Best practices for minimizing ad latency

Unity LevelPlay enables you to see both your waterfall latency and instance latency via real time pivot reports. Latency metrics are extremely valuable as reducing latency can have a significant impact on app revenue, impressions, and user experience.

What are waterfall and instance latency?

Waterfall latency is the time from when a request to load an ad is made to Unity LevelPlay mediation until the time the ad is ready to show.

Instance latency is the time from when a network instance is requested to load an ad until the time the network instance returns a response.

Best practices

Follow these best practices when minimizing your waterfall latency:

Identify waterfalls with high latency

To determine if a waterfall has high latency, you first have to establish your “latency tolerance”—the average duration of time you’re willing to accept between impressions. Once you’ve established your latency tolerance, see if your waterfall latency is exceeding the acceptable timeframe.

You should also compare waterfalls against each other and see if one waterfall has a higher rate of latency than others.

Note: For the rewarded video ad unit, waterfall latency is mostly relevant for the first impression of the session (“session Depth 1”). This is because LevelPlay’s progressive loading is activated for successive impressions, eliminating the vast majority of latency.

Generate your waterfall

When generating your waterfall in real time pivot, make sure you’ve included the following:

Filter Dimensions – App, Ad unit, geo(s), segment
Measures: Rev, Rev SOW, eCPM, instance Latency
Show: Instance

Remove low-revenue SOW instances in long waterfalls

If your waterfall has 45 or more instances, look for instances that have a low share of wallet (SOW) and test removing them. Be sure not to remove bidder instances or instances at the bottom of the waterfall as they don’t significantly contribute to waterfall latency.

Remove high latency instances latency in short waterfalls

For short waterfalls that experience significant latency, it could be that there are specific instances generating high instance latency. In that case, test removing the instance, adjusting the price, or resetting the problematic instances.

Balance your waterfall

Find the balance where you can remove the most amount of instances that sum up to less than 5% SOW.