Games Let's talk about ads in our games

Right now, I use interstitial ads in my games. I used to use banners, but found these too intrusive and they made only about 1/6 the revenue of the interstitial, so I removed banners to improve the players experience.

I show an interstitial at these points:
Starting a new game
Quitting the game to return to the main menu
Every three levels
At GameOver (if rewarded ad not selected)

When the GameOver screen shows, I give the player a choice to watch a rewarded ad for an extra life to continue playing for a high score.

I also offer an IAP to remove ads for a small fee.



What does everyone else do? Do you have one strategy that makes better revenue than others? But without getting to many negative reviews.

andymc said:

I show an interstitial at these points:
Starting a new game
Quitting the game to return to the main menu
Every three levels
At GameOver (if rewarded ad not selected)

When the GameOver screen shows, I give the player a choice to watch a rewarded ad for an extra life to continue playing for a high score.

Click to expand...

wow, that sounds like a lot of ads.
i am also not sure that on Gamestart you may show ads but even if you are allowed, this is a very bad idea in my opinion.

for games, i would show only an Ad when the game is finished. that's enough in my opinion so the player will enjoy the game.
i would show banners only in menus where you can purchase items or main screen but not inside the game.

andymc said:

I also offer an IAP to remove ads for a small fee.

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the question is this, how many IAP do you have per month?
in my opinion, selling the No Ads in-app purchase for a few $ is a very bad business idea and the reason is this, the only user that will purchase a no ad package in a game is your best client because he really likes the game and he plays it a lot but the ads are annoying so he wants to remove them. so you charge him for 1$ and your best client only made you 0.85$ (0.15 goes to google). now imagine if you would show him much much less ads like 2-3 ads per whole game interaction (from loading your app to closing it) you can make much more than 1$ in a long period of time instead you give your best client the opportunity to get rid of all ads for 1$ and we all know that ads is the big money compared to IAP.

so bottom line, don't offer IAP that remove ads (you can offer to buy stuff like unlock levels or new cars, depending on your game) instead show fewer ads and in the end you will earn much more from your game.

I liked how your ads are distributed.

Do you think the banner is more intrusive than an interstitial? I don't, but the interstitial get a more revenue.

I don't have games, but in my casual apps I started to use the app open ad and get good results (but already have an interstitial when the game starts).

I'll try the FirebaseConfig lib again to make A/B tests and check how the users react with every ad.

asales said:

Do you think the banner is more intrusive than an interstitial? I don't, but the interstitial get a more revenue.

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I think banners can be offputting during gameplay. I also got a number of warnings from Admob when users were accidently clicking on it while playing (or admob thought it was overlapping other regions), so I just got rid of them .

Interstitials do get a lot more revenue than banners.

ilan said:

so bottom line, don't offer IAP that remove ads (you can offer to buy stuff like unlock levels or new cars, depending on your game) instead show fewer ads and in the end you will earn much more from your game.

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This might be a good idea. I only make a few dollars a month from IAPs anyway. One idea I did have was to stop showing ads to players that get past level 10 to reward dedicated players, or maybe stop showing ads after one week of playing every day. the rewarded ad will still be suggested though.

I only use an interstitial when a player finished a level or when there is a game over on time based games.

If I add more people simply complain and write negative reviews about it.

I only have an ad-remover IAPs in 2 or 3 games. I make more on the ads than on the removers even when it's only 1€ I believe.
So most people don't care about the ads or they don't want to spend a buck or 2 on it to get rid of them.
You might find an interesting game through the ads maybe that's why.

andymc said:

Starting a new game
Quitting the game to return to the main menu
Every three levels
At GameOver (if rewarded ad not selected)

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Many players will just quit the app and reopen to go to the main menu instead of "quiting". Other can quit the game and never go back if they are in a "ready to play" mood but instead of the game they see an ad

Every three levels and At GameOver is ok. Deppending on the mechanics of your game you can even insert a button to display a reward video at the end of the other 2 levels.