DARO: Revealing Alarmy's Ad Monetization Secrets

What Alarmy Learned from 10 Years of Ad Monetization

Alarmy is the alarm app that wakes up 100 million mornings worldwide. As of 2024, we hit 2 million DAU, an annual revenue of 30 billion KRW, and an operating profit of 19 billion KRW, all while clinching the #1 spot in 100 countries.

When we mention these results for an alarm app, people often ask:

"How on earth do you generate that kind of ad revenue with just an alarm app?"

Today, I'm here to answer that question. It's the story of DARO, an ad platform built on the long-term experience and know-how Alarmy has accumulated.
(*DARO: Delightroom Ad Revenue Optimizer)

🤷‍♂️ Why Did Alarmy Build Its Own Ad Platform?

Ad monetization is broadly divided into direct sales and network ads. Direct ads are sold straight to advertisers and command a high unit price, whereas network ads have lower unit prices but are easy to scale globally (e.g., Google AdMob, Meta Audience Network).

From the beginning, Alarmy's traffic was scattered across the globe, making direct ads difficult. We had no choice but to rely on network ads, but looking back now, this constraint actually became a new opportunity.

For over 10 years since then, we've directly tested and operated countless ad-tech products globally, including SSPs and DSPs. Through this process, we built tight partnerships with big tech companies in the ad space, allowing us to be the first to utilize unreleased technologies and APIs.

Furthermore, Alarmy didn't just stop at using platforms. From an app developer's perspective, we figured out the pros and cons of each platform, developed the parts that needed improvement ourselves, and modularized the points that could maximize revenue one by one.

This accumulation of operational know-how, partnerships, and technologies eventually combined to create the ad engine known as DARO.

🚀 Why Does DARO Do It Better Than the Rest?

Here is the question we hear most often around us (Reference: It Doubles Your Revenue, So Why Aren't You Using DARO?).

"There are big tech platforms like Google AdMob and Meta Audience Network. How could this new thing called DARO be any better?"

To clear up a misconception right away, DARO is not a competitor to AdMob or AppLovin. Rather, it's a partner that helps you utilize these platforms even better.

DARO connects dozens of ad sources, including AdMob and AppLovin, and automatically selects the ad that yields the highest revenue among them. Ultimately, it provides additional ad sources and optimization technology on top of the strengths of existing platforms.

Also, DARO didn't just appear out of nowhere. It is a byproduct born from the daily process of analyzing ad data and applying improvements while running Alarmy, and it has only just now been released as a standalone product.

Just as the infrastructure Amazon built for its own e-commerce became AWS and led the cloud market, Alarmy built DARO by solving the ad monetization problems we experienced firsthand. We figured out ways to maximize revenue from an app developer's (publisher's) perspective one by one, and immediately reflected any discovered improvements in DARO.

Sometimes we say this:

"If there's an ad platform out there that generates better revenue than DARO, Alarmy will switch to it instantly. Even a 5% efficiency bump means earning over a billion KRW more. Then, we'd analyze that platform's strengths, apply them to DARO, and eventually come right back to DARO."

Ultimately, this dogfooding loop as an app developer is the core that makes DARO different from other platforms.

🎯 The Core Know-How Packed Inside DARO

So, exactly what kind of know-how is packed into DARO? It can be broadly summarized into 5 points.

‎

1. 🌍 Curating Highly Profitable Global Ads

At Alarmy, we continuously test and use ad sources from all over the world.

Through testing, only ad sources with proven profitability and quality are added to DARO, and thanks to Alarmy's scale, we can secure premium advertisers that average publishers can't access.

Through these secured diverse ad sources, we continuously develop DARO's unique high-revenue ad inventories. Representative examples include DARO's proprietary slots that combine the strengths of various ad sources, such as bottom text strip banners and lightweight interstitial ads.
(Reference: Interstitial Ads Leading the Core Trend in the Ad Market)

All these ad sources are optimized by region and time zone, connecting automatically, and DARO handles all the complex processes on the backend.
(Reference: Making This Revenue With This Ad Inventory?)

‎

2. 💹 Bidding Logic That Maximizes Ad Revenue

Integrating tons of ad SDKs directly into your app makes it heavy and hard to manage.

While minimizing SDK integration, DARO connects various ad sources to its own ad server via an S2S (Server to Server) method, taking real-time bids through RTB (Real Time Bidding) to automatically select the ad with the highest unit price. Your app stays lightweight while accessing far more ad demand.

In reality, this bidding logic might look simple, but it's packed with highly sophisticated technology. Various factors like real-time price prediction, performance analysis by ad source, latency-based bidding logic, and user segment optimization all run simultaneously.

If you're curious about the technical details, you can refer to the post below.

(Reference: Why Did the Alarmy Team Build an SSP Themselves?)

‎

3. 🛤 Lean Distribution Structure

Receiving a single ad involves going through multiple intermediary steps, with fees piling up at every stage. DARO minimizes these distribution steps by directly connecting as much as possible with DSPs or top-tier platforms that are closer to the advertisers.

The more middlemen there are in the ad distribution structure, the smaller the publisher's cut becomes. DARO eliminated unnecessary middle steps, drastically reducing distribution margins. Thanks to this streamlined distribution structure, publishers take home more revenue, and DARO operates on a portion of the saved distribution margin.

Ultimately, it's a structure that maximizes an app developer's revenue by cutting down the margins taken by various players in the middle of the distribution chain.

‎

4. 🛡 User Experience and Ad Quality Management

Alarmy is completely serious about maximizing monetization without ruining the user experience (Reference: Why Retention Matters in Ad Monetization).

In fact, we've continuously tested highly profitable ad formats and UX in Alarmy for a long time to minimize user churn, and DARO provides the final winners from these tests.

(Reference: Balancing UX and Ad Revenue, Choosing Usability Over Doubling Revenue)

Going a step further, ad quality management is crucial when it comes to user experience. No matter how well-placed an ad is, if a low-quality ad is shown, the user experience is ruined.

Even after going through the filtering of various ad platforms, DARO sifts out any remaining low-quality creatives one more time before final exposure. Looking at the actual filtered ad reports, clients are often shocked by just how many low-quality ads get blocked.

‎‎

5. 📡 Continuous Operations and Policy Responses

With an ad platform, it's not just "integrate and you're done." You have to respond nimbly to market shifts and policy changes.

In particular, failing to properly adapt to policy changes from big tech companies like Google, Apple, and Meta can lead to severe issues like confiscated revenue or your app being pulled from the store. Through direct lines with global ad platforms, DARO catches policy changes ahead of time and safely manages them.

Additionally, our ops team continuously monitors ad metrics every day to detect anomalies and analyzes the real-time impact of product updates on ad revenue. This allows us to swiftly resolve issues and unearth new opportunities for improvement.
(Reference: 3 Easily Missed Points From an Engineering Perspective)

Compliance like GDPR and CCPA, which are essential for global traffic monetization, can also be easily handled through DARO. What's more, clients who hit a certain revenue tier can receive direct consulting from Alarmy's ad monetization managers.

For these premium partners, we go beyond just providing a tool; the Alarmy monetization team directly helps with everything from ad inventory design to A/B testing, UX improvements via data analysis, and revenue optimization.

(Reference: How Alarmy Leverages Ad Data 200%, How to Analyze Why Revenue Dropped)

4️⃣ Actual Results and Client Feedback

Clients that adopted DARO saw their ad revenue increase by 1.5 to 3 times on average. Among those who received continuous consulting, some grew by over 5 times. In fact, there are startups that 🔗surpassed their BEP through increased ad revenue after adopting DARO.

But what's even more meaningful than the numbers are the actual changes our clients have experienced.

"Development related to ad policies has become much simpler. Handling global compliance like GDPR was a massive headache, but since DARO takes care of it for us, we can focus purely on product development."
— CTO of a Global Utility App‎

‎

"It used to take three months to get paid out separately from multiple ad platforms, and we had to constantly worry about managing receivables. Now, it's settled as a lump sum through DARO in just one month. Our cash flow improved, making business operations significantly easier."
— CEO of a Global App-Tech App

‎

"Whenever we piled in multiple SDKs to boost ad revenue, the app would always get unstable and weird ads would pop up. DARO connects even more ad sources, yet the app is more stable, and it automatically filters out the trashy ads."
— Business Manager for an E-commerce App

‎

"They didn't just hand us an SDK. They analyzed our app's user flow and suggested ad inventories that wouldn't ruin our UX. By working with us from A/B test design to result analysis, we were able to continuously level up our app's ad revenue."
— PM at a DARO Premium Partner

‎

Hearing VoC like the above—that we solved the tough ad monetization problems our clients struggled with, allowing them to focus on much more important product improvements—is easily my proudest moment.

5️⃣ When is DARO Not a Good Fit?

If you've read this far, it probably seems like there's no reason not to use DARO. But to be brutally honest, there are definitely cases where DARO isn't a good fit.

In fact, there are clients who abandon the integration halfway through or churn after using it for a while. The reasons generally fall into the following 3 patterns:

• 💥 Role Clashes With Internal Teams
  For companies that already have a dedicated ad monetization team, adoption isn't easy. That's because introducing DARO can be perceived as reducing the existing team's role.
  ‎
  In practice, we sometimes face internal pushback along the lines of, "Aren't we just outsourcing our jobs?" We need to build a collaborative structure, but if it turns into a rivalry, generating synergy is tough.

• 🏗️ Building an Ad Server and Ops Team In-House
  Some companies want to build their own ad server, put together an ops team, and manage everything directly. That means handling everything internally, from contracts with each ad platform to technical integrations, payouts, and policy compliance.
  ‎
  It requires significant manpower and time, but for companies that want total control over everything, it's a meaningful choice. For these companies, DARO might not be a priority.

• 📉 Differing Perspectives on Ad Revenue Fluctuations
  The ad market shifts constantly based on countless variables like international affairs, exchange rates, and seasonality. Even with DARO, ad revenue will bounce up and down daily. The problem arises when clients use the improved peak under DARO as their baseline, concluding that "DARO's logic got worse" the moment it dips even slightly.
  (Reference: What We Misunderstand About eCPM)
  ‎
  In reality, it's usually just natural variance during machine learning optimization or a movement in the market itself. You have to compare before and after adopting DARO on a macro level, but some folks judge purely on short-term drops. To prevent this misunderstanding, they'd need to run their existing platform side-by-side with DARO to compare, but they sometimes give up because that process is a hassle.
  (Reference: Is eCPM All You Need to Look at for Ad Monetization?)

‎
Ultimately, DARO isn't right for every single company. That's why we focus on working properly with companies that actually need DARO and understand our approach.

🔑 Wrapping Up: Skip the Trial and Error We Went Through

DARO wasn't a project started with some grandiose vision. It was naturally created while trying to solve Alarmy's ad monetization problems, and we launched it thinking it could probably solve other app developers' problems, too.

Even at this very moment, DelightRoom is applying new ad tech, testing various ad sources, and searching for better monetization methods. Every improvement discovered this way gets reflected in DARO. Adopting DARO means you aren't just taking our 10 years of experience; you're taking today's discoveries and tomorrow's improvements along with it.

The problem DARO aims to solve is simple. It's about letting us handle the complexities of ad monetization so app developers can focus entirely on their product.

If you want, you can compare it side-by-side with your existing platform to see the difference in ad performance for yourself. That's how we started, too.

If you want to know more about DARO, check out daro.so.