This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers – 🪦 Are Banners Dead? Zedge Removed Them, Cut 38% of Impressions, and Made MORE Money
Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 am conference discussion vibe, so let’s not take it too seriously.
The Team:
Jakub Remiar- Game design consultant
Felix Braberg – Ad monetization consultant
Matej Lančarič – User Acquisition & Creatives consultant
Join our slack channel here: SLACK CHANNEL
-
Unisex oversized hoodie
70,00 € Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
2,5gamers OG hoodie
59,00 € Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
Oversized faded t-shirt
40,00 € Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
Denim T-Shirt
32,50 € – 35,50 € Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
Summary
Zedge removed banners from an app with 721 million installs — half as a joke, to be consistent in a refresh-rate test. Impressions fell 38%. Revenue went up 1%. Their North Star metric rose 1.77%. Then they ran it in reverse to make sure, and got the same result. Banners might genuinely be dead.
Felix Braberg goes solo for an ad-monetization interview with Ignas Danielius, Head of Ad Monetization at Zedge (the personalization company behind the 721M-install, 4.7-rated wallpaper and ringtone app, plus Emojipedia, GuruShots, and the new Dataseats AI-training-data business). They cover how ad-mon has evolved (from painful waterfalls to bidding and, ironically, back to user-value-segmented waterfalls), why banners went from Zedge’s main revenue driver to a stale unit (the format is functionally unchanged since the late ’90s while interstitials and rewarded have been through a conversion arms race; 5-second refresh rates kill advertiser value; misclicks and unfixable redirects), and the experiment itself: a refresh-rate test (15/20/30 seconds) with a “for a laugh” variant that removed banners entirely — run from December 8 through January, spanning the best and worst ad-ops months, with the no-banner group outperforming control for the entire duration. Ignas explains the mechanism (advertisers bid on the user, and a fast-refreshing banner is the cheapest impression to “buy” them on — remove it and later-session interstitials, numbers four through six, see fill rates explode), why the first interstitial didn’t change, why Google likely drove the biggest effect, the conditions under which other publishers can reproduce it (top networks, up to 15 bidders on interstitials, low latency, a full format mix — and frequency of use matters), and the practical checklist: compare CPM decay by impression sequence for banners vs. interstitials, and if interstitials decay slower, try removing the banner and treat that real estate as an in-app-messaging slot instead.
The takeaway: “the banner always contributes” was a status quo nobody tested. Zedge tested it. It didn’t hold.
Chapters
00:00 Meet Ignas — ad monetization at Zedge
05:15 How ad-mon evolved — and why waterfalls are back
06:05 The banner’s slow decline: a unit that never innovated
09:55 5-second refreshes, misclicks & redirects — how banners kill themselves
11:40 The experiment — refresh rates, and “for a laugh, remove it”
14:50 The result — 38% fewer impressions, +1% revenue, +1.77% North Star
17:10 Why it works — advertisers buy your user cheap on the banner
21:40 Should you turn off banners? The checklist
