How do you plan to make money from your app? I'd be interested in hearing from developers who actually make an income, and from developers who are yet to make any money to hear your strategies on making money from your app? Advertising? In-app purchases? A publisher handing you a bag of money? Premium app sales?
I developed a free puzzle game that doesn't affect the framerate too much. I decided to monetize by placing a banner ad at the top of the screen for the entire time. There are no other interstitials or video ads, and no in app purchases. This isn't recommended for most apps because the ads themselves can mess with the frame rate. The advantage of this approach is that I don't annoy my users with any interruptions. The downside is that I need tons of users to generate any revenue, which I have not done so far.
We've done a bit of everything - premium apps, ad supported apps, full free to play apps, sponsored apps, and third party published apps. Free to play is definitely the best model for us currently, leveraging mainly incentivized video combined with IAP, and all our titles in development are monetizing that way.
Amazon Underground Hey PikPok, I just checked out your website, you have some awesome titles. I notice you have a game on the amazon underground, how did that compare with the playstore release of that game in terms of income per user?
rewards I think the monetization of banner ads is the lowest rpm type of advert, which is a shame. Is there a possibility to insert a mechanic to get a hint of you watch a rewarded video? That's how many of our games make the lions share of their revenue.
Banner ads are the lowest cpms. I'm looking into using reward videos. It seems like most developers use interstitials after a couple of levels passed. They make more money in the short run but the tradeoff is that they annoy their users. Then users leave one star reviews where they say they like the game but hate the ads and delete the app. I would like for persistent banner ads to be a middle ground where I can earn a living while not annoying my users, but so far that is not the case.
Rewarded That's why many developers are using rewarded ads. You can get a VERY high rpm and users can opt in or out. If they opt in, they get some kind of in game reward. Pretio even offers real life rewards (vouchers etc) although that's not everyone's cup of tea. Do you have stats on how long your users stick around anyway even with low impact adverts?
Our latest title Tap Transcend: Rebirth is a free game that monetizes with a mix between IAP, banner ads, and rewarded video ads. We plan to give a premium title a try soon, but we don't have any yet. Our revenue from TTR currently comes mainly from IAP (about 70%+), then the remainder is split about 50/50 between the banner ads and the rewarded videos. It seems IAP will always prevail if you give the users a 'premium' feel from it. We offer the usual ad removal, and some stat multipliers which seem to be a hit amongst our users. Our most popular IAP is the most expensive ad removal option that gives an added multiplier benefit. Then we have noticed users are 6X more likely to purchase our largest currency pack at $9.99 over our cheapest one at $0.99. I guess it all depends on how much added benefit you give from IAP to IAP. If for instance a $0.99 pack has 10 coins, and the $4.99 pack has 1,000 coins, psychologically people will want to buy the $4.99 pack just from the virtual deal you created. As for people mentioning banner ads being low cpms, as with any ads, it all depends on how large your audience is. After all, it is known flappy bird was making over $50k a day from these ads, but I guess it takes millions and millions of users in your audience! Good luck!
We have banners and videos ads when the game, not the whole time. Only when the game is at a pause. I personally really like rewarded ads, as a player as well. They works pretty good, that's the least annoying way of showing ads. Sometimes can't even wait to watch an ads to get the reward! And it's benefits both for players and developers.
It is actually roughly the same, but to an extent that is a coincidence given the average time spent in the game per user. I think results on Amazon Underground are highly dependent on the individual game, so hard to recommend or not without context.
I would agree with PikPok. You also need to understand your user and game play. For Example I don't use video ads if game play was 15 seconds to 1 minute. Showing a 15 to 30 second ad would likely create a bad user experience. But if game game play was 3 to 5 minutes, then that would be okay. Matching the right method from PikPok list to the user experience will help a lot.
This is such a good point. You have to really understand your game play and monetise appropriately. What I love about PikPoks game Doomsday is it offers you to watch rewarded adverts only if you want to multiply your income per second. This seems like an awesome strategy for idle style games. They also seem to work well in puzzle style games in exchange for hints, or bonus rewards, etc. Unity seems to be pretty popular for in app videos, but there are many others, is anyone using anyone else? Where else have people seen in app rewarded videos work? And what are some other genres that need to utilize other income methods for reasons mentioned by Mukul or any other reason?
