Ad Monetization: How Many Monthly User Session Needed to Make $?

Solar2D Monetization (in-app purchases, ads, etc.)
#1

I’ve never been a big fan of ads for monetizing games because it’s been my understanding that you need 10s of thousands of monthly users before you’re likely to see anything significant. And I know how hard it is to get even hundreds of downloads per month.

I have one game that gets thousands of downloads per month, but the rest are in the dozens range – and I think that’s probably typical (the dozens, not the hundreds).

Anybody willing to share numbers? What kind of usage is needed for ~$100 per month in ad revenue?

 Jay

PS - Rereading this it sounds like kind of a downer, but I don’t mean it that way – just want more data points to try and figure out how to monetize games that don’t realistically have a chance at making money via ads.

#2

On average per 1000 users a month I make a little over $100 US. Mind you this is mostly LatAm traffic (where I focus my efforts). I suspect that if most of your traffic is from the US you would get significantly more than that.

For me 1000 LatAm users a month translate into 600K impressions at a 25% fill rate. 150,000 impressions at a little under 0.75 cpm translate into $112 dollars a month (again on average).

Hope this gives you at least one data point. I can give you more detail if you are interested.

Edit: I just reread your question. Those 1000 unique monthly users on average produce about 15,000 sessions.

#3

That’s interesting. So I have one game that, if I put ads in it, might bring in a couple hundred a month (over lifetime, could have been 5.6million sessions/15k * $100 = $37,300? Ouch!). Maybe I should monetize that… :slight_smile:

Thanks for the data. Anyone else?

 Jay

[Edit to fix my freakin’ math!]

#4

On average per 1000 users a month I make a little over $100 US. Mind you this is mostly LatAm traffic (where I focus my efforts). I suspect that if most of your traffic is from the US you would get significantly more than that.

For me 1000 LatAm users a month translate into 600K impressions at a 25% fill rate. 150,000 impressions at a little under 0.75 cpm translate into $112 dollars a month (again on average).

Hope this gives you at least one data point. I can give you more detail if you are interested.

Edit: I just reread your question. Those 1000 unique monthly users on average produce about 15,000 sessions.

#5

That’s interesting. So I have one game that, if I put ads in it, might bring in a couple hundred a month (over lifetime, could have been 5.6million sessions/15k * $100 = $37,300? Ouch!). Maybe I should monetize that… :slight_smile:

Thanks for the data. Anyone else?

 Jay

[Edit to fix my freakin’ math!]