Case studies
How Start.io helped Zedge unlock new native advertising dollars
Its biggest product Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones, has been downloaded more than 600 million times, and has approximately 30 million monthly active users. Its other properties include GuruShots, the world’s leading photography game, with 7.5 million installs, Emojipedia, which has 10 million monthly active users, and AI Art Master, a generative AI game.
About Zedge
Zedge is a publicly traded software company (NYSE: ZDGE) that makes AI-powered utilities that help people create content, engage in friendly competitions with other people with that content, and monetize content with marketplaces.
Goal
Roughly two-thirds of annual revenue at Zedge comes from digital advertising, so building and maintaining a high-performing advertising practice is a top priority at the company. Zedge wanted to work with Start.io to improve the performance of native advertising on the Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones mobile app, because native ads can feel more seamless to the end user, resulting in a more positive customer experience.
Process
Zedge integrated the Start.io mobile advertising SDK into the Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones mobile app. Next, Zedge built a rigorous set of tests to measure Start.io’s capability to drive high CPMs with digital ads while maintaining a healthy fill rate. Zedge was particularly interested in testing Start.io’s native advertising capabilities.
Outcome
Over several weeks of tests, Start.io consistently delivered high-performing digital ads and was particularly strong with native advertising.
“For a long time, we had been looking for a solution to monetize native advertising. I was very skeptical in the beginning… everybody claims they can monetize native advertising, but very few can. We’ve been extremely pleased with native advertising performance with Start.io. Start.io is the only ad platform we’ve seen in the last 2 or 3 years that has had good performance with native advertising.”
Results
- Start.io is the #1 ad platform for native advertising on Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones app.
- Start.io is one of top 5 best-performing monetization solutions at Zedge.
- Since integrating Start.io as a partner, revenue from native advertising has increased by 14% on the Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones app in Tier 1 countries (the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom).
