Can I add a new AdWhirl ad network for an existing app?

Question

I currently have AdMob and iAd configured in the AdWhirl settings for my iOS app, which is currently on the app store. I'm thinking of adding InMobi as well. Obviously I'll need to add the InMobi SDK to my app and do an update for the app. What I'm worried about though is, what happens to old versions of my app once I've enabled InMobi. Will they get InMobi requests they can't handle? Basically, will it be a problem?

Answer 1

This is actually a very good question. If you update your configurations in the AdWhirl UI to add InMobi, users running the old version of your app will get the new config. What is important is how AdWhirl handles the config. The behavior is different for iOS and Android, but I think both are relevant.

Short answer:

iOS: Percentages are normalized for valid networks.

Android: Top valid network in back fill priority consumes front fill percentages for invalid networks.

Explanation:

iOS: When iOS tries to parse a new config, it will only set up configurations for ad networks that meet certain conditions, including having the corresponding adapter. Otherwise, the config for that network returns nil, and only the valid networks are included in the mediation. Then your percentages will be normalized. If you had 20% AdMob, 20% iAd, and 60% inMobi, the percentages for old apps with only AdMob and iAd will be out of 20/40 for AdMob and 20/40 for iAd, or 50% for each network. Backfill priority will be the same as expected, but exluding invalid networks like inMobi.

Android: When Android tries to parse a new config, your old apps would blindly add inMobi as a configuration. The SDK is generally included as a jar which includes all .class files for the ad network adapters, so this check isn't made on the Android side. Unlike iOS, Android will try to make a request with inMobi even on old apps. The request will fail gracefully, but then AdWhirl will roll over to your backfill priority. This means if you had 20% AdMob, 20% iAd, and 60% inMobi, and iAd was your top backfill priority, you would essentially get 80% iAd and 20% AdMob for old apps with only AdMob and iAd SDKs included. Be careful when making such updates on Android as the result may not be what you anticipated.

Answer 2

It don't think it should be a problem. I think that when the config comes back from the server, a check is done to make sure all the ad network SDK's are available. If a particular SDK isn't available, it just normalizes across the rest of the results. AdWhirl should handle this situation fine.