“The game is slowly shifting from ‘how do I fill my ad slots?’ to ‘how do I intelligently route and price my own impressions?'”
That’s how Tracy Phan sees where ad monetization is heading. And if you’ve spent any time working with gaming studios on their ad stack, you’ll know exactly what she means.
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We interviewed her to talk about where the money is, where it’s getting lost, and what studios can realistically do about it.
Why Brand Advertisers Never Show Up (And It’s Not Your Fault)
Brand advertisers pay more. CPGs, entertainment, retail, they represent the “premium tier” of ad demand. So why do most mid-tier studios never see them?
The short answer is infrastructure. Brand demand is heavily skewed toward non-SDK integrations. But traditional mobile mediation is built around SDK-based bidding, which means brands have to move through multiple reseller layers just to compete in the same auction as performance demand.
Each extra hop means another margin cut. By the time the bid reaches the studio, it’s a fraction of what the brand actually spent.
“For small and mid-tier studios that don’t have the infrastructure or volume to access brand DSPs directly, it becomes almost impossible for those high-paying brand advertisers to show up.”
The good news: Tracy says new RTB infrastructure and mediation tools designed specifically for non-SDK bidders have started emerging in the last few quarters. For studios trying to access brand demand today, she calls this “one of the most practical paths right now.”
If your mediation stack can’t efficiently route non-SDK bids, you’re definitely missing out on brand CPMs. And you’re also paying a tax on every hop that’s eating your floor.
The Attribution Problem is Bigger Than The Ad Quality Problem
99-second videos, forced end cards, countdowns you can’t close. The rewarded video format has degraded visibly. Tracy is direct about where the blame sits.
“The blame lies primarily with the industry’s outdated attribution model, specifically last-click attribution, and the ad networks themselves.”
Longer videos, harder-to-close creatives, and forced end cards that lead straight to the store are all deliberate attempts by networks to drive higher CTRs. Networks know that more clicks look good in last-click models, so they push aggressive formats. As Tracy puts it: “I don’t blame them, they’re just playing the game.”
The common justification studios hear is that if you train users well enough, they’ll eventually tolerate the ads with minimal impact on retention.
“In the short term, you do see a nice RPM bump from the higher CTR. But this is only partially true. The system always adjusts: CPI normalizes, and that initial revenue lift quickly flattens out.
Tracy references a conversation with Andrew Seow, former Director of Monetization at TripleDot, whose take was straightforward: “I would just ask for the shortest creatives possible, because the CPM evens out in the long term. You may as well save yourself a lot of anxiety and bad ratings.”
Her practical advice: actively negotiate for the least aggressive templates from your networks. You can and should do this. Prioritizing better user experience doesn’t have to mean giving up revenue in the long run.
When One Platform Captures Most of the Auction
Consolidated demand is a structural reality in 2026. Tracy lays out the mechanics plainly.
When a mediation platform and an ad network are owned by the same company, it’s no surprise that a large portion of bids end up won by that network. Studios have almost zero visibility into whether the winning bid was truly the highest available. The revenue ceiling in that setup gets set by the platform’s algorithm, not the open market.
Tracy is careful to note this isn’t unique to any single company. “This happens with other large platforms too.” It’s a pattern that comes with closed-loop ecosystems.
For mid-tier studios the practical impacts are clear: limited leverage to push back on terms, creative restrictions, or template standardization. And if you want access to a platform’s ROAS solution, you’re often required to use their mediation as your primary stack. “This creates a closed loop where you lose real control over your own inventory.”
As one large Vietnamese studio head put it to Tracy recently: “It is my inventory. By right, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.” But in this ecosystem, that’s simply not the case.
Larger publishers with scale and resources can sometimes negotiate better terms or route premium inventory directly. For small and mid-tier studios, especially those bootstrapped from Vietnam or SEA, the options remain very limited unless the broader market dynamics shift.
Vietnamese Studios Were Never Unprofitable
There’s a narrative that 2026 is the year Vietnamese studios make the shift to profitability. Tracy pushes back.
“One common misconception is that Vietnamese studios aren’t profitable. In reality, most of them bootstrapped from zero and have always treated profitability as a top priority, long before international capital markets started paying attention.”
The real shift happening in 2026 is in the business model itself. Two or three years ago, the hyper-casual model (high volume, low margin) still worked well. With CPI continuing to rise, Vietnamese studios are now pivoting toward higher-margin segments: hybrid-casual and casual games.
On the monetization side, this means moving away from pure IAA toward a true hybrid approach (IAA + IAP). “This requires a much more sophisticated strategy: thoughtful ad design, dynamic pricing, better timing and triggers, user segmentation, and significantly more A/B testing.”
It also changes how teams work together. Ad monetization managers need to collaborate much more closely with product managers and data analysts. CFOs must get comfortable with longer payback windows and more balanced cashflow management. “This transition is more complex, but it’s necessary for sustainable growth in the new environment.”
On the geo penalty question, Tracy is equally measured. Most serious Vietnamese studios have been built for global Tier 1 markets (US, Europe, Japan, Korea) from day one, not relying on domestic Vietnam traffic. The geo skew that hurts truly local-first SEA developers doesn’t apply the same way.
The indirect disadvantages are real though: less access to capital for aggressive UA scaling, tougher competition against well-funded Western or Chinese publishers for the same Tier 1 installs, and sometimes subtle biases in ad network algorithms or mediation waterfalls that favor certain geos or company origins.
Their actual edge: low dev costs and fast iteration. “Aggressive iteration speed and cost efficiency let studios A/B test faster than competitors.” That’s real leverage, if they use it.
What Actually Changes When You Hit Scale
Scale starts to matter meaningfully once you hit consistent daily impression volumes in the high millions. Below that, you’re mostly at the mercy of public auctions and standard mediation rules.
Tracy says one thing that changes above the threshold is underrated: you get a real person on the phone.
“Before hitting the threshold, you’re most likely met with chatbots or auto replies from platforms. But once you hit the revenue threshold, you’ll get assigned and talk to a real person for real support. And from this, things like being able to test beta products and faster turnaround in troubleshooting can actually drive revenue outcomes.”
Beyond that, what opens up: real conversations about custom deals and cashback, better creative templates, and access to bid landscape data that some platforms only share with a select group of publishers. With that data, studios can start running experiments around segment pricing and frequency capping that smaller studios simply can’t.
Bigger impression pools also make you interesting to brand advertisers and open the conversation about direct integration with DSPs: lower hops, higher net CPM gains.
And then there’s risk. “A single-hit studio can still do very well with strong game design and disciplined testing. But once the titles underperform, it tanks your overall performance. Having scale means better risk diversification and higher margin for errors and testing.”
The Realistic Three-Year View
Tracy doesn’t offer an optimistic version when asked where ad monetization is heading.
“Realistically, in three years, the top 10 ad networks will look almost exactly the same as they do today. The big players have too much scale, data, and closed-loop advantages to be easily displaced.”
What will change, she says, is how studios actually manage and control their inventory.
“For the past seven or eight years, mediation and supply-side tools have largely evolved backwards: more black boxes, and less real control for publishers. But I believe we’re hitting a friction point right now. Many studios, especially mid-tier and Vietnamese ones, are getting tired of being price-takers in someone else’s ecosystem.”
The early signs are already visible. Studios pushing back through meta-mediation, using multiple mediation stacks at the same time. More studios exploring direct paths to demand. New players and solutions entering the space that genuinely aim to give publishers more visibility and control over their own inventory.
“The major demand sources won’t change much, but the supply side is finally starting to fight for more power. The studios that actively invest in taking back control of their inventory, instead of just accepting whatever the mediation stack gives them, will be the ones that pull ahead.”
The question is already shifting. The studios asking “how do I intelligently route and price my own impressions?” today will be ahead of the ones still asking “how do I fill my ad slots?” in three years.
TL;DR
- Brand demand doesn’t reach mid-tier studios because of reseller hops in SDK-based mediation. New RTB infrastructure/mediation is starting to close that gap.
- Rewarded video degraded because last-click attribution rewards aggressive formats. Negotiate shorter, less aggressive creatives directly with your networks.
- Closed-loop ecosystems where mediation and demand are owned by the same company limit publisher visibility and leverage. This is an industry-wide pattern.
- Vietnamese studios were always profitable. The 2026 shift is from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual: a strategic change, not a survival pivot.
- Scale unlocks real humans, better data, and direct demand access. Below the threshold, you’re mostly at the mercy of the algorithm.
- The supply side is finally starting to push back. Studios that take back control of their inventory now will pull ahead.
