What is the optimal impression split between bidding and waterfall?

Thank you for your answers.

I have absolutely seen the trend of more and more of the traffic being delivered from the networks I have in bidding.

With 2 networks in bidding and 4 in waterfall, I'm currently seeing between 30%-45% going to bidding in our main market (US). Looking at worldwide it is between 40% and up to 65%.

Looking forward to having more of the networks in bidding.

Well it depends how and which bidding SDK networks you have in your platform. TBH, FAN is leading the race here so based on your pricing levels and other networks, they can take 20%-30%. Makes sense?

I know an "it depends" answer is not what you are looking for, but the answer here is really going to vary a lot by publisher, what mediation solution they are using, and what ad networks they have chosen to work with.

Speaking in general terms, if you work with an established mediation platform who offers a bidding network then expect their bidding network to be one of the best performers in all aspects. After that, Facebook Audience Network is available as a bidder and are likely to feature prominently (and in fact have just announced they will *only* be available as a bidder as of March 31 2021). So I would already expect two of your best performing networks to be bidders. From there it really depends how many other networks you are working with, and which of them are available as bidders on your particular mediation platform.

Over time the weighting is going to move further and further towards bidding, so whatever the answer is now, it is going to be different in a few months as more networks transition.

So in short, I don't really expect there is an industry benchmark. But whatever the current number is, it is just going to move further towards bidder-dominance with time.