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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 4, 2008 15:04:27 GMT -5
Hello guys!
I know I haven't been posting much in the way of Java related news/info lately. I've had to concentrate on iPhone for various reason. However thanks to one of the forum members I was alerted to getjar.com's in game advertising solution called MADI. This is used to place ads in the game, and can be either text or banner ads like you see on web pages. It was painless to integrate, and only took me an hour or so to add to "Attack Breaker Pro - LX".
Let's use this as a sort of case study. I'll post my results as they come in, and give a more detailed description of how I integrated the ads.
Integration:
This was easy. They give you a .jar file that needs to be included in your midlet suite, and has some objects/funtions that will display ads, as well as change the ads based on time intervals or a function call. Drawing can be done totally manually if you like, which is cool, and makes it easy to fit into the graphical style of the game. Because it's all manual integration, I will be able to make a game I've been wanting to do for a long time, that I wouldn't be able to do with pre/post game ads, or on the iPhone.
What I've done is place a single ad in the center of the screen between levels of the game. This screen has a forced wait of 4 seconds, and will change the ad every 6 seconds if you leave it. On the screen, you have the option to view the 'next' ad using a softkey, 'continue' with the next level of the game using the other soft key, or to 'press fire if interested' in the sponsor.
So potentially a person can sit there and hit 'next' until they see an ad they like, but I doubt anyone will do that. I had that in there mainly for testing, but left it in as it can't hurt.
Performance:
I'll make posts every day as I get reports...
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 4, 2008 15:10:30 GMT -5
2008 Dec 3
impressions: 125
clicks: 4
CTR: 3.20%
eCPM: $0.96
Earnings: $0.12
This is only the first day of stats. It's worth mentioning that the game in question is only getting between 35 and 50 downloads a day. I don't plan on promoting it at all until I have collected stats for a while. The reports are updated several times a day, but are not real-time. My goal is to make more than 1 penny per download, as I can promote the game through getjar using this ad revenue for exactly 1 penny per download. That's the minimum you are allowed to spend on promotion, but it is allowed.
If the game can start to earn more than $0.50/day at the current download rate, it'll be a net positive when promoting. If could take a while, as some people tend to play this game for months after downloading, so the number of ad impressions should steadily increase for at least a week or two I imagine, and then level off.
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Post by chrisl on Dec 4, 2008 17:42:56 GMT -5
Very interesting insight into the getjar ad system, thanks Adam!
I'm grateful that you take some time from your developments and business to blog here. Keep the posts coming!
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 5, 2008 8:38:23 GMT -5
2008 Dec 4
Downloads: 33
impressions: 89
clicks: 6
CTR: 6.74%
eCPM: $4.38
Earnings: $0.39
Hmm... I 100% expected the number of impressions to be higher than the day before. It's too bad we don't have any fill rate information. I wonder if this is only logging the real ads that get displayed, and not the 'filler' that points back to getjar. If the fill rate is fluctuating, that would explain the impressions wavering. It's still too early to tell.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 6, 2008 14:41:00 GMT -5
2008 Dec 5
Downloads: 18
impressions: 22
clicks: 1
CTR: 4.55%
eCPM: $0.45
Earnings: $0.01
Looks like yesterday must have had a low fill rate. The stats for the 6th are already much better than the 5th, and the reports aren't final yet(since it's still the 6th).
---------------------------------------------------------------
Overall, since start of test:
Downloads: 86
imp:236
clicks:11
CTR: 4.66%
eCPM: $2.20
earned: $0.52
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 8, 2008 8:44:08 GMT -5
2008 Dec 6
Downloads: 27
impressions: 59
clicks: 6
CTR: 10.17%
eCPM: $4.41
earned: $0.26
--------------------------------------------------------------
Lifetime
Downloads: 113
impressions: 295
clicks: 17
CTR: 5.76%
eCPM: $2.64
earned: $0.78
Again, it looks like the fill rate is quite volatile. It's too bad, since I seem to be getting a very respectable 5% CTR. I wonder how many impressions would be recorded if the fill rate was 100%? Makes me want to use google ads in game.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 9, 2008 17:24:22 GMT -5
2008 Dec 7
Downloads: 22
impressions:12
clicks: 3
CTR: 25.00%
eCPM: $13.33
earnings: $0.16
------------------------------
2008 Dec 8
downloads: 11
impressions: 20
clicks: 1
CTR: 5.00%
eCPM: $0.50
earnings: $0.01
------------------------------
Their online system is sketchy at the moment, so I'll post more details when I get em...
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Post by mieciok on Dec 10, 2008 6:09:30 GMT -5
Hey, I put yesterday my game on getjar.com(finally). Today I got first reports and I can say that something is really wrong about their ad system. Fill rate is really, really low... I think that this data needs no comment:
2008 Dec 9
Downloads : 1427
Imressions : 433
clicks : 85
CTR : 19.63 %
eCPM : $8.55
earnings : $3.70
Btw, CTR is surprisingly high... I was expecting something less than 1%
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 10, 2008 8:26:51 GMT -5
2008 Dec 9
Downloads: 16
impressions: 120
clicks: 1
CTR: 0.83%
eCPM: $0.17
earned: $0.02
-------------------------------
Overall:
Downloads:162
impressions: 447
clicks: 22
CTR: 4.92%
eCPM: $2.17
earned: $0.97
Hmmm... The last few days show a noticeable increase in impressions, and a noticeable DECREASE in clicks. This seems counter intuitive. Your 19% CTR is crazy. What game is it in the system, I'd like to check it out. Maybe people are accidentally clicking the ads?
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 10, 2008 11:40:58 GMT -5
Hey mieciok,
I tried out your game, and it runs well in the emulator. Also, I should think that 'press anything but 5 and fire' is straight forward enough not to confuse people. I took the time to run the game on my Nokia-5200, LG-TU500, and SonyEric-z710i. Works well on all of these devices, so I can't see any technical reasons why the impressions are so low compared to downloads.
It's going to take a little while before the impressions outweight the downloads, simply because some people will inevitably not be able to play it after downloading, as well as some people simply won't like it. None of this is your fault though, so just give it some time. Eventually you'll have a solid number of the people that really like the game and keep playing it every day, so their usage will make up the difference.
It may not be fair to compare to "Attack Breaker Pro - LX", as it's known to be one of the most often re-played free games around. It's been ranked around the top spot on greystripe's system for almost 2 years straight now.
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Post by mieciok on Dec 10, 2008 15:38:25 GMT -5
Thanks for Your test, Adam. Time will show what will happen with my game. About my creazy CTR : I don't have final reports from today, but in partial I can see that CTR is today still more or less the same.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 11, 2008 13:00:32 GMT -5
2008 Dec 10:
downloads: 28
impressions: 146
clicks: 1
CTR: 0.68%
eCPM: $0.55
earned: $0.08
-------------------------
Over all:
downloads: 190
impressions: 593
clicks: 23
CTR: 3.88%
eCPM: $1.77
earned: $1.05
-------------------------------
I hope the recent numbers are due to a technical hiccup. It sucks that my impressions shot up, but the clicks shot down... again. Wierd.
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Post by chrisl on Dec 18, 2008 2:50:45 GMT -5
Hey mieciok,
What do you think of the getjar ad system after a few days? Any more figures to share?
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 18, 2008 8:50:41 GMT -5
Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing some more recent numbers as well. Mine are all the same, so I've stopped posting them. One day I'll get 100 impressions, the next I'll get 11.
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Post by mieciok on Dec 19, 2008 10:26:50 GMT -5
As for today (all time results) :
Downloads : 5070
Impressions : 2980
clicks : 405
CTR : 13,59%
eCPM : 5.86 $
earned : 17.45 $
After three days number of impressions and downloads decreased rapidly, but from that time is growing every day. Now it's something about 180 impressions a day and 400 downloads a day.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 19, 2008 14:53:19 GMT -5
Wow, only 2980 impressions for 5070 downloads. Your CTR is huge still though. It would be really interesting to know what the actual fill rate is from the MADI system.
Downloads: 350
impressions: 998
clicks: 44
CTR: 4.41%
eCPM $1.61
Strangely, it looks like we're both making about the same $/download.
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Post by mieciok on Dec 20, 2008 5:00:30 GMT -5
If the fill rate is low, high CTR is easy to explain, because in reality it's much lower(when you sum impressions and fill ads).
By the way, I recall that you, Adam, said something about promoting games at getjar. Could you give me some more details ? I think that spending these 18$ for promotion is the best thing I can do with them. At least It will increase downloads if not impressions.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Dec 20, 2008 8:14:28 GMT -5
I asked the guys at getjar about using the publishing money for their PPD (per-per-download) system. You can set the bid price as low as $0.01/download.
Unfortunately, they said that they don't currently do that, and the minimum deposit for the PPD promotion is $1000(US). I would be using it as well, but don't want to drop $1K just to watch $500 disappear. At the moment, it looks like we make about a half-penny per download.
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Post by chrisl on Feb 9, 2009 16:21:49 GMT -5
Hum, not sure if the performances announced by GetJar reflect your experience, Adam & Mieciok... "The GetJar Ads solution has been designed to provide the most profitable advertising channel available to mobile application developers, delivering a 100% fill rate and high CPM," explained Ilja Laurs, Founder and CEO of GetJar. "Mobile developers have long recognized GetJar as the place to Get Downloads - now it's a place where they can also Get Paid." blog.mobilegamesblog.com/2009/02/getjar-goes-ad-funded.html |
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Feb 9, 2009 17:07:59 GMT -5
That seems like total BS. Here's my stats for the last 7 days...
Downloads: 163
impressions: 294
clicks: 3
CTR: 1.02%
eCPM: $0.10
revenue: $0.03
I know the fill rate is very low because the average person that downloads "Attack Breaker Pro: LX" plays the game 10 times, and they are supposed to see an ad between every level. That means...
(10 plays) * (4 levels) * (163 downloads) = 6520 estimated impressions.
This is conservative! It looks like my fill rate is... 294 / 6520 = 4.5% . 100% fill rate I disagree.
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Feb 11, 2009 8:29:19 GMT -5
I asked Getjar about their 100% fill rate claims, and they told me it's probably because people just say "no" to the security dialog that asks for permission to access the network.
Hmm... The only way to counter that would be to have the game exit when there is no internet access. Maybe make the game rely on online features, so the user doesn't want to turn off net access? Ugh.
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Post by chrisl on Feb 12, 2009 17:10:15 GMT -5
Actually, that's something I wanted to ask about, though this may be better to post in the Greystripe topic. Anyway.
I've seen that various Greystripe games react differently when no online access is allowed: for example I can test your own games offline (I don't have a data subscription...) whereas some other games will just quit if I try to skip the ad update. So I guess this is configurable on the app side?
I agree that a positive approach (better value for the player) will always work better, but providing good enough online features may prove tricky and costly (development-wise).
That said, asking players to spend time (often meaning money) to download ads again and again may turn many off. Tough.
If only more people had access to unlimited data plans. That will probably take some time...
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Post by Adam Schmelzle on Feb 12, 2009 17:18:04 GMT -5
Yeah, problems with data plans never seem to go away on Java devices. It's one of the things that the iPhone has going for it: Just about everyone has close enough to unlimited data that it's a non issue.
As for Greystripe games: We have no way to cinfigure the behavious of the system when ads cannot be downloaded. Maybe this is an artifact of when the games were downloaded? Greystripe updates the ad code from time to time, so depending on what date you download, you'll get different results from the ads.
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