Straight to the point... :P

How much is the average AD Revenue for a game with 1 million downloads in google play?

Thanks in advance. :)

Thanks for taking the time to clarify how this works. :)

This should help as well. When you make a game, usually you would be attaching something to make the ad revenue alongside it.

IPA or Install Per App Revenue and the CPM, which is as @frob mentioned. CPM is an amount given for every 1000 impressions.

Now here's the choice. You have different ways to monetize it, and it's entirely up to you. For the purpose of demonstrating, lets use revmob and flurry.

Revmob pays a higher amount for the IPA, which is around $2 - $4, but the CPM is lower at I think between $.50 - $1.5

Flurry though has a lower IPA, but a higher CPM. IPA is between $.20 - $.40. CPM is between $2 to $8.

So for the purpose of everything, you'll need to decide on the kind of game you're going forwards with. If it's a shitty one level game that is your first release, and you want to make some money, you would want to look for something that can give you the higher IPA, which would help with future products.

Now on the other side, if you are making something, and you expect that more people would be playing it and stuff (aka the game lifetime is going to be pretty long), then the best bet for you is to find something that can give you a higher CPM.

Now here is something else. Just because hypothetically you have 1 million downloads it doesn't mean that you have 1 million active users. We've found for us that the conversion rate for our games and contracts is at around 55%. Meaning that 55% of new players stick around to become MAU or monthly active users.

1 month later, that number will decline by 55%. 2 months, by 7.8%, 3 months? 3.8%. 4 months? 2.2%.

Something else you want to factor in, is how many of those people will become whales. Whales, cash cows, your choice. On average, you'll find that 2.2% of the MAU purchase on average. That itself is broken up even further. Out of that 2.2%, 48.8% purchase once. 21.2% purchase twice. 10.7% purchase three times. 6.1% purchase four times, and 13.2% purchase five times or more. Now these are averages, meaning that depending on your game, these numbers can vary.

So lets say with an XYZ game, we are doing a campaign of around 20k a year, starting in June. Facebook is at $.12 a click, Youtube is lets say $.04 a click. So for that month, we are doing a 50/50 spread on the campaign, giving each thing about $1,428.57. Estimated amount of unique visitors is at 47,619 people.

Now since we didn't do our market research correctly, and did just a blanket campaign, we are getting a turnover rate of 30%. The turnover rate is from Advertisement to App download.

So then we have an estimate of 14,286 app downloads. 55% of them become MAU, so we have an estimate of 7,857 MAU out of that batch. 2.2% of those MAU who become whales leaves us with 173 potential whales.

Now for the 173 whales we have, 84 of them purchase 1 time. Each purchase is about $3 by the way. 37 people purchase twice, 19 three times, 11 four times, 23 five plus. The numbers are a bit rounded anyways. So the Total Monthly Estimate for in-app purchases is at around 1,122 USD.

Since we have 14286 app downloads, and lets say we are using flurry, we are getting $.20 per IPA, so $2,857.20.

Our total amount of impressions is at around 30. That's going as low as possible, in saying each person is shown an advertisement one time each day in a 30 day month. So at $2.00 for every 1000 impressions, we are getting $857.16 total.

that gives us an estimate of the IPA + IAP + CPM of $4,836.36 for the first month. Next month, when calculating the TAU (total amount of users) against the EIU (estimated impression per user) and the CPM, we are adding on the total amount of MAU that has degraded each month as well.

That should give you a better estimate on how much money you would be making, so enjoy.

Key Terms I used:

IPA (Install Per App Revenue)

IAP (In App Purchases)

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)

MAU (Monthly Active Users)

TAU (Total Amount of Users)

EIU (Estimated Impressions per User)

Hi,

Can you explain what is : IPA (Install Per App Revenue) compared to CPI? It's the first time I hear it but then again people use and change terms/jargon constantly so I may lost track here.
If they're roughly the same (CPI == IPA) then you mentioned : "Since we have 14286 app downloads, and lets say we are using flurry, we are getting $.20 per IPA, so $2,857.20.". -> does this mean all your users who see the ads, click and install an app?

That's a pretty optimistic estimation, or if it's a fact then please teach me how or explain to me why we don't just use revmob with their high IPA cause 14286 x 2-4$ is way more than all your incomes combined?

Sure. It is pretty much the same, but when I was pitching to investors, I used the term IPA for them. As for the last question, I'll explain it as in why we use flurry vs revmob.

Flurry gives us a CPI of $.20 - .40 and a CPM of $2 - $8.

Revmob gives a CPI of $2 - $ 4 and a CPM of $.5 - $1.5

When we are making games, we want to make them last as long as possible, so lets keep a game that lasts 1 year in mind. So lets say that we are making a yearly budget of 18k for this game, with 6k to youtube and 12k to facebook. And finally, I'm putting this with an Estimated Impressions per User at 30.

The end of year total for a flurry campaign, with a $.20 CPI is 15k - $.4 CPI, we get $30k.

For the CPM, Low range CPM of $2 gives us $20,383.56 / High Range CPM of $8 gives us $81,534.24

Now in comparison to lets say Revmob.

CPI $2 gives us $150k / CPI $4 gives us $300k

CPM $.5 gives us $5,095.89 / CPM $1.5 gives us $15,287.67

So lets compare low side total CPI/CPM versus high side total CPI/CPM with revmob and then flurry at 30 Impressions per User.

Revmob: $155,096.89 (low side) versus $315,287.67 (high side)

Flurry: $35,383.56 (low side) versus $118,534.24 (high side)

Now before anyone gets their hopes up, the high side tends to go to apps, while games stick to the lower side. So if your entire ball game is to go for the CPI, then sure, stick with Revmob, or other companies that offer high CPI. If your goal is to make money in the long run though, you would want something that can give you better CPM.

So lets show what happens when you increase the impression. The average playtime spent on mobile is 94 minutes daily. The average play session for mobile games is between 1.5 - 2 minutes. Lets say that you're game is solely played by your target audience 94 minutes a day, and each session shows 1 ad impression. So then lets say that the total amount of impressions a player gets a day is 47, and lets take it further and say they play that game every day for a 30 day month cycle (If this ever happens for you, congratulations, you made a virtual crack). So the hypothetical amount of impressions per use will be set at 1,410 per month.

So while we were making at 30 impressions per user with revmob $155,096.89 and $35,383.56 with flurry, at 1,410 impressions per month you would be making:

Revmob: (low side) $389,506.83 (CPI + CPM @ 1410 impressions)

Flurry: (low side) $973,027.32 (CPI + CPM @ 1410 impressions)

So again, what it comes down to is do you think your game will make it? That people would keep on playing it so that you can rack up the CPM? Or is the game something people will download and ignore?

There is a couple of other things that we look for when we put the advertisements in our games. Who gives us the best controls on what ads we want displayed, and the most freedom for mobility. Also, for instance we make games for schools, so for the previous game we made, we have a guarantee that players will be playing it consistently over the period of 2 semesters. And if the teachers are happy with it, that it would continue as a supplementary exercise.

So for that reason, the best way for us to monetize is to go with the CPM, and with that Flurry. Now again, some things that are missing in the calculations are player decay of MAU. What was taken in account is decay in Whales. Also for the time being, we can't accurately guess the right amount of impressions, and there is no calculation for other terms of growth. So take everything with a grain of salt.

So if you want to do your own research on the market and stuff, I recommend downloading the monetization report from Swrve.com, and also checking out the reports from Flurry on app behavior and stuff.

And even though it's a comparison here to a competitive product, revmob does well to explain it here:

http://www.revmobreview.com/networks/revmob-vs-flurry-a-side-by-side-comparison/

Thanks for the lengthy response but please bear with stupid me as I'm now more confused than before (especially after you mentioned CPI is IPA)

First, I still don't understand where this figures come from : ""Since we have 14286 app downloads, and lets say we are using flurry, we are getting $.20 per IPA, so $2,857.20.".
CMIIW, 14286 app downloads -> does it mean people who downloaded your game or people who downloaded app through your game? Cause I thought that number comes from your FB n Youtube campaign to get your user ?

The 14,286 app downloads are people who downloaded the game. Remember, that the CPI i'm calculating is pretty optimistic, with the max possible at a given number. The number for the facebook and Youtube campaign to get the visitors is 47,619. Then the 14,286 comes from 30% of them downloading your app.

Now, on your estimations :

The end of year total for a flurry campaign, with a $.20 CPI is 15k - $.4 CPI, we get $30k.

For the CPM, Low range CPM of $2 gives us $20,383.56 / High Range CPM of $8 gives us $81,534.24

CMIIW, so you have 15k installs from your game/app + for the CPM @2$ you earn 20K.
To make it easier I'll use CPM campaign first to try to figure out how much users I need to reach that income. So basically you need 10MM (20K/2 x 1000) impressions to reach that number.
With your estimation of 30 impressions/user that means you need 333K users. This means conversion rate is at : 15K/333K = 4%

Hmm.. ok, I get it now, those numbers are very believable although 30 impressions/user is quite optimistic imho for interstitial/video ads. Also, it depends on the region of where users are based. I know that I have many users in Asia and they don't really have high eCPM over there.

Thanks again for the lengthy response. I'm currently trying to figure out what is the best way to maximize my ads revenue but I'm to weary of trying all these different agency. Been using Admob for awhile for interstitial ads since banner ads has very low eCPM. I'm currently thinking about Flurry vs Chartboost, any experience in using either one of them?

If you want to maximize your ad revenue... well, it depends on the game, but stick to banner ads for puzzle games for instance, or other solutions. Ads in games isn't a one size fits all solution. Try working with a company that specializes in stuff like this. For instance, swrve, and they have a free plan that you can try things out with too.

As for your second question. Sorry about being fanboyish, but I like the controls given with flurry personally. The thing with them though, is that you can't monetize web games, but you can still find out when things happen. Like for our word game, I could tell you the average play sessions to the words used each game, and the words people are having the most problems on. The other thing about it, is that there isn't a limit and then a fee, like what you can see with other ad networks.