Preparing for peak season: 4 principles for maximizing revenue

Key takeaways

• The holiday season presents a major revenue opportunity for publishers as user engagement and advertising demand surge across app categories
• Enhance your app's user experience to attract and retain valuable users that advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach
• Maximize competition for your inventory by diversifying your ad networks and adopting in-app bidding to capture highest possible value during peak season
• Ensure that your ad network partners can effectively render the top-performing creative formats prioritized by advertisers.
• Begin technical preparations early — ensure your app is fully equipped to handle the heightened traffic and demand of the peak season

With holiday season engagement and mobile spending ramping up across app categories, publishers have a unique opportunity to maximize revenue. But what’s the best approach to leverage this seasonal surge?

We connected with industry partners — including John Wright, VP of Mobile Games at Kwalee* and Felix Braberg*, ad monetization consultant known for his insights on the 2.5 Gamers podcast — to uncover strategies for navigating the holiday spike effectively. Experts and leading publishers agree: to capitalize on higher eCPM potential, it’s essential to plan proactively. Key tactics include delivering a seamless user experience, aligning with advertisers’ needs through effective ad formats, increasing competition by diversifying supply channels, and ensuring systems perform smoothly under increased traffic. When approached strategically, these elements set publishers up for success in capturing the season’s full potential.

1. Prepare your app experience for maximum holiday impact 

First and foremost, make sure your app provides the best possible user experience.

“Both the holiday season and Q5 (mid-Dec to mid-Jan) offer peak opportunities to drive user growth and maximize revenue. Outside of the summer break, Q5 is one of the few periods where you can capture up to 30% more daily traffic, compared to typical weekend spikes. With more cash flow available, we also see an uptick in the percentage of paying users.” says John Wright, VP of Mobile Games at Kwalee. “We’ve found seasonal campaigns such as holiday themed creatives and rewards provide a unique uplift in performance and the app experience our users expect.”

Felix adds, “I advise clients to reduce interstitial cool-downs and increase rewarded video ads, especially for Black Friday, where massive eCPMs often eclipse retention as a focus.”

Similarly, in the lead-up to peak times, review where users tend to churn and optimize ad placements to avoid disruptive experiences. Offer non-intrusive seasonal bonuses that let players make meaningful choices to earn rewards. 

A strong user experience is essential not only for retaining engaged users but also for attracting advertisers who are willing to pay more to reach this high-value audience, driving higher eCPMs.

2. Maximize returns through increased competition

As advertising demand spikes during the holiday season, publishers can seize the opportunity to boost ad revenue by diversifying their ad networks and implementing in-app bidding. This approach creates real-time competition among by:

1. Enhancing your monetization strategy by identifying ad networks that connect you with advertisers not typically reachable through exchanges. For example, Moloco SDK offers publishers incremental access to high-value advertisers, bypassing intermediaries to empower advertisers’ buying power while allowing publishers to tap into greater demand.
2. Implementing an in-app bidding strategy. Compared to the traditional waterfall approach, in-app bidding optimizes returns based on market demand, with multiple buyers competing simultaneously for each impression in real-time. This creates real-time competition among diverse buyers, which is essential for driving revenue growth and expanding access to a broader range of advertisers.

According to Felix, “In-app bidding drives an uplift in eCPM and reduces the workload for publishers. I've seen clients benefit greatly from testing bid floors around the holiday season to drive bidders’ performance up. Having bidders instead of a waterfall frees up valuable time to work with the product team to increase impressions as much as possible for the BlackFriday weekend”

Adding another demand source is critical but also time sensitive. You need to ensure that the new partner can deliver significant value to your app before the peak season arrives and demand increases. Adapt and conduct tests quickly to validate the new partnership!

3. Ensure your ad network partners support advertisers’ preferred creative formats

Working strategically during the holiday season, performance marketers focus on creative formats that deliver the highest returns. Based on ads delivered with Moloco, advertisers’ preferred creative formats in Q4 — those that drive the greatest increase in eCPM — are: 

Publishers should ensure their ad network partners are capable of rendering these best-performing creative formats. When advertisers can't deploy their full creative capabilities through your supply path, they may route their highest-value campaigns elsewhere. 

4. Ensure technical readiness for peak traffic

Given the increased demand during peak season, any app crashes or ad infrastructure downtime could lead to significant revenue loss. Before peak begins, make sure to verify:

• Ad serving infrastructure can handle increased request volume
• All SDK integrations are updated to their latest versions
• Error reporting and monitoring systems are in place

“Holiday season is the time you want absolutely nothing to go wrong,” says John. "We start stress-testing, checking server capacity, and fixing any dormant issue that could cause problems. We also ramp up our internal alerts so we get notified of any possible incident immediately.”

However, remember that peak periods can vary by region. While North American traffic typically surges around Black Friday and Christmas, other regions may have different patterns. 

For example, in our analysis of seasonality trends, it shows earlier drops in bid requests and late rises in CPMs in gaming apps in Germany, whereas Japan sees bid requests rise into early January. Your technical preparation should account for any regional variations in demand and traffic.

Start now, pay off later

The holiday season is approaching quickly, and it's essential to get ready. By improving user experiences, ensuring support for advanced creative formats, increasing competition through a diversified supply path, and optimizing technical infrastructure, publishers can position themselves to capture the full potential of the season’s value. 

To learn how Moloco can help you achieve your strongest holiday season yet, get in touch. 

*About Kwalee

Kwalee is a dynamic game studio known for developing and publishing a wide range of games, from Hyper Casual to Casual, for mobile platforms as well as for PC and consoles. With a focus on engaging, accessible gameplay, Kwalee brings innovative gaming experiences to players around the world.

*About Felix Braberg

Felix Braberg is a mobile ad revenue expert and podcaster with deep experience in helping top game and app developers boost ad revenue through strategic ad placements, mediation optimization, and ad network negotiations. With a strong background in mobile DSPs and ad networks, Felix brings valuable insights from years of hands-on experience to help publishers navigate and succeed in the complex mobile ad ecosystem.