oQuizo: monetization's gone nude

Hi Everyone,

We’ve just published, oQuizo, a new F2P quiz game, on Google Play, which we intend to treat as an experiment in monetization and something that we hope will contribute to greater market transparency. Game monetization, especially on Android, is notoriously difficult and there are a myriad of options available. It is not easy for developers to get reliable and impartial info on how all these options compare against one another and how effective they are.

With our new game we want to do something worthwhile for the community. We’ve decided to… bare it all. We’ll be disclosing all oQuizo monetization data: all our revenue sources and how they’re performing, all financials, whether our campaigns are successful, etc. In short: we’ll be revealing the naked truth about oQuizo monetization. We’ll be tracking all monetization patterns, analyze data and manage campaigns through Dataspin, the game management, analytics and monetization platform we’ve been working on for the last 15 months.

We’ll be publishing regular updates which we hope you will find useful.

Can you spread the word about our game and our experiment? Your help would be greatly appreciated!

This and next month we’ll be testing:

  • Chartboost full screen banners versus Vungle video ads
  • IAPs price sensitivity
  • promoting new content via notifications
  • SponsorPay incentivised downloads
  • game tweaks, updates and new features

And you will get all the juicy details :slight_smile:

Now a teaser: this is how we report, and will be sharing with you, revenue streams. The chart shows revenue from Google (GOOG) and SPonsorPay (SPON) during tests.

Screen Shot 2013-08-21 at 08.37.27.jpg

So, get oQuizo now, share it with your friends and we’ll share the data back with the community!

Btw, we’ve gone back to publishing and more games are coming soon, incl. third-party ones.

Cheers,

Tom
tom at dataspin io

Will wait for results.

Thanks for sharing , will be waiting

Nice Case Study. Just wondering in the chart, is it $1.6 USD or $1.6K?

$1.6k during closed beta testing would be difficult to achieve :slight_smile:

How about adding Tapjoy and GetJar (though GetJar seems to be in transition right now) to your IAP mix ?

Since Tapjoy seems to be king of the hill in this area. Judging from the offers on their offerwall, SponsorPay seemed to be slightly behind Tapjoy - and a bit kludgier.

We were considering testing Tapjoy vs SponsorPay but it seems Tapjoy’s T&Cs forbid using a similar monetization method in parallel to TJ. It could have changed of course.
We’ve been using TJ with great success in the past and it will come back to the mix quite soon so we’ll be able to publish a comparison between these two platforms.

As for GetJar - it wasn’t on our priority list for the next 2-3 months to be honest.
@adforandroidapps How do you find the game? :slight_smile:

Awesome! Congrats on launch Tom!

Wasn’t aware Tapjoy prohibited use of multiple virtual currency - like Tapjoy + GetJar etc.

Sorry I haven’t downloaded the app yet, will soon.

How does Tapjoy fare in comparison to the other “ad potential” for the apps.

Do you see it delivering like 20% of what you earn via ads - or something more significant (though this greatly depends on the game probably and users’ compulsion to desperately use IAP etc.).

If you could split by “the not so compelling apps get us 20% of ad revenue” while the compelling games get us “nearly the same as ad revenue” - or something like that would be great !

Historically TJ was delivering ca. 30-40% of the revenue for us. I have no idea how this would look now.

As for not so compelling / compelling games - could you please clarify? Thanks!

I just meant that some apps which are strong on monetization i.e. compelling games that make users want to earn coins etc. vs. games or tools apps which are more “boring”. I was expecting there would be a difference - just as with IAP billing with Google Payments there is a difference for example some games earn $1 per user, while others earn $0.10 and others $0.01 or less per DAU. Obviously if these SAME games leveraged ads only - their revenue per DAU would be much more similar. But the IAP revenue potential varies greatly (for example Candy Crush etc. which make bundles of money per DAU).

If you are asking if we will share things like DAU, ARPDAU, etc. for oQuizo, then the answer is yes, of course. Here’s a sample (taken early morning today):

but I’m not sure if we will be in position to compare it versus other games we’ll publish soon, maybe some basic metrics like ARPDAU should a developer of a given title be OK with this approach.

Sorry, I was confusing - my question was regarding your previous experience with Tapjoy and it’s revenue vs. ads revenue for the same app.

You mentioned a 20%-30% contribution from Tapjoy. That is similar to what some have reported here.

But I have seen some earning websites dated from 1-2 years ago which gave figures which trounced the ad revenue.

I was wondering if you had a clue if that was just something 1-2 years ago - or there is still potential for that type of revenue/conversion these days.

Thanks.

From what can I see, and read on various blogs, it seems that a well-balanced game should bring ca. 70% of its revenue from IAPs and the rest should come from ads. In our case the IAPs revenue was usually split 60/40 between card transactions and TJ/SponsorPay/etc.

Thanks for that - yes, the split between “ad revenue potential” vs. “IAP potential” has been discussed in many articles, but the comparison between “ad potential” and “GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay” are not covered that well (though GetJar had some stats). So some insight into potential using “GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay” is valuable info.

The reason I suggest a difference between IAP (using cash) vs. IAP (using GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay) is that there is an essential difference in ease/mechanism between these two:

  • cash is high-density (accumulated by parents, and spent by their kids as one example - parents using cash payments in lieu of attention they cannot give their kids)

  • cash is MUCH easier for someone to spend $5 than to earn-and-spend $5 using GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay - where this may require about 50 app downloads (!) - the same density allows it’s use by “whales” i.e. high ticket buyers who have the cash (or who have a tendency to think they “can buy anything with money” - including cheats that “the plebes” have to work hard to do). Game companies leverage this demographic by tailoring their games in such a way that a “cheat” acquires value when doing it the regular way is hard. The “whale” concept goes away when a user has to “work” to earn the $5 by downloading 50 apps (50 app downloads IS significant work)

  • the advantage for GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay is it is doable for users without money (but usually this also reduces their ad revenue potential - as is evident from the divide between Android and iOS users - much higher paying ads on iOS). If a third world android user had a HIGHER tendency to use GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay when given the option than say in the U.S. then there MIGHT be a greater advantage to using this vs. cash IAP.

For these reasons, I would expect that the revenue potential is perhaps slightly smaller with GetJar/Tapjoy/SponsorPay vs. cash IAP - if nothing else because of the absence of “whales” with earn-then-pay schemes (since the whole point of “whales” is to SAVE the user from doing work).

Your figures of 60/40 for cash IAP vs. earn-then-spend IAP seems to support that type of thinking.

Thanks for the insight.

@adforandroidapps
This is sound logic, the only thing we need now is data to support it. I’m not aware (but I wasn’t looking too hard for it) of any data-supported analysis of this audience. As soon as we have enough data, we will share it with the community, of course.
Now, go and download that bloody game :wink:

Regarding TapJoy (and similars), I’m thinking about using them on my next game (in production).

Im curious on some numbers and rules, can anyone give me some approximate figures / answers?

  • Percentage of players who do one (or more) actions in his lifetime (in that game of course)
  • Approximate value paid by TapJoy for a quick and simple action (such as watching a 30s video)
  • Do the value paid depends on the country of the user?
  • Do we know when setting up the actions how much exactly will each action pay? Or is it a variable value (such as eCPM)?

Thanks

Btw, tom, the link is broken! Is the beta over?

I guess a better sense would be to see some stats for some games/apps i.e. app1 has this stats, app2 has this stats (withouth perhaps giving details of the app - but maybe genre).

Video watching does not earn very much from what I have understood …

I suspect the coins earnable DOES vary by country - as some users maybe more valuable to the advertiser than others.

You don’t know in advance what the payouts will be - so it can be misleading - for example if your location has low payouts, you may not get a true sense of “how hard” it will be for users to unlock a certain feature in your app (it will be easier in countries where per “Download and use this app” the payout is more).

i like your startup and your idea, I would love to use it if I still had the game… but you gotta put some polish into your website, super hard to read and understand

Also, you oQuizo is off the market?