Hey,
as the add-on pack with Admob support is available since some time I wanted to ask if there is anyone out first first experiences if people click the ads and if it brings in any money. As free apps getting way more downloads than sold apps, I think the admob way might be something to generate continues income, but I’d like to hear if anyone has already first-hand experience with it.
I have zero first-hand experience with it, but I spoke with someone from AdMob yesterday to fill out some lines in a business plan spreadsheet, and was told that the CPM for phone ads varies from $.50 to $2.00. Would love to hear if anyone can verify this.
My game sadly is not shipped yet.
But a friend of mine has its app out and when we were talking about this revenue path last week, he mentioned that the eCPM varies quite a bit but that it raised from about $15 to a good $30 within the past weeks.
This is for the iPhone, I guess regular phones might be even higher. (remember, that stuff is distinct)
No idea how that converts to clicks thought, Only have experience with googles add system which works a bit different.
dayly or weakly ?
admob cpm has actually dropped since mid dec-ish and its hard to make $ off using it now.
I’m sorry, I don’t know how often their eCPM changes as I do not have my app out yet so I’ve not given it too much attention so far.
But from what I was told, you get something around $0.02 - $0.04 per click, which isn’t too much given the frequency with which apps are started at all (ie the majority of the free apps are used a single day only)
A friend just sent me this presentation which shows some sales and ad revenue trends, including a reference to AdMob:
Thanks Technicat, some excellent stuff in here – a must read for anyone putting apps in the store. Based on this we won’t be attempting any ad supported apps anytime soon.
The main slide is #24 which says to earn the same from a free app vs paid you would need an $8.75 CPM (assuming one ad per session). PinchMedia quotes the current ad market at around $0.50-$2.00 CPM, but I suspect it is more like $0.10 CPM, so you would need to show 87 ads per session.
Some Admob stats from my game Bubble Bang Lite. The table reads like this:
date, ad requests, delievered ad impressions, success rate, CPC clicks, CTR, eCPM, CPC amount, CPC earned money (in red). Not bad, even a lite app can earn money every day. 
Thanks for the info Martin. I’m now inspired to actually give it a go.
btw. Martin. Is there any sort of app that you’d recommend/not recommend for ads? Does Bubble get a lot of people playing it over and over again or do you get a lot of people downloading and playing just once?
@Martin… Do you see a correlation between daily downloads of Bubble Bang Lite and admob click rates? Or does it appear that the install base is generating most of the clicks?
Good question - I only have (now) one game with Admob support, but another app coming somewhat soon. Yes, the game has been played over and over already before. The game made so far over 320.000 downloads and around 500-800 new downloads every day. So from that perspective a good thing, as people come often back and play, get ads, sometimes click ads.
But no, I don’t see a correlation. Hard to say who clicks and who not. From the time the update came in with Admob support so far around 60.000 people updated the app. Still new updaters every day.
A bit of bummer is that admob lowered the click prices a lot (cut in half), so the same amount of clicks half a year ago would have brought way way more income. But still, at least some money from a free game. Not bad as it is not a one-time money but recurring money which I like way more than getting one time money from the sales. Will be interesting to see how it develops with admob.
@Martin… 320.000 downloads? WOW. How is the paid version doing? My experience is that paid versions get about 1% of the free version. Do you think so too?
330.988 to be precise…
Yes, roughly 1% - max. 2% is probably realistic. Had a total of 4288 sales on the full version of BB.