The Creativity – Monetization Dilemma

Lots of creative people engage in designing games that have a niche or mass market appeal. It is a fun thing to do – stretching your creative mind to create great interactive story lines that people will enjoy.

The next question after creating and launching a game is – how can I monetize my game?

In-App-Purchase is a straight forward approach to monetizing your app, but the challenge is, only a fraction of a fraction of your users will actually pay for your game, leaving 98% of your games users base Un-Monetized. To be profitable, you have to use a mix of other monetization tools, reward video ads, display ads, monetizable surveys etc.

If you are on the creative side of game development, adding such monetization tools might feel like you are selling out to the standard Ad based Web Economy.

In my day to day interaction with game developers, that is one of the things that keeps coming up – how can I monetize my app without affecting the game experience.

It is a valid concern.

If not well thought through, Ads can have a distractive user experience. A well thought Ad monetization strategy, however, does grow your revenue significantly

So how do you make your creative and $$$ sides work together?

Reward Video Ads

There is a reason reward video ads are popular. When correctly implanted, they look and feel like part of the game experience. Reward video ads give your users the option and control to get reward inside your game for watching a video ad. It is in the users’ terms.

Besides giving your gamers a sense of control over the video watching experience, reward Video Ads can

  • For advertisers, this ad format helps increase brand awareness through guaranteed video completes. It also results in highly engaged quality users and therefore helps maximize LTV.
  • For publishers, it can help entice users to making more in-app purchases by making this concept appealing to them.
  • Video traffic is incentivized-only, which leads to genuine clicks and can result in high quality installs and increased lifetime value since the app was previewed by the user before deciding.
  • Offers higher eCPMs as compared to other ad formats such as banners and static interstitials.
  • Offers higher engagement

So how can you decide if you Should Use Rewarded Video Ads?

Typically, gaming advertisers use rewarded video ads to offer users incentives such as moving to the next game level, offering an extra “life” in the game etc. But, in general, any app advertiser can use rewarded video to drive new adoption. Rewarded video ads can be a good channel for advertisers looking to increase viewability. Since rewarded ads are user generated, in the sense that users have to click to accept the rewarded video, it offers advertisers higher viewability and engagement. In contrast to video ads that pop up on their own and are non-skippable, rewarded video ads are less intrusive to the user.

Overall, when you decide to monetize Apps, do it in a way that creates a seamless game experience. Check some of the ways our clients use reward video ads to monetize their games.