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« Preview Bloodbath 2: Electric Boogaloo - the smartphone wars in year 2011, will be bloodier still | Main | Some Milestones We Will See This Year in Mobile Statistics »

March 17, 2011

Comments

Romain

Tanks for sharing those data with us Tomi. It makes perfect sense that advertising (especially if paid based on click through) is not the right to monetize a free game, because The ads simple get in The way Of The gameplay. However, it doesn't completely dismiss The case for free games, because there's still The in App purchase opportunity. Any hard Data on this subject, Tomi ?

Patrick

I'm in agreement here and on paid apps, but you really have to look into freemium games, in-app purchases, and break down the economics there. Here's a neat link on the NGMoco acquisition: http://dlr-law.com/blog111/Entries/2010/12/6_Valuing_ngmoco_-_Part_2__Revenue.html

That acquisition was probably overvalued (as have been most of the acquisitions in the social game space), however the non-trivial revenues are there.

Arun

Dear Tomi,

I would've liked it if you had considered the game angry birds as well for your analysis. This analysis, though solid it definitely is, can give the impression that you are picking on someone with a poor monetization strategy.

Bob

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-million-advertising/

Angry birds is making 1 million dollars per month on android phones alone via advertising.

Elias Pietilä

Thanks for the mention Tomi! To lessen the pain of the ad model, I have to admit that there is a full version of WL3D that costs $2.99 which has been downloaded a solid 180 000 times. So fortunately, there was still money to be found in the game. It just has been painfully apparent that the AdMob/Mobclix advertising isn't paying the bills. A company I'm involved with - GameBook Inc. - is based partly on ad revenue as well, but these ads are sold straight to the brands. The quality of the ads, and the value to both parties is much higher in this case.

I should probably sell the ad space in Wooden Labyrinth 3D straight and solely to toy manufacturers ...

Trav

I like the strategy Tomi. First, spend 3 1/2 years saying that iPhone will fail and after having failed in that pursuit, now, turn your sights to the App Store.

Splendid. Good luck with that.

KDT

@Bob,

The techcrunch article states:

"we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds,”"

There is a difference between a "projection" and how much they are really making.....

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I just like the approach you took with this subject. It isn’t every day that you discover something so concise and enlightening.

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Thanks for sharing your article. I really enjoyed it. I put a link to my site to here so other people can read it. My readers have about the same interets.

MicroSourcing

Not just through ads, though; Apple's subscription model for iPhone applications takes cuts from the developers. Put the fact that they keep everything in-house on top of that.

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Without any real data, I just felt that free apps doesn't do much money. Now, we have the data.

Developers of Angry Birds makes their money from paid downloads, and that's a lesson to learn: If you want to see the cash, do a good app and charge real money for it.

Mulberry

It just has been painfully apparent that the AdMob/Mobclix advertising isn't paying the bills. A company I'm involved with - GameBook Inc. - is based partly on ad revenue as well, but these ads are sold straight to the brands.

Mulberry

This analysis, though solid it definitely is, can give the impression that you are picking on someone with a poor monetization strategy.

Tom Ross

So this game made $400.000 overall, despite the fact that it was only one of the more prominent me-toos of Spotify's original Labyrinth game and never topped any charts I can remember. Labyrinth surely must have made millions then, also on a paid model. A place in the AppStore Top 100 of free downloads will give you between 10.000 and 500.000 downloads per day. It's up to your business model if you can monetize that. The audience is there.

Tom Ross

Correction: The developer of Labyrinth is called Codify, not Spotify.

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It is proven that advertising could really attract customers. People were convinced to buy a product because of the advertisement brought by media services. And through this, companies were also encouraged to do such advertisements to promote their products.

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I just want to say thanks, I haven’t posted on your blog but I have been an avid reader for quite some time now.

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