Ad monetization is the process of monetizing your mobile app via advertising revenue. On the face of it, this is extremely simple: insert ads into the app and collect revenue. However, maximizing ad monetization revenue can be extremely challenging for app businesses.
Even to get the total ad revenue, you need to add up all the money you make from each source, which, if you’re working at scale, will come from at least several ad networks which may define views, clicks, and conversions in different ways, and is likely to include different creatives and placements that offers varying revenue opportunities. More sophisticated mobile publishers also want to know where they get their most valuable ad monetization users from, what the ROI (return on investment) of acquired users is, and what the LTV (lifetime value) of their users are.
Since many app businesses also monetize via in-app purchases, you need to add those numbers into the picture to get accurate ROI of acquired users.