Unity & In-App UA
Ad Mediation
The layer that routes each ad request across multiple networks to maximize fill and revenue, the plumbing behind in-app inventory that UA buyers acquire against.
Mediation platforms run an auction across networks for every impression, picking the highest-paying eligible ad. It is mostly a publisher and monetization concept, but UA buyers care because it decides which networks their creatives compete in and at what price.
Understanding mediation explains why the same offer clears at different costs across networks and why some inventory is effectively resold several layers deep. The pitfall for a buyer is ignoring the mediation stack and mistaking a bidding-layer artifact for a targeting or creative problem.
In buyer speech
“The price swing across networks was a mediation-layer effect, not our creative losing steam.”