In 2022, new rules on ad settings and limited monetization space have made it difficult for tool app developers, who are already struggling with commercialization challengesIn the mobile game market, although the version number has finally returned after 263 days of hard work, the distribution volume has been cut in half, which is just a drop in the bucket for the game market that is waiting to be fed.
Whether it's toIn-App Ads (IAA), In-App Purchase (IAP).StillHybrid monetizationDevelopers who have increased revenue, the continuous tightening of industry policies and the extremely involuted industry environment have made it more and more difficult to increase revenue, and they have to embark on the journey to the sea.
How to avoid detours when novice developers go overseas?Sufficient information and rich experience are the prerequisites for a smooth voyage.
TOPON brings you the exclusive sharing of "New Ideas for Monetization: IAP+IAA Hybrid Monetization Gameplay", starting from the advertising monetization models of different game types, teaching you how to design ads to bring the maximum revenue, and taking practical experience as an example to take you to "copy homework".
Hybrid monetization is simply a monetization model that combines IAA app advertising + IAP in-app purchasesIn fact, this monetization model is not unique to a certain type of product, the more popular hyper-casual games in the past few years, mainly based on advertising monetization, but recently they have produced some changes in gameplay and monetization, such as users can use the version with ads for free, and at the same time, you can also choose a version with ads removed through in-app purchases. And we're seeing that more and more hardcore game makers are also exploring and experimenting with hybrid monetization.
The chart below shows that among the top 200 Google Play games in North America by revenue, the number of games that are mixed in monetization accounted for about 26% in 2015, and by 2020 this proportion has doubled. The North American market is the preferred region for Chinese developers to go overseas, so this data has a certain reference value.
In addition,Different types of games have a big difference in the structure of their adsText, arcade, chess and other leisure products are mainly monetized through advertising, so their advertising revenue can account for more than 50%;For example, some hyper-casual games basically rely on ads to monetize, so this proportion is about 90%. Medium-heavy games such as role-playing and action-adventure account for less than 25% of their advertising revenue, and although different types of games rely on advertising to different degrees, it is certain that advertising plays its own value in game revenue.
Nowadays, we often encounter some developers who do medium-heavy games, and they may be concerned that adding ads to the game will affect the user experience to a certain extent. In fact, as can be seen from Unity's data,As long as ads are added reasonably, it can not only increase the developer's income, but also improve the retention rate of users, and the player's acceptance of ads is actually increasing.
There are five common ad styles for games: splash, banner, native, incentive**, and interstitialDifferent types of games have different choices in terms of ad styles. Let's first take a look at hyper-casual games and casual games, this kind of games have a characteristic, that is, players will frequently switch scenes in the game, which provides a good opportunity for interstitial ads, so casual games will mainly use interstitial, incentive** and banner.
Topon also made a statistic that casual games accounted for nearly half of the revenue from interstitial ads, followed by incentives**. Medium-to-heavy games take into account the player's experience, so they use less active pop-up interstitial ads, and more use incentives**, which account for more than 80% of the revenue.
There are also some considerations when accessing different ad formats. For example, for incentives, if it is a creative with an ad duration of more than 20 seconds, it is best to preload. For interstitial ads, you can set the maximum frequency of impressions in the early stage to observe how users react to the interstitial ads. For banner ads, you can set the automatic refresh time to attract users' attention through the change of the ad, so as to improve the conversion rate of the ad.
Once the ad style is decided, the second step is fineSelect an ad networkThere are many overseas advertising platforms, for example, there are 32 advertising platforms that TOPON currently cooperates with, we recommend that developers combine the region where the product is located, the region where the traffic is located and the advertising style to be received, and finally determine which advertising platforms to be connected, and the number of recommended access to 3-8 can be done, so that you can make some flexible adjustments in the future.
Europe and the United States focus on AdMob, Meta, Unity, Applovin, and Vungle, while Russia can consider local advertising platforms MyTarget and Huawei Ads. Southeast Asia focuses on AdMob, Meta, Pangle, Mintegral, Unity, and Inmobi. In addition, I would like to share three platforms: Pangle, a local Chinese outbound platform, Huawei Advertising, and mintegral, a global advertising platformThe first two are mainly in Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, and the monetization of Huawei advertising may be less listened to, and their monetization advantages are mainly in the Middle East (Turkey, Egypt) region, as well as Europe, Southeast Asia, Mexico, these regions are performing well.
Pocket Sniper is oneCasual shooter games,Launched a week on the top of the United States ios free list and game list,Its traffic is mainly distributed in Europe and the United States、Japan and South Korea、Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia,Their income is mainly from advertising,Ad styles are incentive**、Interstitial and native ads,And contains a small amount of in-app purchases,In-app purchases can remove ads。
In terms of monetization, Pocket Sniper has access to 10 advertising platforms such as Meta and AdMob, because their traffic is distributed in a wide area, up to more than 200, so through the function of traffic grouping, some key countries and countries close to ECPM are grouped and operated separately, and the mixed sorting of waterfall + bidding is also used, which is also the most mainstream sorting method for overseas monetization.
When using this sorting method, we recommend adding as many bidding platforms as possible, and we can also find the best floor price setting for the waterfall through a B test, so that we can stimulate and increase bidding bids through the waterfall setting with a high floor price, and maximize the ECPM.
Devil Lord is a Japanese oneAdventure gamesTherefore, most of the traffic comes from Japan and a small number of users in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the proportion of in-app purchase revenue is relatively large, about 60%-70%, and advertising revenue accounts for 20%-30%.
The advertising style is based on incentive** and banner ads, and it is connected to 8 platforms including admob, two of which are local platforms in Japan, maio and nend, because the traffic is concentrated, so the traffic grouping function of topon is used to make a separate operation in these three regions, and different ad sources are configuredFor the iOS version, the devices without IDFA are grouped separately, and some ad platforms may have a particularly low fill rate when they can't get IDFA, so you can not add such platforms in this group.
About TOPO
Topon is the world's leading mobile ad mediation tool platform, focusing on providing ad monetization operation management and optimization services for mobile developers around the world. The intelligent aggregation management tool based on big data provides developers with convenient monetization management functions such as ad layering, header bidding, traffic grouping, A-B testing, cross-promotion, and API management, and quickly implements refined operation strategies.