So, how much money are you guys making with ads in your free games? Or do you rely only on IAP? Which services do you guys use?
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We made 2 dollar in the last 1/2 year with IAP and Chartboost combined with our one title on the AppStore.
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2 bucks? Really?
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I dont know if this counts but, 3 dollars from kongregate ad revenue over the pass 1 1/2 years. Wasn’t trying to make money in the first place though.
I’ve got 2 games on the Apple app store.
Not sure on exact figures but ninja pig has made less than ÂŁ1k on iAds Admob combined. It did have IAP in but it was next to useless so I took it out in an update quite early on and focused on Ads.
Moto-x-racer has made around 10k on ads alone, much higher than the paid version I released which has come in at around 2k but the revenue for that was spread over a couple of years and its almost completely died now. Its currently making about ÂŁ15 a month 
Moto-x is a couple of years old now so these are old stats.
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On Zombies vs. Knights on Kong I’ve made $5.63 in about two years. It seems our games are on roughly equal footing.
…Conversely, on Wooglie, my two games SHMUP: Orbital Combat and ZvK have earned me about 11 euros. I recommend Wooglie, needless to say.
On the other end of the spectrum from both of those is GameJolt - In two years, ZvK and SHMUP have raked in an enviable 0.78 cents (USD). They’re just not a good source of ad revenue, sadly.
From Ads on all platforms, maybe ÂŁ4 a day? You never going to become a millionaire from ads. But I have quite a few apps.
If you got a ÂŁ1 for every 1000 downloads you would need a BILLION downloads!
My view is if the app is not worth £1 but is interesting enough to be downloaded then that’s when you put ads in it. If it is worth a £1 charge £1.
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Which service did you use for Moto-x? AdMob?
1,000 in the past year, ads are not really worth it imo unless you can generate millions of impressions.
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iAds only for moto-x.
The last time I looked into it iAds gave the best revenue but I would always have a fall back to something else for future games.
Ninja Pig did iAds with a fallback to Admob.
out of curiosity,…
what are some examples of ya’lls IAP?
e.i. extra levels,…
cosmetics?
In the free version I had a single IAP which removed ads and unlocked extra game modes in Ninja Pig to bring it in line with the paid version so i guess the free version was try it and if you like it you can upgrade to full version. No IAP in full version.
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I’m not sure if it’s really worth the effort, adding IAP to a game. But, unfortunately, mobile seems to produce a very low income from ads.
On the larger side of the fence, generic ad income isn’t that great either. It is some extra revenue, but not enough to support a game. If we use ads, they are usually though special programs or sponsored. IAP is the bulk of our revenue.
But thing about IAP, is that for it to really be successful, it takes a game with a constant flow of content and/or a mechanic that entices users to keep paying. A single shot purchase (like removing ads) isn’t going pull in the Candy Crush bucks. 
IAP works because it lets a small amount of users pay a lot. Again, looking at Candy Crush, 30% of players are payers. About 5% are whales, who pay on on average about $50 a month. (super-whales can being spending $200-$1000+ a month). And those numbers are lower than other big games, CC just has many more players.
“Energy” is the most common IAP. Limiting or gating play time/progression in some way, but letting users spend money to bypass that an keep playing. Experience/powerups are other common ones, allowing players to spend money to skip ahead or progress faster, complete tasks easier or unlock features/characters. (that’s a big one for our game). And by adding regular new content, it keeps players engaged, people are more willing spend money on a game if they know they are going to be playing it for a while.
Seriously guys, where are you placing you ads and how many users do you have…and do they actually use your game/app?
We have just launch Memrace on Windows Phone, iOS and Android about a month ago, we haven’t done any real PR for it yet, as we need a lot of things to be done first, but we have already generated about 4£ in Ads and we don’t even have ads on the Windows Phone version yet and generally we have very few downloads.
Currently:
- iOS around 500 downloads
- Android around 20 (!) downloads
- Windows Phone around 3000 downloads (we have been featured in some countries)
Again, we haven’t really done any PR yet, except a few tweets and Facebook updates for friends and family - we will do much more when we have a more complete game.
But people are actually playing our game for about 4 min in average pr. session so we have a game people like and play on a regular basic.
So I’m pretty surprised about the low income most of you are telling about.
my game got around 3k DL on Android, with around 1.3k still installed
for the last 6 months I got around 20USD for admob, without IAP
looks like IAP is the better than ads…?
The only baseline I have is a small Android game I published 2 years ago, which has gotten around 500 downloads since then (embarrassing, I know). In those two years it has generated $8.22 in ad revenue. That’s with a small ad that only shows up on the main menu.
The thing about ads is, it’s a double whammy. Not only do you make money for each ad impression, but the value of your advertisement space goes up the more users you have. So there is a point where if you have enough users, you can make big bucks with ads alone. See Flappy Bird with its $50,000 of revenue per day from a single tiny ad.
Got 375 euros since 03/2012 from about 1.100.000 plays at wooglie
Could be much more as most of plays are from Brazil where ads pays less.
I made 15$ since february 3 with the alpha version of my game, I made only some free advertising on forums… 
I just downloaded Memrace on my Windows Phone and I will definitely be keeping it downloaded! Solid game