how does "free" apps earn money via ads if users play the app offline?

Hey I’ve been strolling around here because I’m an indie game developer and having hard time to increase my earnings/day.

I already made apps but those are paid ones. Now I want to dive in and explore this “free” app world.

So a lot of free games out there uses ads to earn money instead of in-app currency.

I’m just wondering, how does, let’s say “flappy bird” earn around 50,000$/day thru ads if its userbase plays the game in offline mode?
In my own knowledge ads are useless (in money terms) if the app can’t access the net. So does it mean that almost every user that plays “flappy bird” access the net/wifi everytime?

Or there are other ways out there that I haven’t known?

PS: if this is off-category, please note me.

money is not everything.
That is why you can implement multiplayer and it will assure you that at least these players have internet

You don’t directly, but giving the user a good offline experience keeps them coming back when they are online. And most usere are online most of the time

@mmmkkksss Hey thanks for the quick response and tip. But a game like flappy bird doesn’t have multiplayer mode and they earned 50,000$/day? :confused: So is it really possible that almost every player got access on the net every time they play the game?

@Oakwood Games
oh! okay :smiley:
We probably posted at the same time that’s why I didn’t include your opinion on my reply. Sorry about that.

I never understood how flappy birds earned that much daily. Amazing to think about :banghead:…one can only dream…

Flappybird earned up to $50,000 a day not earned $50,000 a day. Basically what it means is he had millions of players , playing a lot everyday. The 50,000 is the highest he earned in a day.

How do you know 50k is the max he earned in a day? The news about the 50k was several days before he announced he will take down the app, so I suspect the earnings increased even more due to the high virality that news generated.

Well, the news said it was earning 50,000$/day, so I assumed it was the average earnings. My bad. Yes, probably it was the highest of his earnings.
Thanks for all who replied in this thread.
Appreciate the conversations guys.

Most users with smartphones are generally always connected - smartphones are actually fairly useless unless they are, TBH.

Some users may deliberately switch off data traffic to avoid advertising whenever they do play games though. To deal with this one should always include default adverts (typically in-house), bundled with your APK, so that even if there’s no connection the user will still get an ad served - this makes trying to avoid ads by disconnecting a pointless exercise.

Hi drichg24,

You do bring up a good point that with free apps if there is not internet connection then no impressions are delivered and no revenue is earned.
With the Airpush Bundle 2 SDK for 3rd party markets, the SDK pays up to $0.05 per new user install of your app and EULA (end user license agreement) at $50. With this you are paid up front for each user, and do not have to be concerned with user lifetime value or internet connection after they install your app.
I also have a large list of 3rd party markets that will accept it, and are free to post on.

I can get this enabled on anybody’s account.
Send me a PM.

Cheers,
Nick

Bundle 2 must be enabled manually? I got with without asking anyone…
Can you post the best stores for it? I know that there was somewhere here that list, but I can’t find i t

Mobogenie is best of all.
My app get 20k download form mobogenie where ot was in top new free category on 4th position

It doesn’t need to be manually enabled, but I can do it for any account quickly and easily.

Here’s my list of stores.

Nick

1Mobile Over 800,000 Android Apps & Games free Download | 1mobile.com
Appslib* AppsLib
Amazon Appstore Amazon Developers
AndAppOnline https://www.andapponline.com/
Anzhi Android???-???,???,???Android???,???APP???
Appchina ?????????-???appchina???
Baidu ??? - ??
D.cn Games Center ??Android??? ??Android??? ???Android???android.d.cn?
gFan ???-???
Hami Hami???
HiAPK ???-???Android???
Mumayi ???,???-???-???,???Android???Android???,???,???,???,???,???,???
N-Duo Market N?? - ??? | ???android???android???play store?android4.0?android5.0
PandaApp PandaApp.com | Free Your Mobile Life!
Taobao App Market ÌÔ±¦Èí¼þÊг¡(Android°æ)
Tencent App Gem ???
AppCity Appcity Promo
AndroidPit App Center Android Market - AndroidPIT
Pdassi Android Apps and Games - pdassi
Naver Nstore N???
Olleh [???] !!! 1.8GHz ??? ??? LTE-A
SK T-Store T store

Yandex Yandex.Store is the app store for your Android phone
Camangi market https://www.camangimarket.com/index.html
Indiroid Turkcell AppMarket
F-Droid https://f-droid.org/
Appitalism Appitalism
Software Store (Sprint) https://digitallounge.sprint.com/digitallounge/browse?platform_id=2005&INTNAV=ATG:HE:DL:Android
AdultAppMart Adult App Mart offers best porn on android, sex on android & porn app
AppBrain Top Android Apps and Games in the Android Market | AppBrain.com
Apptoide Home | Aptoide - Android Apps Store
Getjar GetJar | Mobile - Appsolutely Everything - worlds biggest open appstore
LG Application Store ::: LG Smart World :::
MiKandi Adult App Store - Porn Apps and Videos | MiKandi
Mobango Download Free Mobile Apps, Games & Videos: Mobango.com
Mobile9 Other Other - mobile9
Opera Mobile Store* Opera Mobile Store
Samsung App Store http://seller.samsungapps.com/
SlideME* SlideME | Android Apps Market: Download Free & Paid Android Applications
Soc.io Mall The Android Mall that loves developers | Soc.io Mall : Application Preview
MoboGenie Mobogenie DEVELOPERS
mobile24 Free Ringtones, Games, Apps, Themes - Free Mobile Downloads - Mobiles24.com

@AirpushNick pm sent to you regarding some issues with bundle 2 sdk, hope to hear from you soon.

Just sent you a message back.

When any user playing game offline then the app company does not get any revenue. Free apps provides revenue by showing ads, Flappy Bird earned by showing ads in the app. There are million users of flappy bird and mostly users are connected to internet every time when they are playing game.

I think that we, as developers, have to educate users so they will not turn of internet connection in order to avoid ads.

How?

Easy:

  • Create ads for your own applications on Google Play and embed them into you application.

  • When you detect that internet connection is off, just show your own ads to user.

Note: your ads must be of the same type, size, positions and frequency of regular ads. This way users will see that turning off internet connections won’t have any practical effects for them and in the medium to long run they will keep internet connection on when using applications.

I used this approach in 2 of my games and I noticed a tiny improvement into my earns. It’s a start. I intend to do it for all my new applications.