Major impact of your game theme and keywords on ad performance

BigDave

Advertisers pay more to appear in games which audience is for them more relevant, more likely to join their game.
I experience a bitter demonstration of that right now and here are my two extrem cases.

Weekly Admob banner numbers for Android Versions:

As you see creepy has around 13x times more impressions by players, is generally played more and longer.
But it only made $1.28 and Brofist Legend $4.01.

If Creepy would have the rpm of Brofist it would have made 51,40 this week.

I wonder if there is any chance to increase the rpm of a game retroactive.
But I am afraid its just depending on your theme and keywords.

I learned something so I shared it here,
Cheerio Dave

BigDave

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The_Gamesalad_Guru

@BigDave said:
Advertisers pay more to appear in games which audience is for them more relevant, more likely to join their game.
I experience a bitter demonstration of that right now and here are my two extrem cases.

Weekly Admob banner numbers for Android Versions:

As you see creepy has around 13x times more impressions by players, is generally played more and longer.
But it only made $1.28 and Brofist Legend $4.01.

If Creepy would have the rpm of Brofist it would have made 51,40 this week.

I wonder if there is any chance to increase the rpm of a game retroactive.
But I am afraid its just depending on your theme and keywords.

I learned something so I shared it here,
Cheerio Dave

This is traditional in advertising. Game ad buys are no different that TV or radio demographic is everything. You don't put toy commercials on HBO vs Cartoon Network. This is where independent game makers tend to overlook who are their users. It is a must to consider who you are targeting when you develop game ideas. Most people just focus on the idea and not the user. The user is everything and not to be a second thought.

Franto

Thanks for sharing. In your experience, which is overall better, Chartboost or Admobs? Or would they be better in different situations?

Since chartboost requires installs to earn, it really makes me think critically on how and what games would benefit from this? It makes me wonder if only quick, simple games would find this advantageous over those with longer gameplay sessions.

mhedges

Very interesting, @BigDave . Thanks for sharing; I always look forward to metrics from other users. You probably have the combination of game name, keywords, and types of ads served. Advertising hot titles in your game will probably generate more clicks, while conversely, advertising your apps will generate more downloads for you. Are you advertising?

BTW - I seem to have experienced a small surge in downloads from Gumball Catch, and despite not being the app with the most downloads, it's the one that has generated the most earnings.

BigDave

The total revenue with admob banner ads on android versions since game salad added the feature Thanks!

https://us.v-cdn.net/5017598/uploads/editor/sd/cva4znpiuirf.png

@Franto this is admob banners performance
So i do not really influence what I show. Maybe I should?
Only showing games could increase the performance even for banner ads.
Mostly tough they are passive counters to make a cent or two every 32 seconds per user.

i do use:
Interstitals Pop up and Banners = Chartboost
Banners iaD (soon only admob) on iOS Versions and admob banners on android versions.
and sell in-apps

@mhedges
i do launch stuff like using prmac press releases the extended version to create a quick impact on the searching keywords for the game as they publish in no time to x pages.
All copy paste of your text but still makes you get found quickly.

Depending on the strength of my promo video I do make youtube video ads sometimes but I lack the overall vision of how impactful that is.

I do promote posts on Facebook pages of mine.
Like pewdiepug with 6000 likes I do promote so more that like will see that new post.
I made bad experience by promoting to audiences set via the Facebook options.
The only option right now that performs honest likes is to aim for people which liked your page honestly in the first place.

I have a frequent chartboost ad running for Orcs in indonesia as I only pay 1 to 4 cents per installs. I do not get the high traffic but constant installs here and there and the chance increases that someone shares,cares.

Franto

Thanks for sharing, Bigdave. Yes, I think only showing game ads rather than general ads would increase revenue, due to the core demographic, gamers, being interested in said ads. But I haven't used admob yet, I wouldn't know how to influence it.

As for the frequency of ads, I had a game with a 30% chance to show interstitials on chartboost, rather than using a timer to reset it. I think it might have been a bad idea, since if a player chooses to play once, it showed the graph as ads having only shown to 30% of players. So isntead, I'm gonna have the first ad show up 100% of the time, then all ads afterwards will show up at 33% rates for the next game.

BazookaTime

Thanks for sharing.

BigDave

@Franto
I show interstitials first after 2.5 to 3 minutes and after that every 2 minutes on a scene change or upgrade for none level based games.

Level based games get a 15-30 sec video every change scene after level 3 was finished.
Chartboost interstitials are my main revenue and enable me to do work on my games full time since 3 years now.

Chartboost - Main Revenue
In-app Purchases - Lightly above the banner revenue
Banners - lowest revenue

but all together just make about a good monetization.