Hi guys,
I’m still a college student but will graduate soon, and I’ve been working in my company Mobithink for almost half a year. And I think I’ll start to work full-time after graduation.
I really wanna talk with you guys about the factors that will actually influence your income. I won’t promise all my words are completely right, cuz i only work in this industry for 6 months, and i still got a lot to learn. But i’d like to share my thoughts and discuss with you guys, and i know, as developer, this is what you care about the most;)
OK, so here we go.
1. The popularity of your App.
I think this is quite easy to understand, and no need to argue. AD company will come find these developers first. At least that’s what I do everyday, to check the daily rankings in different countries. And try to connect with those developers whose apps rank high, and try to set up partnership with them.
2. Ads formats.
Ads formats I’v dealt with for now including banners, full-screen pop-out posters, interstitial, video ads, and App-wall. It’s easy to understand that the full-screen ads, interstitial and pop-out posters can get more attention, even clicks, because they’ll come out suddenly and many players just click on ads unintentionally. So if you’re doing CPC mode, these three types of ads will earn you more. Video ads is more common for Incentive campaigns, where players watch a video to get virtual rewards. As for App-Wall, it’s the easiest way to manage your campaigns with networks. All you need to do is to integrate their SDK, then they’ll choose ads for you according to where your major players coming from. And usually you can log in to their platform to check the revenues. So it really depends on yourself. What kind of ads you wanna show in your app. I think as a developer, you have to consider not only how much you gonna earn, but also what kind of ads has the least User Experience on your App.
3. The campaign itself.
The ads you have may be for an App or game, its size, creatives, conversion rate, etc. will all influence your incoming.
Size: When you work on CPI basis, if the size is too big, it will decrease the conversions, cuz many users may quit while downloading.
Creatives: how do the ads pics look, if they’re attractive enough, then players will click on it. And one important thing about creatives is whether they’re localized. For example, use Thai in Thailand, Vietnamese in Vietnam, etc.
Conversion Rate: the conversion rate for each apps/games is different.
4. CPC, CPM, or CPI???
OK first of all, CPC stands for click, CPM stands for Impression, CPI stands for Install. I know most of developers prefer to do CPC/CPM mode, cuz you think that Click and Impression depends on the ads inside your App, but for Install, it much more depends on the App/Game itself. So you think CPI is not fair for you as a developer who insert ads. But think it this way, why does the advertiser want Clicks or Impressions? They want actual users. That’s why the payout for CPI is higher than CPC/CPM. Besides, you can test the volume of your own App/Game by CPI mode. Usually we put App ads in App, Game ads in Game, cuz this will convert better.
Alright, the above are the four reasons i can come up with for the time being.
I’m not a developer after all, so there may be something that I haven’t given enough consideration. So plz feel free to comment if you have any ideas on this topic.
I’m open-minded lol;)