GameSalad + Playhaven show impressive results
SF
Member, Chef Emeritus Posts: 35
Hi everyone,
Recently we integrated PlayHaven’s ad service into GameSalad Creator as a way for our Pro developers to generate more revenue from their games. Now that we have a few months of performance data under our belt, I’d like to share some of the results we’ve seen so far.
As a quick primer for those unfamiliar with PlayHaven, we’ve started to implement portions of their service, beginning with full screen interstitial ads that allow game companies to advertise games on a cost-per-install basis. This means that advertisers only pay for actual downloads of their games, which they typically value much higher than clicks or impressions.
Since most of the apps on the GameSalad network are games, we see high conversion rates to game downloads, which lead to high eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions) relative to other ad networks. Initial results have proven quite successful, as many developers are seeing gross eCPMs above $10 and nearly 100% fill rates. After PlayHaven takes its 50% cut, developers are seeing net eCPMs in the $5 range and some developers are earning thousands of dollars per month per game.
To put these numbers in perspective, many of our developers have reported that iAds produce eCPMs in the $2 range, and other popular ad networks such as AdMob produce eCPMs in the $0.65-$0.85 range. I realize there are a lot of acronyms and jargon being thrown around here, but the key takeaway is this: PlayHaven is producing results that are anywhere from 2 to 8 times more effective than competing mobile ad solutions. Now that’s pretty awesome.
It should come as no surprise that most of our developers attract more players when they make their games available for free versus charging upfront to download. In an industry that is increasingly moving toward the free-to-play model, it’s becoming even more important to find ways to monetize free-to-play games and we think PlayHaven provides a simple and effective solution to do just that.
With the launch of GameSalad 0.9.94 we’ve also made some modifications to the way PlayHaven operates for developers. For Pro developers, you now have more control in determining the placement of the interstitial ads. For Basic users, we’ve elected to remove the interstitial ads from games published under Basic accounts in order to provide a smoother player experience. Instead, those games will receive a “More Games” button, overlaying a section of their splash screen before gameplay starts. We’re going to test this approach out and optimize it in future releases with the goal of finding a solution that is mutually beneficial to GameSalad and Basic users.
Over the coming months, we’ll continue to integrate more features from the PlayHaven platform with the goal of making revenue maximization easier, faster, and more seamlessly integrated into the player experience. At the end of the day, we want to free our developers up to focus on making great games that can be enjoyed by lots of people while earning meaningful revenue for all their hard work.
Cheers,
Steve
Recently we integrated PlayHaven’s ad service into GameSalad Creator as a way for our Pro developers to generate more revenue from their games. Now that we have a few months of performance data under our belt, I’d like to share some of the results we’ve seen so far.
As a quick primer for those unfamiliar with PlayHaven, we’ve started to implement portions of their service, beginning with full screen interstitial ads that allow game companies to advertise games on a cost-per-install basis. This means that advertisers only pay for actual downloads of their games, which they typically value much higher than clicks or impressions.
Since most of the apps on the GameSalad network are games, we see high conversion rates to game downloads, which lead to high eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions) relative to other ad networks. Initial results have proven quite successful, as many developers are seeing gross eCPMs above $10 and nearly 100% fill rates. After PlayHaven takes its 50% cut, developers are seeing net eCPMs in the $5 range and some developers are earning thousands of dollars per month per game.
To put these numbers in perspective, many of our developers have reported that iAds produce eCPMs in the $2 range, and other popular ad networks such as AdMob produce eCPMs in the $0.65-$0.85 range. I realize there are a lot of acronyms and jargon being thrown around here, but the key takeaway is this: PlayHaven is producing results that are anywhere from 2 to 8 times more effective than competing mobile ad solutions. Now that’s pretty awesome.
It should come as no surprise that most of our developers attract more players when they make their games available for free versus charging upfront to download. In an industry that is increasingly moving toward the free-to-play model, it’s becoming even more important to find ways to monetize free-to-play games and we think PlayHaven provides a simple and effective solution to do just that.
With the launch of GameSalad 0.9.94 we’ve also made some modifications to the way PlayHaven operates for developers. For Pro developers, you now have more control in determining the placement of the interstitial ads. For Basic users, we’ve elected to remove the interstitial ads from games published under Basic accounts in order to provide a smoother player experience. Instead, those games will receive a “More Games” button, overlaying a section of their splash screen before gameplay starts. We’re going to test this approach out and optimize it in future releases with the goal of finding a solution that is mutually beneficial to GameSalad and Basic users.
Over the coming months, we’ll continue to integrate more features from the PlayHaven platform with the goal of making revenue maximization easier, faster, and more seamlessly integrated into the player experience. At the end of the day, we want to free our developers up to focus on making great games that can be enjoyed by lots of people while earning meaningful revenue for all their hard work.
Cheers,
Steve
Comments
I have a game with 400 download/day, with playheaven since 2 months, and I never received a payment.
Maybe the game didn't earn enough to receive a payment, however I would like to see my reports...
It's very very important as a Pro feature, most of all because you said that GameSalad didn't take anything of these revenues
However, now that I know some GameSalad users are seeing good results by implementing PlayHaven's network, I will strongly consider implementing it myself, once a reporting system becomes available. Any idea as to when that might happen?
- Alex
I want to join the conversation and provide some additional information as well as answer some questions that have been brought up regarding revenue sharing. I hope this helps everyone understand what’s going on currently as well as what we’re working on.
First off, payments for PlayHaven (February 2012) and Kiip (March 2012) went out today. We changed our threshold for payment this month to $10.00 from $100.00. If you had Kiip or PlayHaven in your games during those months and didn’t get a PayPal, then you made less than $10. With PlayHaven, we only were live for 2 weeks in February, so numbers are definitely stronger for March.
There have also been a lot of questions on reporting, which we have not been ignoring. The systems that we use for accounting are big ERP databases and weren’t custom-built for our needs. As a result, creating automatic reports that mail out isn’t working within the system. We’ve been working hard to remedy that, but have decided to move forward in our own internally-built way to get you all your data.
First of all, we’re going to run our master report and manually break it down and send it out via email to everyone individually. It’s a very time-consuming process, but it’s been started and we should have the first reports going out shortly. We’ll keep doing this until we have our own reporting solution done later this year.
While I don’t have a date or too many details yet, we’re working on a solution that will let you view your revenue data from a login page (like your profile page). This isn’t as easy as a pass-through, as data doesn’t get finalized until the end of the month, so we want to make sure we’re providing both convenience and accuracy.
PlayHaven and Kiip have been very helpful in working with us on the accounting and reconciling—they’ve gone back themselves to ensure that every dollar matches up at each end independently. Now that the first payment is out, we feel that the process of reconciling and paying is running end-to-end and the monthly payments should be going out smoothly and promptly.
We did see the announcement on Android, which wasn’t unexpected at our end , but don’t have anything to report today. But rest assured, we’re working a lot on ways to enhance your monetization options as well as your technical features.
Regards,
Mark
I am glad to hear that there is a reporting system in design. I would not implement Playhaven until there is an easy system of reporting profits and stats. I need accessible data until then I might wait.
Android possibility sounds interesting. Any new way to get money out of the droids is good.
Moreover now with Mark's additional informations it's all totally clear, thanks a lot
regards
What is your opinion to PH and Kiip vs iAds?
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I have a couple of apps with PlayHaven and I'd like to know about it, wait 1 or 2 months without any report is not a good thing.
Anyway i hope to see improvements in the future.
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@saladstraightshooter what is cost-per-install basis mean? i know that player has to download the advertised app, but does he have to run it?how do they know if the player fully downloaded the app and run it? is there any hidden software in the app ?
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