How Guangzhou Hongshi unlocked a closed market and lifted ARPDAU 50%+ with Liftoff Monetize
App category: Smart Home / IoT Security | Solution: Liftoff Monetize | Formats: App Open, Interstitial Video | Mediation: TopOn (Hybrid: Waterfall + Bidding)
- 50%+ increase in ARPDAU after launching a hybrid waterfall and bidding setup
- $2K+/day in publisher revenue cold-started in a previously inaccessible market, from zero
- 80% of monetization revenue driven by App Open, with significantly fewer crashes and black screens
“Liftoff helped us fill the demand gap in closed markets and improve monetization performance across Southeast Asia. The App Open optimization has also driven significant revenue uplift. The onboarding process was smooth, and the regular data analysis and client communication have enabled us to continuously unlock our traffic potential. Liftoff is a monetization partner we truly trust.”
Pei Chen, Head of Software Product & Operations, Guangzhou Hongshi
Guangzhou Hongshi is a solution-based platform company in the consumer smart camera space, built around its V380 App ecosystem and proprietary protocol platforms. The V380 ecosystem reaches more than 30 million users globally, with its largest markets concentrated in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and in key Eastern European markets. Hongshi’s footprint extends beyond its own apps as well: its XiaoVV brand is integrated into Xiaomi’s Mi Home platform, and its Jingling Eye brand connects into Alibaba Cloud’s AIoT network, alongside an overseas distribution business and white-label, OEM, and ODM hardware partnerships.
That scale comes with monetization built across multiple layers: hardware, solutions, cloud services, and app traffic, with in-app purchases and in-app advertising working together as a hybrid model. Running that model consistently across markets as different as Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe meant Hongshi needed an ad demand strategy that could flex region by region rather than apply one approach everywhere.
The challenge: a demand stack that couldn’t reach Guangzhou Hongshi’s biggest markets
For a company operating across as many regions as Hongshi, ad monetization carried a structural ceiling. The team’s existing demand sources left clear gaps in exactly the markets where Hongshi had the most users to monetize. In one key market, longstanding platform restrictions had blocked access to mainstream ad demand entirely, leaving the region effectively unmonetized. In Southeast Asia, where Hongshi’s app traffic is strongest, competing bidders consistently offered lower CPMs, capping the revenue Hongshi could generate from an already large and engaged user base.
Diversifying demand became the clear priority, but the goal wasn’t simply adding another source to the waterfall. Hongshi needed a partner who could scale monetization from zero in a previously inaccessible market, lift competitiveness across Southeast Asia, and do both without compromising the reliability its users expect from a security and home monitoring product.
The strategy: a hybrid setup built for scale
Hongshi integrated the Liftoff SDK through TopOn mediation, and the rollout was smooth from the start, supported by regular check-ins and in-depth data analysis from the Liftoff team. As the relationship matured, Hongshi moved from a waterfall-only setup to a hybrid configuration combining waterfall and bidding placements, a shift the team put in place in October 2025.
The hybrid setup proved to be the turning point. Liftoff’s three-page ad display format delivered a notable uplift in eCPM, and the bidding layer gave Hongshi’s highest-value inventory direct access to advertiser demand it hadn’t been able to reach before.
The breakthrough: App Open becomes the engine, without the friction
App Open is Hongshi’s primary monetization format, accounting for roughly 80% of total ad revenue across the V380 ecosystem, which made the format’s performance and stability a critical priority. Liftoff’s optimization work on App Open significantly reduced crashes, black screens, and other issues that had previously created friction for users opening a security app they rely on daily.
A key advantage came from how Liftoff structures its demand pool. App Open and Interstitial Video draw from the same video demand, giving Hongshi’s App Open placements access to the same advertiser budgets as its Interstitial Video inventory, a capability the team hadn’t found elsewhere in its stack.
The impact: a market unlocked, and a stronger hybrid engine
The results showed up first in ARPDAU, which improved significantly after the hybrid bidding configuration went live, exceeding Hongshi’s internal target with a lift of more than 50%. In the previously inaccessible market, publisher revenue cold-started from zero and surpassed $2,000 per day. In Southeast Asia, Liftoff’s bids consistently outperformed other demand sources in Hongshi’s stack, pushing eCPM higher across the region.
The hybrid model also reshaped how Hongshi thinks about its waterfall. Settlement prices through the waterfall channel have typically landed two to three times higher than bidding alone, a gap that has meaningfully lifted overall ad revenue and reinforced the value of running both auction types side by side.
What’s next
As Hongshi continues to scale across its V380 ecosystem and connected hardware partnerships, the team plans to keep refining its hybrid setup with Liftoff, expanding ad variety and format coverage as new regions and traffic sources come online. For publishers managing complex, multi-brand portfolios, Hongshi’s experience points to a clear lesson: real diversification means scaling new markets from zero just as deliberately as optimizing the ones already performing well.
*All performance metrics reflect the optimization period following Liftoff’s integration into Guangzhou Hongshi’s demand stack as of Q2 2026.