Hi
I noticed when testing admob in my app prior to publishing it, that interstitials are sometimes images and sometimes videos which you are forced to watch for a few seconds (at least, that’s how the test ones worked).
I’m assuming that we get no payment if the user does not interact with an image-only ad, but in the case of the video, do we get a payment each time a video ad is shown, regardless of user interaction, since they are forced to watch it for at least a few moments? Thanks.
No. You don’t get paid for either.
that’s frustrating. So admob/Google is basically just stealing my app time?
They aren’t stealing it by any means. 
Think about it from the advertisers point of view. If an app has 100,000 DAU who supposedly see an average of 10 ads per day, making it an average of 1 million ads served per day. Now, if the ads were prominent and couldn’t be ignored, that’d be great. But what if those ads are just a banner somewhere that gets ignored 95% of the time? That’d mean only 5% of the advertisers budgets would go towards their goals and nobody wants that.
Simply put, unlike with TV, radio or newspaper ads, etc., on mobile apps you can fully track user engagement and so it only makes sense that the advertisers pay for engagement instead of the ad space.
This means that in order to increase your user engagement with the ads, you need to design them to be a part of the app and not something that the users want to tune out. Serving ads more relevant to the users or opting for more suitable ad formats are good ways of approaching this issue.
To add to what Xedur said, the only network that still pays per impression is Amazon ads.
The good old days of getting paid for impressions are long gone.
Those were the days… (@0:47)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d8FTPv955I&t=0m48s
(Man am I old… I actually remember watching this show.)
Quick ad lesson here:
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, online advertising didn’t really get how it works. They operated on the TV model of show the ad and you could measure success in your brick-and-mortar store the next day (Come to Toyota tomorrow for 20% off). Other TV ads existed just to build brand awareness. So with this model, advertisers paid for just showing ads. They paid per 1000 ads shown or known CPM or Cost Per Mill.
It wasn’t long before the advertisers learned that they were not getting the “view” engagement, especially in games where no one would actually engage with a banner ad. So the model changes to what’s known as CPC or Cost Per Click. You got paid only when the ad got interacted with. Eventually, they learned that wasn’t all that effective, in particular with mobile apps because clicks didn’t turn into sales. so the advertisers turned to a new model: CPI or Cost Per Install. This is what most interstitial ads are today.
I said “most” because you can still make some money for showing banner ads in a CPM manner, not much mind you. There are still advertisers who do pay CPC. This will be more common than getting paid for just showing banner ads, but it’s still not going to be your best engagement. CPI campaigns pay the best. This is what most interstitial ads are (static image or closeable video). Interestingly enough, all models are converted to an eCPM (effective CPM) to allow all campaigns to all be measured against each other.
Rewarded video is a non-closable video ad. The ad provider pays more for this because they know the user has requested to view the ad and they will see the whole ad. This is much closer to traditional TV advertising and this pays the most, but it’s also the most limiting because you can only show them if the user asks to see the ad and you must be able to give them some in-game/in-app value for viewing the ad.
Rob
Thanks for the info. I’m not really clear how CPI works. For example I have tested the android version of my app on a friend’s phone and tapped the ads and got paid for those interactions. Does that count as an ‘install’?
Then it sounds like those were CPC campaigns. For CPI, the ad should show you a different app that you have the opportunity to install. Clicking through to that will give you an opportunity to install the app. That would need to happen to get credit for a CPI ad.
Rob
No. You don’t get paid for either.
that’s frustrating. So admob/Google is basically just stealing my app time?
They aren’t stealing it by any means.
Think about it from the advertisers point of view. If an app has 100,000 DAU who supposedly see an average of 10 ads per day, making it an average of 1 million ads served per day. Now, if the ads were prominent and couldn’t be ignored, that’d be great. But what if those ads are just a banner somewhere that gets ignored 95% of the time? That’d mean only 5% of the advertisers budgets would go towards their goals and nobody wants that.
Simply put, unlike with TV, radio or newspaper ads, etc., on mobile apps you can fully track user engagement and so it only makes sense that the advertisers pay for engagement instead of the ad space.
This means that in order to increase your user engagement with the ads, you need to design them to be a part of the app and not something that the users want to tune out. Serving ads more relevant to the users or opting for more suitable ad formats are good ways of approaching this issue.
To add to what Xedur said, the only network that still pays per impression is Amazon ads.
The good old days of getting paid for impressions are long gone.
Those were the days… (@0:47)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d8FTPv955I&t=0m48s
(Man am I old… I actually remember watching this show.)
Quick ad lesson here:
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, online advertising didn’t really get how it works. They operated on the TV model of show the ad and you could measure success in your brick-and-mortar store the next day (Come to Toyota tomorrow for 20% off). Other TV ads existed just to build brand awareness. So with this model, advertisers paid for just showing ads. They paid per 1000 ads shown or known CPM or Cost Per Mill.
It wasn’t long before the advertisers learned that they were not getting the “view” engagement, especially in games where no one would actually engage with a banner ad. So the model changes to what’s known as CPC or Cost Per Click. You got paid only when the ad got interacted with. Eventually, they learned that wasn’t all that effective, in particular with mobile apps because clicks didn’t turn into sales. so the advertisers turned to a new model: CPI or Cost Per Install. This is what most interstitial ads are today.
I said “most” because you can still make some money for showing banner ads in a CPM manner, not much mind you. There are still advertisers who do pay CPC. This will be more common than getting paid for just showing banner ads, but it’s still not going to be your best engagement. CPI campaigns pay the best. This is what most interstitial ads are (static image or closeable video). Interestingly enough, all models are converted to an eCPM (effective CPM) to allow all campaigns to all be measured against each other.
Rewarded video is a non-closable video ad. The ad provider pays more for this because they know the user has requested to view the ad and they will see the whole ad. This is much closer to traditional TV advertising and this pays the most, but it’s also the most limiting because you can only show them if the user asks to see the ad and you must be able to give them some in-game/in-app value for viewing the ad.
Rob
Thanks for the info. I’m not really clear how CPI works. For example I have tested the android version of my app on a friend’s phone and tapped the ads and got paid for those interactions. Does that count as an ‘install’?
Then it sounds like those were CPC campaigns. For CPI, the ad should show you a different app that you have the opportunity to install. Clicking through to that will give you an opportunity to install the app. That would need to happen to get credit for a CPI ad.
Rob