Ok now it's starting to make sense! Can I ask how you get the "banners from the several advertising companies" into your app? Do you use an ad sdk (such as iPhone admob) or do you have your own tech within your app? thanks
But how about paid apps? The numbers are different for paid apps, I don't have as much direct experience with them (although we have run 2 smaller ad campaigns for paid apps). I suspect that the number of downloads required to climb the paid charts is substantially lower than for free apps. Perhaps other devs could chime in here? I suspect the conversion rate would be lower for paid apps, thereby requiring a larger amount of clicks to get downloads. In the end, it would probably be difficult to make money with all but the most successful paid apps by advertising like this.
AdMob and ... We certainly do! We have used AdMob, AdWhirl, Quattro and MobClix's ad sdks within our free apps (3 at present). We will soon be posting results of a comparison we ran between AdMob and MobClix to see who made us more money in the first 2 weeks of December, 2009 (each getting 50% of our ad impressions).
Ok, I think I didn't make myself clear enough. What I mean is that you have two versions for this app Spazzle, right? You paid AdMob to push the lite version to Top 25. As more people downloaded the lite version, do you see some big sales raising for the paid version of Spazzle as well? If you can have more sales for the paid version, then promoting the lite version by paying AdMob should be a good way to promote the paid version too...
Does this help paid apps to? Yup, sorry, you're absolutely right! We do have a paid version as well. When we did the ad campaign for the free version, we did also see a huge spike in downloads for the paid version. The revenue from the paid version sales wouldn't have been enough to pay for the ad campaign - but we did make enough to cover the ad campaign also factoring in the ad revenue from the free version. Great question! Thanks!
In your blog article, you say: "To be in the top 100 free games in a gaming category like Family Games, youll still need to average more than 2,000 downloads per day." I'm wondering how you figure this because we currently have a game in the top 100 free family games and do not get even close to 2,000 downloads a day...more like 500-600. Thanks,
top 100 free family games downloads Good point! Our experience is that you'll need 2,000+ downloads per day to be towards *the top* of the top 100 free family games. We're currently averaging about 1,500 downloads per day and have been hovering between 50-60 on that list. Over the last week of last year when we were advertising, we had between 4,500 and 2,500 downloads per day and got as high as 40th. As you say, averaging 500 downloads per day is still enough to be on the list (but probably near the bottom). Thanks!
I don't wanna bring a downer on the conversation, but can I just point out that as a consumer... AdMob is probably in the top 5 list of most annoying things in an iPhone app. I undestand that if it's a free/lite version then we haven't paid and so don't really have much right to complain about it, but regardless, it still gives me negative feelings whenever I see it... although I can't honestly say whether or not that effects the chances of me buying the paid version. Do I want to spend the money to remove the ads, or do I just quit the lite without playing it properly because I find AdMob annoying?
I'm a bit curious about it - but I don't want to annoy people and it doesn't seem like its really meant for paid apps (people downloading free might not be interested in paid apps)
We have done two things to help counteract any negative feelings people may have about in-game advertising in our free games: 1. Rather than lite versions, we offer a complete, high-quality game completely free. This way, customers don't feel like they are getting a "partial game filled with ads". 2. We usually offer a paid version of the game for a low price (99 cents US). We'd estimate that about 1 percent of our customers opt to purchase the ad-free version of the game. One additional thing to consider is your audience. For example, our company has developed two educational games for preschoolers (Whizzit 123 and Whizzit Words). Of course we don't want children randomly clicking on advertisements. So, for those games, we offer paid versions only.
AdMob, annoying? Many people feel just like you do Some people feel strongly enough about it that they don't download games with ads. Some people also like the game enough to spend the 99 cents to get the ad-free version. And then (fortunately for us!) there's the million people who apparently feel that a full featured free game with ads is a good enough value proposition for them to justify their impulse decision to spend 10 seconds of their lives downloading a mole-whacking game for their phone
Just want to reiterate that many assumptions by OP are totally off. Here's what our experiment with Admob has yielded, this is reported by Admob. I don't know what to make off these numbers, if its good or bad. Total Impressions: 145112 Clicks: 986 Downloads: 98 Conversion Rate: 6.9%
Different results Yeah, it'll depend on the ad text you run, your app and many other factors. Is this for a paid game or a free game? Free games will have higher conversion rates. So, you paid $50 for 98 downloads? How far up the charts did you climb as a result of this? Probably not much. We usually don't see any significant climb unless we spend $300 or more in a single day. Great to see other's numbers! Anyone else out there want to share?
Ouch… if you'd said you got 96 downloads of a 99¢ app after spending $50, or even $100, I would've said that was pretty good… but for a free app?
Other things to try Yeah, those aren't very good results. I can certainly understand your reaction! A small ad spend is usually a pretty good indicator of what a larger ad spend will do. I would try switching up your ad text and potentially having another look at your app's icon, screen-shots and description on the App Store. The idea is to make your game look attractive enough to quickly convince the people clicking on your ads to go ahead and download it. You also need to consider when you trigger your ad spends. Try to visualize when you think your typical users will be playing your app and do your ad spends during those times. It's also a good idea to time other promotion and marketing efforts at the same time as your ad spend to maximize your downloads per day. Good luck!
Yeah, we've tried smaller ad spends ($50) with little difference in ranking... I think you need to reach a critical mass in order to climb the ranks. Bumping up a few spots just isn't enough to increase visibility. However, it's always a bit scary to commit to a larger ad spend, when you don't know whether your app will hold the ranking. The app itself makes a big difference. We've done ad spends with Spazzle II, which is in many ways a better game than Spazzle I (includes Openfeint, bosses at the end of levels, new challenges and bonuses). But, Spazzle II doesn't tend to hold its place in the rankings as well. Spazzle II is a space aliens game; we've hypothesized that maybe space games don't do as well as familiar earth-bound games like whacking moles? Was your ad spend for your robot game? Thanks for the comments and contributions to the discussion!
I'm looking forward to seeing your results between AdMob, AdWhirl, Quattro and MobClix those last two I haven't even heard of. I know there's another; Greystripe. I've always had the suspicion that Admob particularly is a pretty bad option for both publishers and advertisers, but it would be nice to know if that's wrong, or if it's true, by a factor of how much, etc.
We haven't yet heard back from Mobclix about who is the official winner of the Mobclix-Admob Challenge (see: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/10/mobclix-going-head-to-head-with-admob-in-a-10000-challenge/. But we're planning to post the news on our blog once we've heard. Obviously, we've got our own numbers right now, but we'll wait to post until after the "official" news is out. I think it'll probably generate some discussion and provide some answers!
Please do - really interested in this. We're only using AdMob right now in our lite ads, but the CPM oscillates wildly. Also, the fill rate was pretty terrible until recently. We want to put in backup ad services, but would love to hear if it's worth it.
