okay, what is the vision. And how do they understand, the trajectory right now of Vector? so yeah, I thought overall was a really good one. Josh Chandley: I thought Felix was very open for a C suite exec at a publicly traded company. Vincent: Yes. And the stakes are very high, obviously, stocklisted, as you said, So yeah, a lot at stake. Josh Chandley: my sense being in the room when it was happening was he felt very well, he's super talented, but justifiably he comes across as very confident right now. but I mean 18 months since launch and the execution has been really consistent, which is exactly what we were criticizing previous versions, of of Unity for. but I I do believe day twenty-eight campaigns will commoditize soon as more you know networks launch that type. You know, and I don't think runtime has been proven yet. So I think what I'm watching for is you know, from a Unity perspective, is can can Felix and Co. continue that drumbeat of consistent gains? Can they execute against a runtime opportunity faster than day twenty-eight commoditizes? Cause that's the the foot race they're in, right? Vincent: Yeah, and I believe you asked the question of okay, what happens and do you still have an edge once everybody's on D28, right? And the answer was very interesting also because when you think about it, some some not too long ago, everybody was D seven, and so everybody was competing with the same kind of weapons or algorithm. So soon it's gonna be the same playing field. And so how do you differentiate, right? And obviously runtime fee is is obviously a key From the outside, a key unique data set, right? And obviously you did a good job trying to understand what his his perspective on how valuable is the runtime data And I thought the the the Felix take was very interesting, and obviously I I encourage everybody to listen to the whole thing, but my understanding is what the sequencing and the timestamp of all the event and essentially having a source of truth, right? something very solid in terms of the events. and yeah, sure, you ask any head of data, you know, having a very clean database that is normalized is the first thing you need. So then the question is, okay, well, if you don't have this runtime fee, is your data kind of messy, you know, in that regard or not? And is it really the way to tackle that? And a unique way to tackle that and make sense of your whole data lake as you know, if you are a network. That's obviously a question mark to me, which I'm I'm not technical or an engineer. But yeah, the uniqueness and is it an age to have access to this data is still a question mark, I believe. Josh Chandley: I think you're right. I think the my my personal opinion is that it is some level of an edge. I don't think it's knowable quite yet how big of an edge it is or isn't. but I I do think it's real. I think my question in my head, thinking about the runtime I wonder if the Unity engine, the revenue growth that it causes for that company, if it's going to be expressed more in the create side, or if it's going to be expressed more in causing the the ad network to grow. I think this question is kind of a key thing for that. Because to your point, it almost developers almost want this to work because that means it can keep the engine cheap. Vincent: Yes. and again, if the network is healthy, you know, the prices on the engine will not go as up as otherwise. so I think as a publisher, you know, this is one partner with two different products. You actually want the engine to have a healthy business, which again was not really the case for ages. so whether the runtime fee will help one more than the other, I'm not sure. I don't know. And again, this is the central question of how valuable it can be for the ad network. but Josh Chandley: Mm. Vincent: either way, I personally as a client, I personally need each business unit to be solid and, you know, financially valuable. you don't want something unbalanced. Otherwise you're gonna pay the price on the other side. I think. Josh Chandley: I think that's fair. Either way, I think it was a it was a good podcast. It was a lot of fun to do. and I came away, I mean, feeling pretty good about it, Vincent: Yeah, just one thing is what Josh Chandley: Fuck, how do I make this transition? Go ahead. Vincent: I think you you expose yourself with a prediction of three networks, whatever the timeline's gonna launch D28. And I think the Felix interview gives you some perspective on if you know you're gonna be correct or not. Because his explanation on why so late, why it took so long, where Aplovinit was, I don't know, two years ago, was very interesting. And again, I've seen that. My past experiences of disrupting yourself and essentially cutting an arm to just continue to grow stronger, which is essentially what you have to do. You have a D7, it's it's kind of growing, but you know it's not the best, and you're late in the market for the next evolution. You need to give air or oxygen, I think it was your expression there with Felix to your other product, right? And for that, you need to kind of hurt. some extent your current main revenue driver. This is very, very tough to do. It's it's called a sacrifice, right? And so how quickly you do that, how intense you go, and what is the urgency is the question everybody is asking themselves right now who are still on D7. And Unity went through that and is actually seeing the end of the tunnel, the out of the tunnel, I believe now on D28. Josh Chandley: Yeah, yeah, no, I think uni's out of the tunnel, but I I really do think, it's been two years since AppLovin launched D28. And it was so obvious how much of an improvement that made when when we ran those campaigns. And I, you know, as a publisher, I was asking every ad network for day 28. And I have been for two years. so it it's hard for me to feel like ad networks are just like if you're a liftoff, if you're Moloco, if you're Mintagral, if you're Google or even Meta, it's hard for me to think that you've waited until Q2 seeing Unity's results to start doing D twenty eight. I think this has been thought about for years, or at least that's my gut, because we've been asking. Vincent: I agree. And then my simple answer will be the difference between having a great ID and then the execution of it. And we are in a business of execution, right? can you do it quickly? Who just stuff? Josh Chandley: Yeah, that's true. That's true. and so I think D28, we've now seen two business gate or two businesses show big growth after launching day 28. But applevin alleges that Unity's growth partially came from unfair data practices. And in fact, now AppLovin has sued Unity over ad quality. And that's our next story. for background. Unity markets their ad quality SDK as a free tool that helps publishers catch bad ads. AppLovin is alleging that it also collects creatives, user data, and revenue data from ads that AppLovin wins. And that data could be helping train vector, Unity's ad network. Unity's stance, I believe, is that publishers have authorized the collection and that ad quality isn't even what's driving its performance in the first place. About two months ago in August, AppLovin asked Unity to stop. Unity offered to switch ad quality off for MAX if AppLovin considered the matter resolved. And AppLovin declined. It wanted the data already collected to be deleted, including from any models trained on it. So it asked the judge to make Unity stop collecting this data. The judge said no. that isn't a ruling on who is or isn't right. It just means it requires arbitration. And so that's the real fight. And so first question, Vincent. Who cares? W why is this data worth fighting over? Vincent: Yeah, it's obviously super interesting discussion on data ownership and is it used left or right? And obviously, as a publisher, an app is generating tons of data, you know. If think about it, the analytics, the attribution, the obviously the impression served. So which one of them is actually valuable and who owns it, right? my my own experience or understanding is Obviously, this this ad quality tool was part of level play. And a year ago, Unity decided to open it up to non level play clients. So even if you're on MAX, you can access their ad quality tool, which is actually regarded as a pretty good ad quality tool. and it is an opt in option, right? You don't have it's not done behind the back of publisher, right? So Wasn't it was announced, and as a publisher, you could ask for it, opt in for it, and then integrate the SDK or update to the latest iron source level play SDK. And then you have access to the dashboard, which is populated with what's going on in your ad quality. And the ad quality is obviously ad served, and they are served from your mediation. And in that example, it's Max. from that perspective, I think it was super relevant and super interesting. I personally was happy to improve my ad quality and my block list strategy with the additional and the quality of this tool. and so you know you'll share your data, you know, your user activity data with Unity, because you know they need it to display this great ad quality tool, and it's for free. Like so. everything that is free is usually about your attention or your data. And then you have a service for free. There are some paid ad quality tools in the market. It's pretty expensive. so the trend, you know, the the decision is made fairly quickly. You know, shall I save, you know, a couple of hundreds or dozen of of K of dollars on the tool by just, you know, sharing some of my data. Right. And when I say that, well, yeah, it's my app and it's you know my users. So Going share this data. so for me, it's very simple. I actually didn't see that coming, right? so why is it is it becoming a big deal? Well, I guess it's a good signal that you know vector is a threat, and people are are wondering how this performance is coming from. Where is it coming from? And again, you just interviewed, you know, Felix the and he shared some answers. and then the big question is the right time fee. you know, interesting discussion. Who owns this data? I guess it's a legal question. at the end of the day, I think, and again, we need to check the Ts and C's of every company's, but this is publishers user activity data. and then you know it's a fight between two ad tech or network players in a In obviously a very big moment of you mentioned D twenty eight, you mentioned networks trying to catch up with the leader. So of course, it's a very intense competition right there that we are witnessing. Josh Chandley: Yeah, it's a unique moment. And you're right, we're not going to settle whose data this is. The arbitrator will. I think the simple truth is that you know the core job of an ad network is to value an impression. And so how do you know if person A on device B, how much is his impression worth? Well, knowing how much the last one sold for is probably a very useful indicator. And I think that this is just information that everybody, you know, wants to have. and so let's let's take App Love inside seriously. It alleges, you know, Unity's code is like literally hooking into the App Love and SDK and pulling that impression level of revenue. Which is not clear that it's related to catching bad ads. You know, if that's true, Vincent, is is a publisher consenting enough? Vincent: Well it depends, I guess again, it depends on you know a publisher contract and T C N C with its own mediation. You know, can can you make use, can you share this data with a third party, yes or no, right? is it useful? Again, what is the what is the the purpose of an ad quality tool, right? You want to do a good job and and it's very, very t very difficult, right? Which ad to block? And obviously to do that, yeah, you need to to do some arbitrage on obviously the revenue you're getting from those ads and the churn they are causing. So the revenue of a creative is relevant to make this decision as a publisher, right? Do they collect it for that purpose and for displaying a level play ad quality tool? Yes. that's just a fact. is Unity using that for something else? They're not supposed to. and then again, it's a legal and a Ts and C's and an opt-in, you know, fine line conversation. but again, the purpose of this data is to provide a service which is an ad quality tool. Josh Chandley: know adsec, yeah, it can be a dirty business. So I don't concern myself too much with what's fair as much as what's legal. But even when you look at strictly what's what's legal, it is confusing and there's very fine lines. So for instance, my interpretation. Is that Unity cannot be hooking into the max SDK and gathering impression level revenue data to train Vector. But it can have the publisher send that user level impression data to an MMP and then forward that from the MMP to Vector for training. And that that is that makes it somehow different. Because what we're ultimately talking about here is that's like the foundation of of of ad RowAS campaigns. If you do if you don't allow that. All of Appleovin's publishers will go out of business. And so these were these are Vincent: Correct. Josh Chandley: it's it's very fine lines. These are very fine Vincent: Yeah, yeah, but Josh Chandley: lines. Vincent: but I believe that is a nuance. What you described with Josh Chandley: Mm. Vincent: the MP flow, it's for only you're sharing pressure level revenue data with users coming from that network. Right. Not from all yeah. Josh Chandley: If you choose to. Not all not all MM not all MPs even allow you to make that distinction. In fact I don't I Vincent: Right, right. Josh Chandley: don't does a does a just allow that distinction? I don't know. Vincent: I need to double check, but again, a network need to know the revenue of the users they send to you to optimize their addrous compagnon. They don't need to know the revenue of each user, even the organic. Take organic, right? To optimize your model for addroas optimization, D twenty eight, you need to know the quality of the users you're sending to your clients, right? and so that's the MP flow. at least on paper or you should be. whereas getting access to one hundred percent of all users' revenue is a different thing. And again, until now, indeed, it was only the mediation accessing this level of depth of data, which is obviously super valuable. Josh Chandley: Yeah, it but again, you're right. You're right. To measure, you need at the very least installs that you cause to have those postbacks, which is accessing this data, albeit the pipeline instead of going from device to vector server, it goes from device to MMP to vector server. Vincent: Correct, correct. Josh Chandley: so that would still be that same kind of data. it's just from a user caught installed because of a Unity ad. Additionally, Vincent: Yes. Josh Chandley: though, of course, networks want more than that. They want all postbacks, right? They want every network's postbacks. Apps flyer does provide that option to send all postbacks. Does Vincent: Mm-hmm. Josh Chandley: that mean Apps Flyer is violating these terms too? It's unclear. it's not just such a nuances. I think it's murky to me, right? Vincent: I I see your point, but but again, it's a different path, it's a different data flow. But yeah, if you restrict that from this data flow we we're discussing with the level played quality tool, the next step could be to forbid that through different and various other paths, right? Josh Chandley: Yeah, I think the key question here is, what is publisher data and and what is app loving data? I don't really have any intention of taking sides between app loving and and Unity. I work closely with both of them and and I don't like things getting this messy, But for publishers out there, I I don't think they love being put in a position where it's unclear whether or not they're violating their mediation agreements. Vincent: One hundred percent agree with you. So we the industry needs to clarify that or to to avoid to put publisher in this situation. Yes. We need clarity. Josh Chandley: I yeah, I agree. All right. So now let's look at Unity side. They're saying that ad quality is, off on MAX until a publisher turns it on. And they've also pointed out that AppLovin's own ad review tool, or at least Mac, collects, even more. You mentioned at the start that Unity made this change a year ago and it's just recently that AppLovin is as far as we're aware i is bringing this to a head. If both companies are doing this, is is this fight about fair practices or is it about reducing competition? Vincent: Yeah, that is a a good question. But again, in the center of it is the mediation. And I believe we we're gonna we're gonna touch on the mediation topic a bit further in the pod. But yeah, if you share this data with a mediation, in theory, as a publisher, yeah, you can share it with whoever you want, right? If it's your own data. but again, is a mediation a SaaS business? Where as a SaaS company, you know, normally as a client, this is your data that is hosted in a third party tool called a SaaS tool. Mediation really sits in the middle for ages, you know, in our business. and then again, to your point, who owns this data is still kind of a question mark. I guess we need a lawyer in the room or Claude to check, you know, the Ts and C's of the the fact of the contractual matter. Josh Chandley: Yeah, I don't know if I'd trust Claude on this one, though. this one, this one's crazy. So let's let's like. Vincent: Sure. My first option my first option was a lawyer, a human being. Josh Chandley: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. so let's just like I wanna I wanna simplify and strip down this question. it's like take the names out. An auction with many participants, you know, runs inside a game. question is who truly has a right to the data that that auction generates and things that happen downstream of the auction, like an ad showing. You know, is it the company that ran the auction? Is it the company that owns the game and it owns the inventory and is showing the ad impression? Is it the ad network that won the auction? Is it is it all three? Is it some of them that they Where do you land on this? Vincent: again, philosophically speaking, me personally, I think it's publisher's data. Again, then it depends on the Ts and C's of the mediation you use. It might be different depending on the contract you sign. we build games, we we offer a great user experience and they are monetized, right? So think about it. You have a a grocery shop, you use whatever tile, payment processing. The information of how much you charge, this client, client A B C D, your tomato. You define the price, right? You are the vendor, you are the Josh Chandley: Yes. Vincent: the the grocery shop. Again, take this very simple analogy. The price of the product you sell is your decision. And I guess it's your property. But then if you use tool A, B, C, D, you might have, obviously different rules applying, which is what we're discussing right now. Josh Chandley: Yeah. No, I think the conclusion is unavoidable. We can't settle whose data this is or even have a strong opinion. the arbitrator will decide that, and we probably won't see it. But at least one publisher has decided not to wait for an answer. Tencent has built its own ad network. They've launched ad search. You and I, Vincent, with with Warren, our fallen comrades, you know, we asked whether game publishers can build real ad networks. now on October 14th, MiniClip owned by Tencent, it launched one. It's called AdSurge. It's a standalone company. It does both UA and Admon. So it's sitting on the demand and supply. And they're saying it's aimed at add monetized games first. So Vincent, you if Miniclip calls you tomorrow or AdSurge calls you tomorrow and asks you to integrate the SDK. What do they have to show you before they're saying yes? Vincent: Well, as always, it's very simple to add any new demand partner. do you have obviously a relationship with my mediation? is it like on the shelf, easy to integrate and and maintain, essentially a certified adapter? some publishers refuse to work with custom adapters, you I I want to say most of them or majority of the the market, I believe. And I don't know, I don't have the information, if Ad Search right now is certified in mediation A, B, C, D, but that will be some kind of a technical requirement. Second is obviously a commercial discussion. as you know, integrating an SDK is, you know, some kind of workload. it adds, code and weight to your build. so you need to be sensitive, about how many partners you work with. So then, you can ask, okay, what is the bonus incentive to Try your network. I give you access to my inventory. because the question is always is is am I gonna get more revenue or is just cannibalization between my existing network footprint? And so to alleviate that, a bonus incentive is always the answer, right? so I guess for me that would be the two things. And then obviously I have other things, but those two things are usually the first question I ask. What about you? Josh Chandley: So you're saying how easy it is to integrate and how much you pay me to do it. Vincent: Correct. Josh Chandley: yes, I think that's a very good answer. I do think you you gotta believe that this is a long term network play. not just Tencent, you know, chasing a shiny object and building something because AppLovin is doing such a good job right now. I think the key thing when I think about these new smaller ad networks that are emerging. That Max certification, the certified adapter, is going to be a blocker for many networks. And just to explain why, Max has two paths. Networks can integrate as a custom network, which means anyone can do this, but it's a lower quality integration. For instance, you can only do like old school waterfall style bidding, where maybe you provide fill. At 10, 30, and $50 CPMs. You can also become a certified bidding network, which I'm guessing is much harder to do. However, if you are certified, you can bid at the impression level. So you can bid $28.14, you can bid $512, you can bid five cents at the impression level and perform much better in the auction. And to your point, Vincent. If the goal is to create new revenue, if you can have that specific of a dial on what your bids are, it's much easier to create that revenue uplift. And so the certification is very important in my mind. That's one of the that's one of the biggest things. and it's not being publicly disclosed, I don't think if Ad Search has that certification yet. Vincent: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Josh Chandley: What I do assume though is that, the primary demand source right now is mini clip's own UA budget. Would you invest UA dollars into ad surge? And what has to be true? Vincent: Yeah, so similarly, to test a new network, I think it's very simple for any UA manager or director. you need to track, so you need an MP integration, otherwise you're just spending blindly. ideally the network has a ROAS optimized product. You know, we mentioned D28 vector, but otherwise you fall back to CPI, CPE, which is of course not gonna deliver. Josh Chandley: It's the Stone Age. Vincent: Yeah, it's not gonna deliver any near the performance you used to. As a UA person with other networks, right? So you don't have time to lose and money to lose, actually. So the network has to build an ROAS or add ROAS. and I'm sure they that's what they are releasing. I would assume I didn't check. So you need the ad ROAS product. And then of course you need some you know perks or nice to have, which is you know, all the reporting API to keep your finance team happy. and a front end so your UA manager can actually manage the company themselves. Again, this is more nice to have. The MP integration and the ROAS product for me are just mandatory. Josh Chandley: Yeah, I think you're right. My my natural assumption as well, though, is that the scale is very likely to be quite low to begin with. Right. and if you already are a massive publisher, that might be okay. You know, otherwise, the network needs to be a very good fit. what ad surge seems to be saying is that they're very focused on ad monetized games to begin with. And that's probably a really good call. Because I feel like on SDK networks like Appleven, Unity, Minteral, and such, ad monetized games usually do really well. And so that's a good start. But maybe if you're a hybrid title, it's a little bit less attractive. Now, on the other hand, Miniclip has a lot of ad monetized games and it, competes with the studios it wants as publishers. they're saying that the data stays isolated in a separate company. but would you trust them with with your data? Vincent: Yeah, so I mean again, first if you think about the inception of such project, and I believe it was in the announcement, but you always start with cross promotion, right? So the algorithm you're gonna build is gonna be tailored for what you do. So if you are an IAA publisher, predominantly, your algorithm that you're gonna start and kick off, you know, with cross promotion, it's gonna be trained on IAA. So for me, it makes all the all the sense in the world that. If it's more of an IAA, publisher and inventory pool, that the product is going to be for IAA competitors or other publishers. should I be concerned personally? I will absolutely trust my block list, right? And I will trust the the network, so at search to apply the block list as well. So in Max, if it's certified in Max, my block list that I'm gonna put, you know. Obviously in Max for Applovin, but for in other networks, is gonna be respected, right? So if I'm competing, for instance, let's speak, Easy Brain, which is part of Tencent, I can still technically block all the Easy Brain advertisers and apps and campaigns from my app, but I'm happy to have CyboGames dollars or mini clip dollars. So hopefully, Josh Chandley: Exactly. Vincent: yeah, so hopefully your block list system, the whole chain is working and you trust it. And then it's fine, it's absolutely fine to work with them either on supply or on demand side. so that would be that would be my my assumption and how I see that. Josh Chandley: Last question. Who's next to launch? We talked about, Voodoo being hard at work on the last podcast, but this week Zynga just soft announced Zaid on LinkedIn via job postings. it's unclear what that product is exactly, but it sounds an awful lot like an in-app ad network. So who's next? Vincent: Mm. Yeah, I didn't really follow closely this announcement. But yeah, who's next is obviously a big question. I think last time we, we tried to guess. and honestly, it's very, very difficult. we mentioned Voodoo. we mentioned a couple of others who are already out of the woods. Who's next? Honestly, I'm I'm having a hard time to predict. Do you have any any any ideas or any guess on your end? Josh Chandley: I I have a feeling that j just because we're starting to see more and more information trickle out, that Voodoo and Zynga must be getting pretty close. But for anybody else, I have no idea. All right. Vincent: Yeah, and that makes sense. again, if you're working on such project, it's top secret, for a long time. Again, those companies we just mentioned, it's been two or three years. It was cross promotion first, and then step by step you understand if you have what it takes and the results to potentially start, you know, talking to the industry and do some alpha and beta and then announce it. So by definition, it's normal that it's very, very difficult to to guess, or to predict who's gonna go out of the wood. Josh Chandley: Now let's move on to our last topic. CloudX launched Orchestrator. a multimediation offering. As of today, it supports one mediation partner on one OS. Applovin's Max only on Androids. This is a complicated issue. So Vincent, what is multimediation? And why should publishers care about that concept? Vincent: Yeah, good question. and for me, this is kind of a Pandora box or it's a rabbit hole or you call it whatever you you like. But it's a very interesting release coming from the CloudX camp. the concept is simple, you know, a mediation. Hopefully everybody listening knows what a mediation is. You plug, all your networks you want to work with so they can compete each other. And now with bidding, you know, you know, you have Some yield happening and you can squeeze the highest price. And multimediation is obviously very quickly. The publishers say, Well, what if I do the same concept with mediation A, B, C, D? because for some time, you know, we had, I don't know, four, five, six different mediation in the marketplace. Now they are actually less and less of mediation. But it's still relevant to think about it. Hey, I'm gonna put mediation A, B, C, D, E in competition. And so I on paper, I'm gonna get a higher yield and a higher CPM and I'm gonna increase my revenue. Why choose? Why being exclusive? It is what multimediation is. so it's very interesting. There they until now, you could build that yourself to some extent, but it's a lot of resources, engineering, and you had to indeed have some app releases. So it takes a lot of time to just have your setup out. If you want to change it, you need to change the code, release it. So very slow, very high, demanding in terms of resources. It's actually worth noting, if I may, that My understanding is CloudX is not necessarily the first to market. There are some other, you know, less known or but very interesting companies offering some kind of on the shelf tool to help a publisher, do a B testing between mediation or do interesting things. But yeah, CloudX is coming to the market with a very interesting proposition, which seems very quick to implement with some kind of cutting edge differentiators. Josh Chandley: what are the other options available right now other than CloudX? Vincent: So to my knowledge, you have Lumit who can facilitate a mediation test or just a setup of having different mediation or one mediation on one format only and another mediation on another or per country, and also Orion eleven out of Slovenia. Josh Chandley: Yeah. Vincent: So that at least those two companies who are you know tech companies, they are not publishers, it's pure tech and you Already can do that with them. and again, the devil is in the details. CloudX is offering a couple of different new things. and of it's obviously it's based on their TEE two point so that this concept of transparency between the mediations. so that's I believe new. Josh Chandley: It is. I think there's there's essentially two ways that meta mediation can work. I guess three. Three is you first is you don't do it. And so you have one mediator doing one auction. second, you can do what you usually referred to as a parallel auction. So let's say you have mediation A and mediation B, and you get prices from both, and you can pick which one you want to have. Then finally, there's something that's a little bit more I would say suspects, but that is sequential mediation, either with first look or last look, or you can call that pre-bid or post bids, where mediator one. Runs the auction and gets a price. Then the second mediator takes that as the floor and sees if they can beat that. Is that a good summary Vincent: Correct. Josh Chandley: of what's available? Vincent: Correct. Yes. that is usually what publisher were tempted to do. And as you said, it's, you know, and again, you need all this conversation, you need to check the Ts and C's of your mediation if it's allowed in your contract to do those kind of setups. but yeah, so far it was kind of the two options. and obviously you have a a concept of Asymmetric, information and is it a fair auction or not? Because as a publisher, you don't necessarily orchestrate. And I think the name is actually pretty nailed down. as a publisher, you don't really control the auction when you do, sequential. and one mediation knows the result of the other or the price of the other, and the opposite is not true. I believe what Cladix is offering is essentially the tool for a publisher to do parallel. or more complex setup where no mediation has the information of the other. Right. So you have a layer of neutrality, of transparency that as a publisher you actually control. It's my understanding. Josh Chandley: Yeah, and this is this is wading into murky waters. And and the reason I'm digging into this technical aspect i is because this is Really, at least in the West, only coming to the forefront as a real opportunity now. And it's exposing, you know, how hard some of these decisions are. there's not good precedent for this on on mobile in app bidding, but when you look at ad exchanges on the web, like Google AdX, they went through pretty heavy antitrust. and Google got hit pretty hard. one of the things they got hit hard for was last look, you know, having everybody else run an auction and then you look at that auction outcome and decide if you want beat it. You know, there's this rhymes a lot of what's happening. And so again, I think it's super important to understand what your contracts are, what everyone's comfortable with. and that means I still don't think this is for the faint of heart. And so my real take on this is I I think that this is starting to get a glimpse of what the future could be. But I don't think this is for every every studio yet. This is still a complex, very sophisticated thing. And just because there are products coming out to start to make it more easy for you, you know, relatively more easy when the starting difficulty was absolutely prohibitive. doesn't necessarily mean that we should all hop on this tomorrow. so I don't really understand. this is something we should move forward with or not. I got I don't know where Vincent: Yeah f Josh Chandley: this is at yet. Vincent: Fair point. but again, it's just lowering the the cost or the technical bar for any publisher to try those things. and again, it depends on the mediation you work with, right? right now it's only Applovin supporting this, which is great, which is the biggest mediation, right? So at least it's that. but then yeah, if you work with, I don't know, Google and Level Play or you want to compare or have them compete. Once they're gonna be supported, that could be super interesting. remember that with some mediation, you have obviously a nuance on the access to UA products, right? Whether you are exclusive or not. so that obviously comes into play when you make those kind of decisions. Interestingly, you know, in the in the press release or the blog post, it's actually a setting point saying that it's not gonna make you any trouble on your UA. So I guess is obviously the impression level revenue data sent to your MP is gonna be complete because that's always the thing and we touched on that earlier. If you spread your user journey monetization on several mediation, adjust and upstream your networks, they need the add ROAS, right? So they thought about it and it's part of the product to essentially make sure the data stream is all right for your UA to still function, which is absolutely key. Josh Chandley: Yeah, and it and it it also makes me feel as though AppLovin is adopting a constructive approach here. because this is the ad quality question again. to pick a winner, orchestrator has to see what Max pays. AppLovin is an arbitration now over that exact issue with Unity. And so seeing such a constructive relationship with CloudX is definitely interesting. What do you think about that? Go ahead. Vincent: Yeah, I believe the I believe the answer is CloudX is built on the the transparency framework, right? Where it's encrypted and anybody, can potentially audit, and particularly the publisher, what's what's happening, in the auction. So so I think, and again that's cloudix USP, that this use case is covered of the hey, CloudX could leverage this information for their own business. I think the TEE two point is the answer to this assumption. Josh Chandley: I think you're right. And TEE two point zero for the for the audience is a cryptographically proven way of running these mediation auctions either in parallel or sequentially, however you like. And so one mediator cannot see the outcome of another mediator unless the publisher selects that. Vincent: Which again previous solutions were not offering. Josh Chandley: Yeah. What does this tell you about CloudX? because from my point of view now, it's still early with them on the demand side, But now it seems like supply is really getting mature. There's a mediation platform. They have an exchange. They have a multimediation. And now they have an orchestrator, a way to actually handle that multimediation. Vincent: Yes. again, you can see that in different ways. Either the assumption is, hey, the you know, the CloudX platform is struggling to scale, and so that's a way to add inventory to fuel the UA. That could be in an assumption. But my take is more that it's been in their, I believe, in their pitch since day one to not be a mediation and be bigger than that, right? And provide a monetization suite. So above the mediation. And I believe orchestrator is actually a a pretty nice way to now materialize this initial positioning. Josh Chandley: Yeah. I think Jim has a vision and we're seeing it unfold slowly over time. Vincent: That's a way to put it, yes. Josh Chandley: All right. Well that wraps it up for this week. next week we'll be talking about Meta and Google Earnings. subscribe if you want to see that first.