Apologies if this is a dumb question but is it possible for me to create an in-app purchase such that a user can can buy the app in order to turn off the app’s ads? Thanks.
So that I understand you correctly:
-
somebody downloads the app for free.
-
buys the no ads store item.
-
you stop showing ads for the person on that app.
If what I stated above is correct then yes it is done all the time.
Thanks.
Do you think it’s a good strategy to also offer users something like: I will shut off all ads once you have interacted with a certain number of ads, eg 10 or 15? That way I’d get some money for the app and the user would still get it for free.
When you sell your app for a fixed price, that person pays you once, ever. When you use ads, you get a continuous stream of income as long as your app or game is being used. If someone uses IAP to turn off ads, you get continuous income until they pay for the IAP, then you get the one-time fee and that’s it.
But it’s not that simple. Let’s say that you end up setting the IAP fee to $0.99 (or an initial purchase price). That means you will make $0.69 from that user when they make the purchase. Using AdMob as an example and information from blognife.com (https://blognife.com/2018/05/04/admob-cpm-rates-2017/) banner ads pay about $0.30 per thousand banner ads shown. That same $0.69 from app sales is about the same as your user seeing 2,300 banner ads. Assuming AdMob rotates banners every 45 seconds, or over 1,700 minutes or about 29 hours of view time. But if you’re using other ad forms, like interstitials which pay about $6.50 per thousand banner ads, you need to show about 100 interstitial ads to make up the purchase price. Let’s say you can show 2 interstitial ads per session on average, the user only has to play about 50 times to make up that income. Rewarded video pays about $23 per 1000 rewarded videos. That means the user only needs to view 3 rewarded videos to earn you that same $0.69. NOTE: The blog article says that AdMob RPM values are higher on Android than iOS, so you need to show more ads on iOS to get to the same income level.
All games and apps have a “shelf life”. This is slang meaning how long the user will use your app. They tend to play your game a lot at first, then over time, they play less and less. Some games have a long “tail”. If you view a usage graph, it looks like a dinosaur:
The left side is your initial usage spike (the head) and then as time passes it gets used less and less (the tail). Some games will have a long tail, but many will have a short tail. No one can really predict in advance how long your game’s tail or shelf life will be. This is also called retention.
If your game will have a long tail, you will make more money with your ads. If your game doesn’t have any longevity to it, you want to convert them to paid as soon as possible.
Rob
Interesting. I don’t have much idea whether my app would have any longevity or not (it’s not a game, it an educational music theory app).
It sounds like rewarded video is the way to go, but in my app, really the only thing I could reward the user with is a cessation of the ads. Would it be feasible to set up rewarded video and tell the user they only have to watch a certain number of these to make them go away? (I’ve got interstitials in there at the moment but if my users are anything like me, they’ll just close them asap).
maybe use reward ads to unlock new music? let’s say you have 100 songs and only 10 are available… for each reward ad viewed unlock a new musical score.
this is what I would do for a music app like yours.
The app doesn’t play songs. There are tutorials that explain theory concepts on my website. The app provides flashcard-style exercises to consolidate these concepts by practicing things such as identifying chords, intervals, scales, time signatures, etc. Some of the questions are audio e.g you’ll hear a scale then have to ID what type of scale it is.
That’s not what rewarded video is for. You reward your players with in-game currency like coins or healing potions. You could maybe give them an extra song or something or watching rewarded ads. I wouldn’t recommend it to remove ads. You want people to continue to get rewards over the long term, so using them to turn off ads is self-defeating. I’m also not sure that the ad providers would want you to use rewarded video for that purpose.
Rob
So that I understand you correctly:
-
somebody downloads the app for free.
-
buys the no ads store item.
-
you stop showing ads for the person on that app.
If what I stated above is correct then yes it is done all the time.
Thanks.
Do you think it’s a good strategy to also offer users something like: I will shut off all ads once you have interacted with a certain number of ads, eg 10 or 15? That way I’d get some money for the app and the user would still get it for free.
When you sell your app for a fixed price, that person pays you once, ever. When you use ads, you get a continuous stream of income as long as your app or game is being used. If someone uses IAP to turn off ads, you get continuous income until they pay for the IAP, then you get the one-time fee and that’s it.
But it’s not that simple. Let’s say that you end up setting the IAP fee to $0.99 (or an initial purchase price). That means you will make $0.69 from that user when they make the purchase. Using AdMob as an example and information from blognife.com (https://blognife.com/2018/05/04/admob-cpm-rates-2017/) banner ads pay about $0.30 per thousand banner ads shown. That same $0.69 from app sales is about the same as your user seeing 2,300 banner ads. Assuming AdMob rotates banners every 45 seconds, or over 1,700 minutes or about 29 hours of view time. But if you’re using other ad forms, like interstitials which pay about $6.50 per thousand banner ads, you need to show about 100 interstitial ads to make up the purchase price. Let’s say you can show 2 interstitial ads per session on average, the user only has to play about 50 times to make up that income. Rewarded video pays about $23 per 1000 rewarded videos. That means the user only needs to view 3 rewarded videos to earn you that same $0.69. NOTE: The blog article says that AdMob RPM values are higher on Android than iOS, so you need to show more ads on iOS to get to the same income level.
All games and apps have a “shelf life”. This is slang meaning how long the user will use your app. They tend to play your game a lot at first, then over time, they play less and less. Some games have a long “tail”. If you view a usage graph, it looks like a dinosaur:
The left side is your initial usage spike (the head) and then as time passes it gets used less and less (the tail). Some games will have a long tail, but many will have a short tail. No one can really predict in advance how long your game’s tail or shelf life will be. This is also called retention.
If your game will have a long tail, you will make more money with your ads. If your game doesn’t have any longevity to it, you want to convert them to paid as soon as possible.
Rob
Interesting. I don’t have much idea whether my app would have any longevity or not (it’s not a game, it an educational music theory app).
It sounds like rewarded video is the way to go, but in my app, really the only thing I could reward the user with is a cessation of the ads. Would it be feasible to set up rewarded video and tell the user they only have to watch a certain number of these to make them go away? (I’ve got interstitials in there at the moment but if my users are anything like me, they’ll just close them asap).
maybe use reward ads to unlock new music? let’s say you have 100 songs and only 10 are available… for each reward ad viewed unlock a new musical score.
this is what I would do for a music app like yours.
The app doesn’t play songs. There are tutorials that explain theory concepts on my website. The app provides flashcard-style exercises to consolidate these concepts by practicing things such as identifying chords, intervals, scales, time signatures, etc. Some of the questions are audio e.g you’ll hear a scale then have to ID what type of scale it is.
That’s not what rewarded video is for. You reward your players with in-game currency like coins or healing potions. You could maybe give them an extra song or something or watching rewarded ads. I wouldn’t recommend it to remove ads. You want people to continue to get rewards over the long term, so using them to turn off ads is self-defeating. I’m also not sure that the ad providers would want you to use rewarded video for that purpose.
Rob