Ad-based games

[bobbylien]

How much traffic is required to make a game that relies solely on advertising for revenue and makes a decent profit? I'm not going this route because I haven't seen it work very well in the past. I am wondering if any of you know of a good model to study?

[Dave]

Hmm. This is debatable. People generally hate games that are ad based due to the fact it messes up the feel of the site. Not to mention removes a load of space on the web page which could be used to display things to support your gamers. You'd need a very large user base to see a decent return on an ad based site.

I've never known a game to do well solely from ad's some use both ad's and the more conventional "donation" system, which if you're not aware allows a user to purchase upgrades for their account with real money. Personally this is one of the best ways to generate revenue. Another option which has started appearing frequently is CPA inside games. So a user would complete a survey or offer and then receive in game benefits, but from this the owner of the site receives a set amount of money for that survey or offer. I've never tried this method so I'm not entirely sure of the returns but larger games seem to be implementing it, and the users are basically getting something they'd normally have to pay for nothing.

[bluegman991]

Depends on who your advertisement provider is. Not that familiar with using ads but usually you will get a few cents per ad view. Then a few more cents per click. I'm sure there rates will be somewhere in there FaQ's or somewhere. After you get some rates. Take the monthly hosting fee and divide it by the rate per view. That will give you how many views you need per month to break even where you wont be in profit or in debt. Take that number and divide it be 30. Then you will have how many view you will need per day. Then change the uc (user count) variable in the equation below untill it seems like a reasonable amount of views a user can get per day.

uc=user count

vpd=views per day

uv (user views) = vpd/uc

[runthis]

It depends on your game, sometimes you can get away with placing ads. This one game i played whenever you went to one of the 60 non computer players it would say "There is no webservice running" but in this situation (where the game requires you to bury through all 60) simple ads could replace that text and generate some sweet revenue without ruining the layout of the game or gameplay experience at all. Sweet revenue means like $5-$10 a day which is enough to cover you expenses. Currently on my blog i making around $1-$5 a day on average with about 2% of visitors clicking ads. The key is to customize your ads to get the most money per click. Clicking your text ad may only get you a penny up to a dollar but very low, clicking a flash ad or multimedia ad will get you up to $3-$4 per click, so its best to use those over text ads if you want to generate a revenue that pays the bills

Edited July 29, 2011 by runthis

[bobbylien]

The most effective use of in-game advertising that I have seen has been advertisements for that game's premium features. The best way to go, at least for my game, is to offer a free game but include features, and special areas only attainable through spending money.