I have a few apps that generate about 2 million impressions per day in most profitable regions and have good ratings (4.1 - 4.4).
We use AdMob and of course aren’t happy with it. But Google graciously doesn’t offer any other options for monetization in our country,
but at the same time bans people who use any workarounds for getting cherished Merchant Account.
So recently I faced the question, “What next?” And there is two options:
[ul]
[li]First is to continue what people call “development for beer”. Sorry, but I think this path goes nowhere. [/li][li]Second is to scale: hire people and try to make great products. This requires some cash flow at the beginning.[/li][/ul]
It’s become obvious that you can’t build any sustainable business with current AdMob rates.
So first thing I need to do is at least to double revenue. And this is my challenge, given that the rates are dropping every day.
I’m going to try mMedia and MobFox, but doubt it will make any significant difference.
Other considered option is to use interstitials, Chartboost looks promising. Btw, maybe someone found good tool for A/B testing?
Am I missing any options? Would be really grateful for any advice!
Add more networks to monetize the apps. This is not as simple as it may seem. You need to calculate this properly.
Firstly, you need to check what countries your traffic is originating from. Then you need to find the ad networks that have demand in those geos. Admob is pretty good with almost across the globe but there’s only so much you can do with banner ads.
Which brings me to my second point.
Add more ad units. You need to do this with equal care.
You have good ratings and some ad units can be problematic if you like your ratings where they are. Perhaps it would be nice to implement Interstitials or something that we offer called, Alert Ad Pro. I say that because these ad units are not very intrusive and get better eCPMs than banner ads.
Hope this helps.
If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up.
Integrate Mopub, then sign up with Millennial Media, Leadbolt and a few others. Mopub will allow you to switch traffic between networks, and if nobody has an advert for you, finally try Admob.
I was wondering the same thing. Basically you can do the same thing with adMob mediation as with mopub? I know Mopub charges you a fee though, if you get a high number of impressions.
Well for one, Admob has a tendancy to close people’s accounts without explanation or a real chance to appeal it, although I have no incling as to whether said developers were breaching Admob’s T&Cs. It’s definitely something to consider.
Last month we had almost few hundreds of thousands clicks (not impressions), with avg CPC ~ $0.03 and CTR ~0.3%. And that totally sucks.
So right now we are moving to Chartboost. First numbers even worst than AdMob’s, but they have some analytics issues, I hope it’s related.
I’m seeing $0.03 to $0.05 for EPC (earning per click) for Leadbolt AppWall HTML ads.
AppBrain also gives something similar if you convert to “per click” - they give $0.18 per app install - and clicks are about 3-4 times that so comes out to something similar to Leadbolt.
So essentially these are giving $0.18 per app install (from the appwalls).
You see these older blog reports (usually by people associated with Revmob) that Chartboost gives $0.5 per app install and Revmob give $1 per app install etc. - I wonder if that is still true ? Countering that are comments that Revmob doesn’t work well on android (perhaps don’t have the app advertiser inventory).
If you’re making 2M imps per day, this would amount to ~60M/month - quite a good numbers even considering low ecpm rates. You could try optimizing your ads placements/trying various ad formats.
Also, if you’re having problems with getting Google Merchant Account in your country, try talking to lawyers and incorporate as an offshore company.