Free advertising

I'll need the ad as well.

I hope so too. I hope it's even bigger!

I'll check it out now.

Got the email and added the ad.

 

I didn't realise when I started this thread but AdMob only allows a certain number of house ads and I've reached it pretty much.

I've attached a screenshot of all the ads I included. Some are for a fitness app of mine. These figures are from the last week. You can see though that relevant house ads get a much higher CTR, I've never had a CTR that high with regular ads.

So it turns out I can't display any more house ads in my game. But I don't want it to stop there. This is why I'm calling this the Big IDEA (Indie Developer Exchange of Ads). I think it would be awesome if more people took part in displaying the ads as well as submitting them. I've started to put together a site for all the ads (no design just yet, still busy on Blockees). People will be able to submit their ads independently, and developers can pick and choose which ads they'd like to display in their games.

http://www.runloop.com/thebigidea/

I'd love this to catch on. I think the Big IDEA is a great idea.

Hopefully once Blockees is done I'll have some data that will back the idea up.


PS. For those ads I have included don't be discourage by the low numbers and CTR at the moment. The game that's displaying them is still in development and it's just me and my beta testers clicking them.

 

Just thought I'd let you all know what's happening with this.

Since coming up with the idea and talking about it here I've actually decided to change my plans slightly. Now rather than using admob to deliver these ads I've built my own ad distribution platform.

Using admob had its limitations and drawbacks. For a start as I was using house ads with web addresses rather than the app option the ads would open up the admob browser, then switch to the app store (it might have even opened safari on the way). There was also the risk that admob could change the way this worked at any point.

So instead I've built my own web app for delivering the ads and a library to include the ads within apps. Right now it's in a very early stage and I've just submitted three of my free apps with the ad plaform in. Soon I'll be able to see how they perform.

My intention is to open this platform up. Advertisers will be able to include their ads for free still. Publishers will be able to pick and choose which ads they wish to include in their apps. They will be able to select the ones they think will perform the best, choose the ones with the best CTR, or simply advertise their own apps.

Publishers will make their money through their linkshare account. There will be a 75/25 split between the publishers and Runloop. In other words, 3 in 4 ads will use the publishers linkshare referral, 1 in 4 will use Runloops. This is better than the Apple 70/30 split. If this actually takes off and actually makes people money I may even reduce my share.

Now this is all done, I can finally release my new game as well. It's been a busy few weeks.

 

I fail to see the similarity with Playhaven other than both offer free ads. I've included Playhaven in one of my games and have been entirely unhappy with it. The only winners are those with already successful games and Playhaven. This is what I wanted to address.

It'll be entirely up to developers which ads they choose to display. If they want to display the big titles they can, but personally I don't see the point of advertising games that you can almost guarantee people already have. Getting to choose which ads to display and not which games means you can literally pick the most eye catching ads.

I'm sure it won't be perfect. What is? It's got to be better than using admob or iAd though. In my game I will surely have more click throughs if I display ads for other games, and not hotels, cars, or other somewhat irrelevant services.

Today I'm going to add this to two more of my games and submit them to the store. Then in a few weeks I'll be able to see how successful it is.

 

Ok, so the initial batch of apps with the ad code when live last night. These aren't particularly popular apps so don't expect to see a huge jump in sales. The best performing ads so far are getting a CTR of about 3% which is way better than I ever got on AdMob.

I need more ads though!

I honestly never thought it would be so hard to give away advertising. I actually thought people would bite my hand off at the chance to get more promotion of their games. This doesn't not appear to be the case though.

If you or anybody you know wants some free advertising - no strings attached - just add a link and a banner (320x50, iAd size) to this thread or send them to [email protected] and I'll add them to the inventory.

Edit: There will be some more apps with the ad code coming out soon which I hope will get a lot more impressions.

What do you have to lose?

Answer: Absolutely nothing.

 

That looks awesome. It's going in now.

 

Can you send it to me again?

 

Looks perfect, I'll add it now. I basically feel a bit stupid about talking about a certain standard. I'll accept anything, variety is the spice of life after all.

 

All the old banners are the wrong size now. I changed the spec at some point to be the same size as iAd. If you could resize the old ones I'll add them.