Is adverts in game worth it?

I'd recommend trialing a small amount of ads and see what kind of rate you get - number of new players per $ sort of metric. You don't need to jump in with $100-200 - start with a smaller amount and see what happens. With online advertising you can scale it from there to determine how much money is worth, provided you don't target too small an audience with your advertising.

I've done this with GameDev.net in various ways to attract small amounts of growth without breaking the budget.

Scout, you mentioned some pluses and some minuses that you are trying to juggle to make this decision. I think a decision grid could help you decide. After filling in some pluses and minuses, you get to decide whether including ads is "worth it" to you or not (worth is entirely subjective, so only you can determine the worth).

If you have a sufficiently large user-base, you can A/B test them. Split into two or more groups, show more ads to one group, less to the other, see how each affects the micro-transaction rate in that group.

Successfully monetising with ads generally warrants a fair bit of data analysis and tuning to optimise revenue.

1 hour ago, Tom Sloper said:

I think a decision grid could help you decide.

You have something for everything on that page. Really impressive. Thanks for this.

1 hour ago, swiftcoder said:

If you have a sufficiently large user-base, you can A/B test them. Split into two or more groups, show more ads to one group, less to the other, see how each affects the micro-transaction rate in that group.

This is a good idea, I could try it with my players I still have left. Although I should be careful, they are the most loyal players I have; I wan't them playing my next game.

1 hour ago, khawk said:

I'd recommend trialing a small amount of ads and see what kind of rate you get - number of new players per $ sort of metric. You don't need to jump in with $100-200 - start with a smaller amount and see what happens.

I do plan on doing this. My past games has shown what is more effective so I can down scale a bit.

I guess at the moment my main question breaks down to: Is it worth showing adverts in my game, if all I earn is a low $0,005 - $0.006 for each player?

Especially if players complain so much.

12 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

I guess at the moment my main question breaks down to: Is it worth showing adverts in my game, if all I earn is a low $0,005 - $0.006 for each player?

There's always the old adage.. something is better than nothing.

I like the A/B testing idea to help answer that question. Anything involving human reaction generally needs some level of trial. It's difficult to predict how people will respond without testing the response.

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Especially if players complain so much.

The similarity to managing GameDev.net is striking.

12 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

All in all, there is as much argument for me to include advertising in my games as against it.

It is a plan to get paid. Unless you are doing it purely as a hobby, you need to find ways to get paid.

Ads are a way to help get paid. Microtransactions are a way to help get paid. DLC is a way to help get paid. Expansions packs are ways to help get paid. Full-priced games are a way to help get paid. Shareware is a way to help get paid. Mandatory online access is a way to help get paid.

Each method can be avoided by people willing to lie, cheat, and steal.

Assuming you want your game to make some money, you will need to include methods for getting paid. People generally dislike paying for things, but if they enjoy the game they will generally tolerate it.

10 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Especially if players complain so much.

A difficult lesson is that if the potential customers aren't complaining then you probably aren't charging enough. You need to balance out the complaints against the actual purchases and players.

Something that I don't think has been mentioned yet, but probably should be... Providing an in app-purchase of $1 to remove all ads is a common way to at least partially satisfy both parties.

If a player takes that option, you've converted a $0.006/month customer to a $0.70/life customer (that's 10 years at their ad revenue rate!). And they can't in good faith complain about the advertising anymore, because they could opt out for less than the cost of a candy bar.

13 hours ago, khawk said:

There's always the old adage.. something is better than nothing.

So true. There have been some times where I was very happy with the little money the game brought in.

2 hours ago, frob said:

Assuming you want your game to make some money, you will need to include methods for getting paid.

I really want to break the revenue mark this time.

I am indeed a hobby developer that was why the success of my last game is so important to me. It's my first game ever, that I developed, that made profit.

1 hour ago, swiftcoder said:

Something that I don't think has been mentioned yet, but probably should be... Providing an in app-purchase of $1 to remove all ads is a common way to at least partially satisfy both parties.

Well there it is!

A fantastic fix that allows me to keep things as they are and provides only solutions; well there is bound to be some unexpected problem.

I have seen this in games before but not once did I think about using it. Thanks for pointing this out.

Thanks for all the answers; really all of you have provided me with extremely useful info. I have new hope for my game and some tests to run.

It was such a depressing topic for me, now I am actually excited about trying new things.

16 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

That means you need either 30 000 players for the first month or need 5 000 players to keep playing your game for 6 months. Both these goals are a bit extreme for most games

In my limited experience with mobile games, it seems they fall into two categories - ones that get over 10k new downloads per month, and those that get under 1k. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground. Just success and failure. Don't plan around how to maximise revenue from a failure; plan to succeed.

Also don't aim for a 0.006 ARPU, as even a successful game would only deliver coffee money for that. A 0.30 ARPU will deliver a living wage from a successful game. As above, this can involve ads and IAP.

14 hours ago, Hodgman said:

A 0.30 ARPU will deliver a living wage from a successful game. As above, this can involve ads and IAP.

What kind of ways could be used to increase my ARPU?

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

I know clicking on the adverts help, yet asking players to click on adverts goes against the ad publishers contract and can lead to them banning you from using there services.

I know a publisher who was so desperate he hired people to use jail broken phones with many sim cards to click on adverts X times a day. It didn't work for him because the more users clicked the lower the value of each click was.

Then he had to pay the people more money that he made. In the end I felt so bad for him that I agreed to refund him.

Maybe I should try to keep players online more?

Some multiplayer, chat or friend system could help with this. A friend system would be the simplest to insert.

6 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

There's a reason many mobile games relying on pay-to-win mechanics, uncapped cash purchases of in-game currency, severely limit playtime each day for non-paying customers, and aggressively use forced interstitial video ads to frustrate players into purchases...

Making money on free-to-play mobile games without stooping to... what I'd describe as "sleazy" tactics, is not an easy thing.

9 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

As mentioned in another post, it does let you sell a no-ads IAP

It also depends on how/when you show them. A common trend now seems to be opt-in fullscreen video ads, either on a timer in the main menu (e.g. Once per hour to get a prize) or after each level/death/etc (to get a bonus, extra life, etc). Once-per-day bonuses also seem to be a common strategy often a with a phone notification reminding players to open the game and get their bonus (a nudge to help retention).

These choices won't be arbitrary or devised in advance perfectly for most successful games though. It's common to soft-launch in one territory only and then do lots of A/B testing (use science to find out which variations get best results). New Zealand seems to be a common target as the small population means you don't waste a lot of opportunity, but they still have similar tastes/habits to North America (assuming that's your real target market -- a NZ soft launch won't help you tune the strategy for China). The "AAA Mobile" studios that make millions per month likely have a lot of people full time on looking at analytics and devising experiments... At any scale you at least want to know why/when people are quitting your game, and whether people are opting in to your bonuses or not. Things like offering a bonus life at the start vs end of a level, or even just the color of a button could potentially be the thing that makes a feature work!

To get ARPU up though, besides optimizing your ad usage so that people are happy to see a lot of them, you need IAP. Your ARPU for just the IAP-engaged segment can be several dollars, which gets dragged down to a tens of cents average by the freeloaders.

Loot boxes seem to be the current fad - play the game and watch ads to get coins, spend them on boxes, get prizes... Then directly sell coins/boxes/prizes too.

As posted above, the most successful games will be very scummy... However I love Crossy Road as an example of a less scummy option - the gameplay is just endless frogger an exist in full out of the box. Collecting coins in black game, opting in to videos, once-per-day bonuses and IAP let you get loot boxes, which give you re-skins of the artwork - no effect on gameplay, but made a huge amount (for an indie dev). It is a little scummy to people who feel the compulsion to unlock everything in that you can't buy prizes directly, just gacha boxes... Flappy bird also just had banner ads on death with no 'scummyness' but made a huge amount (for an indie dev) simply off volume of players.

Getting happy players is the goal. And yup, ads can get in the way of that.

You must balance on the line of getting paid vs not getting your app deleted from a players device.

Being smart with the intervals where interstitials are displayed is a good place to start. Play the game, in a players perspective, is it a good ratio? do you get annoyed? Also, using rewarded video is perfect. They pay out better + the player chooses to see them. You can reward them with no ads for a short time, or just give a few coins (or whatever).

As a player, I am quick to delete a title if I am inundated with ads, but have no issues with the occasional ad, even banners that aren't in the way.

Good luck with this. When you are ready to integrate ads, check out how Enhance can help : https://goo.gl/Y6DyNM

I think rewarded video ads are actually ok , i have seen them implemented in very clever ways in some games where even I watched 5-10 ads in a game session. On the other hand those annoying interstitial or video ads that pop-up in the middle of a game level or 20-50 times per hour get me to uninstall the game.

I think there is a business model for ads if done right , a lot of games with micro-transactions have the Watch a Video for this reward(balanced usually with the value of an ad: say 10 gems reward when you would get 1000 spending 1 $) but you know the people that click that are less likely to pay , yet they become a revenue stream and chose to watch the ad instead of having an ad shoved down their throats.

11 hours ago, CrazyApplesStudio said:

I think rewarded video ads are actually ok

The problem with rewarded ads is that after the user watches adverts +/-4 times a day, it gives exactly the same payment to the developer. So after the first +/- 4 watches you just end up forcing the player to watch a adverts you won't get paid for.

The only exception is if the user actually clicks on the advert to follow the link.

That means the reason to keep showing adverts, after the first few times, is to purposefully irritate the player or in some hope that this time they will click on it.

Of course you would irritate people , that is why i said it should be their option to watch the ads. I did not know the 4 adverts thing to be honest but i agree , the target should be for the user to engage and Install an app , as that can pay a lot , imagine if you have a 0.005% conversion rate in your app(of course this is also based on luck and what adverts are shown that day) with say 50.000 DAU , as for example Unity Ads can pay even 1.8 $ as i have read in many places , you would earn 200-400$ from this alone.

But as i said, you should implement this in a way that does not force the person but instead give them the option and let them chose to watch the ads , there would be no reason for them to be irritated since you do not actually force them. You can also limit the number of adverts people can watch by tailoring your reward system to make the user watch exactly as many adverts as you know you would get paid for , or introduce ad mediation and serve ads from different platforms to mitigate this issue.

3 hours ago, CrazyApplesStudio said:

I did not know the 4 adverts thing to be honest but i agree ,

Even so your opinion has been very useful. It shows me insight into what people think of adverts.

When making games we often forget that players don't have access to the statistics of the game and this greatly effects how they interpret our actions.

I wonder if players like the idea of adverts as part of the game? Rewarding players for watching adverts definitely makes them feel better about it, but does the fact that the advert contributes to the game have anything to do with it?

Well, i read a lot of materials, and overall all agreed that Rewarded Video ads that users chose to watch are accepted and tolerated by players a lot more , one example give in one of those articles was Crossy Roads that made 300k $ from Rewarded Video ads. You can read an article here if you want more insight :

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/01/13/crossy-road-and-unity-ads/