I’m a new android developer and my first app is getting very close to finish. I’ve been a little overwhelmed by all of the different ad companies. It seems like the companies that pay the best are not very trustworthy. This is why I came here to get a little guidance from you more experienced folk.
My app is an arena style FPS. It has 3 game modes, but the main game mode is survival which just has the player trying to stay alive as long as possible and get the highest score. Pretty simple. When the player dies, he will be taken to a game over screen where the ad will be shown (though I don’t want an ad to show up every game over). There should also be a banner ad on the bottom of the screen on my start menu. Therefore, I’m looking for a company that has both banner ads and full page ads.
I am not very good at programing (I actually used Playmaker for most of my project) so I really need a company that has an SDK that easily works with Unity without too much trouble. I guess you could say I’m looking to get as close to a “drag and drop” sort of thing as possible.
So far, I’ve looked into:
AppSponsor
RevMob
AdMob
Adbuddiz
AppNext
All of them seem to be great, but I’m having a hard time choosing. There is also the issue of banning. I’ve read about a few companies who’s ad methods do not comply with Google. After working my butt off and losing sleep for the past 5 months, I would really hate to get my app banned.
Would you recommend any of the above ad companies? How hard are they to put in a Unity project? My game is mostly for the U.S. But I will be putting my game in other country’s. Will these companies do well if my ap is used in another country?
First of all, I work at appnext so I’m not neutral here. Having said that, the networks number 2 to 5 are all very well known and most developers here used at least one of them. As for Appsponsor, I’m not sure.
Appnext has never gotten any app banned yet. I can understand how worried you are about this issue. The others (apart from number 1, which I don’t know) should be compliant as well. Admob belongs to google so that’s a pretty safe choose as well.
Most networks will have international advertisers well, so you’re pretty covered in that section. I would recommend doing what we all recommend here - choose 2 or 3 of the networks, test them (carefully), and then go with the 2 that generate the highest revenue.
Hey, given the amount of work and the ambition of this app, I would tend to be very careful.
The only network you can be 100% sure about is admob, not because it is the best network, but because google owns it and cannot ban developpers for using it. In general it has an okay cpm, not the greatest but not the worst.
Then there are several other networks that are probably 99% safe, because they really don’t want bad publicity of developpers being banned because of it.
Then there are networks that are below 50% safe, so greedy they take a lot of risks and on a regular basis they get apps to be banned.
I don’t want to point fingers but with a search on this forum with the network names as keywords, you will see useful threads
he said it’s his first app, thus, unlikely to be successful… you published it? you got any downloads ?
you worry now about what ad network will bring you those millions of $$$… when you have to worry if people will like your game.
danzaerz has the point. put in the easist network available (probably admob) watch your success. If you are lucky and got this millions of downloads, you can still implement other networks later on. If you end up having just some cent per day you will be happy to not have wasted days over days in implementing multiple ad networks.
Believe it not, the money was never the focus when making my game. In fact if you read my post, I never said I was looking for the highest ECPM’s. I just want an ad company that is trustworthy, integrates easily with Unity and won’t get my app banned. There are so many copy cat games on the App Store right now I just wanted to make something quality. I’m not sure why this being my first app makes it unlikely to be succesful but everyone that has played the game likes it and I have plenty of marketing plans to get the word out.
Even though this is my first app, I do know that it would not be a good idea to release the app without some sort of monetization plan in place. That is why I’m trying to find a good ad company now.
I’ll suggest you go for a combination of Admob and Appnext
Admob is CPC based (i.e. you get paid for every clicks). you can use it’s banner(make sure you don’t put the banner near your controls, otherwise you get fake clicks and admob can ban you).
you can display the admob interstitial whenever the game is over, not showing on every game over is a good idea.
i’ll suggest if you can ditch the banner it will great coz banners are really irritating and distracting, what you can do is test the banners for 1 month and if it is not generating a decent revenue, remove it.
Appnext is CPI based(i.e. you get paid for every install) so you wont get paid when a user clicks on it and conversion rate of a click to install is generally low.
So the best option is to display the Appnext interstitial after few minutes of game play(if you think the user has played the game for a while) coz the user might get bored of the gameplay(yes it does happen) and if he gets an option for a new game he might try it out and you’ll get paid for the install ;)…
At AdBuddiz, we are fully Google Compliant so you don’t take any risks.
We have a Unity plugin and we have campaigns all over the world.
In addition, if your game is good enough, you might qualify to get your game featured for free on Giftiz (which highlights the best games on Google Play) : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.purplebrain.giftiz
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions : [email protected]