Question regarding monetization with ads

[dodi_games]

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

I would like to ask about ads monetization. I’m a little lost. I would like to use appodeal to start monetizing my apps and when doing the account on that page, it asks me to configure my admob account to link to the appodeal account. Ok, I made the account in admob, which creates an account in adsense and google ads, but tells me very clearly that if there is no activity in any of them the account will be suspend. I see that to use admob plugin I must pay an annuity of $199 a year to Corona SDK. This brings me a lot of confusion because I do not know how to start. I do not even know if 6 months is enough to implement the ads in my app. Any help or guidance that can clarify my doubts? Calling google ads, they told me that to make a campaign, only in US, for a paid app, according to my keywords, I need $12,000 a month with a daily budget of $ 426. So it does not make sense to spend 20,000 on everything to earn me $60 dollars a year. Can any of you explain to me how this works? What steps should I follow?

:wacko:  :wacko:  :wacko: 

Thanks in advance

DoDi

[XeduR]

Wow. Just wow. I believe that you called Google’s customer support for setting up ad campaigns and they tried their best to sell you one. That’s not what you should do as you are, from the sound of it, wanting to be in the business of serving ads via your games and not buying ads in other apps or websites.

From what I’ve understood, using Appodeal is free to use and you don’t have to pay for the AdMob plugin if you want to serve AdMob’s ads via Appodeal. You’d have to pay for the AdMob plugin if you wanted to serve AdMob ads via the AdMob plugin.

So, create your Appodeal and AdMob accounts. Then link them as per Appodeal’s instructions here: http://faq.appodeal.com/sdk-integration/admob-sync-up. You’ll also want to read through the docs to ensure that you implement the plugin correctly: https://docs.coronalabs.com/plugin/appodeal/ (there’s a link to a sample project in the docs).

[dodi_games]

@XeduR @Spyric

At the moment I do not want to use admob. What worries me is all the strict rules that google has. Right now I have an adsense account, which I do not know what it is, I have a google ads account, which is going to make a hole in my pocket, and I have an account in appodeal that I do not know how to configure it. Much to read I suppose.

My biggest concern at this time is that if there is no activity in adsense, admob or google ads in 6 months, it is equal to “suspended accounts”. I would like to know if by making the link from admob to appodeal my admob account remains active?

[XeduR]

Typically, you’d want to add advertisements to your game once you are nearing the finish line. If you plan to use ads, design them to be a part of the game immediately, but leave adding them into your game to a much later date.

I don’t remember about that 6 month limit, but for you, activity really means that you’d have to serve ads in your app(s). If you link AdMob to Appodeal and serve AdMob’s ads through it within those 6 months, then you’ve got activity. I’m not sure if test ads count towards this.

[rob]

Let me try and clarify a few things.

AdMob, inMobi, Vungle, Chartboost, etc. are “ad providers”. Advertisers buy ad campaigns with them to advertise on your app. This is who you talked to. They thought you were an advertiser wanting people to learn about your product.

Appodeal is an “ad mediator”. They take all of the ad providers, find the best ads for your app and show them. AdMob is one of the ad providers that Appodeal can use as part of their offerings, but if you use the modular (recommended) version of their plugin, you do not have to include AdMob at all.

Appodeal is free to use and you can use AdMob for free through them. If you want to use AdMob without using Appodeal (or Chartboost, Unity Ads, or AdColony), those plugins require a fee to use. Other providers like Vungle, inMobi and others are totally free for you to use.

Many people will start with a single ad provider to get used to working with ads. You probably should start here. Appodeal really needs a fairly popular, high usage app to outperform individual ad providers.

There are a couple of concepts about ads you need to understand too. 

First, different ad providers have different fees they pay you. Typically measured by eCPM (effective Cost Per Mill or per 1000 ads delivered) one provider might have an eCPM for interstital ads of $1.00 / 1000 while another might have an eCPM of $5 / 1000. So why not just use the one that’s $5? Well…

Secondly, different ad providers have different fill rates. Your app might ask to show an ad and that provider doesn’t have one for you. Because of this your $5 eCPM advertiser make take 5,000 attempts to show 1,000 ads meaning at the end of the day, you still only made $1 for the attempt to show those ads.

To get around the “fill” problem, many developers will setup a waterfall system where they try their best eCPM provider first, if they don’t get an ad, they then attempt to show an ad from their next best provider, if that fails, then they go to the next providers either eventually giving up or using a high fill, low paying ad service.

This is kind of what Appodeal does for you. It finds you the highest paying ad and gets works to make sure you always have an ad. But for mediation to work, you need like 10,000 active users a day for the mediation to work right. Advertisers don’t want to advertise on apps that no one is looking at.

AdMob, at the end of the day, has the best fill rates around the world. You might find that another provider will have a good fill rate in the US, but a terrible one in France. AdMob also has one of the higher eCPM rates you can get making it the most attractive ad provider.  You, of course, could build your own AdMob support into your Corona app if you do native builds, but if you put a value on your time you will find it’s actually cheaper to use our plugin rather than you having to learn native iOS and Android development and work with native builds instead of simulator builds. 

My recommendation is for you to focus on building the best game you can. Think and learn about monetization types (banners, interstitial ads, rewarded video) and see how your app can work with those types and perhaps start with a couple of the free ad provider plugins. Spend time getting analytics in your game so you can get an idea of how many daily active users (DAU) you have, how long your sessions are and other metrics that can help you figure out the best way to monetize the apps, then you can figure out if there are good places to show full-screen interstitial, interruptive ads vs. placing banners or if you can give value to your users allowing them to choose to watch a video. You can start with Appodeal without AdMob if you wish.

If your usage shows that AdMob would be a better choice, buy the plugin, setup the AdMob account and then you will have the activity there to make Google happy. If your usage gets to the 10,000 DAU level, then look to Appodeal (with AdMob setup).

Rob

[XeduR]

Wow. Just wow. I believe that you called Google’s customer support for setting up ad campaigns and they tried their best to sell you one. That’s not what you should do as you are, from the sound of it, wanting to be in the business of serving ads via your games and not buying ads in other apps or websites.

From what I’ve understood, using Appodeal is free to use and you don’t have to pay for the AdMob plugin if you want to serve AdMob’s ads via Appodeal. You’d have to pay for the AdMob plugin if you wanted to serve AdMob ads via the AdMob plugin.

So, create your Appodeal and AdMob accounts. Then link them as per Appodeal’s instructions here: http://faq.appodeal.com/sdk-integration/admob-sync-up. You’ll also want to read through the docs to ensure that you implement the plugin correctly: https://docs.coronalabs.com/plugin/appodeal/ (there’s a link to a sample project in the docs).

[dodi_games]

@XeduR @Spyric

At the moment I do not want to use admob. What worries me is all the strict rules that google has. Right now I have an adsense account, which I do not know what it is, I have a google ads account, which is going to make a hole in my pocket, and I have an account in appodeal that I do not know how to configure it. Much to read I suppose.

My biggest concern at this time is that if there is no activity in adsense, admob or google ads in 6 months, it is equal to “suspended accounts”. I would like to know if by making the link from admob to appodeal my admob account remains active?

[XeduR]

Typically, you’d want to add advertisements to your game once you are nearing the finish line. If you plan to use ads, design them to be a part of the game immediately, but leave adding them into your game to a much later date.

I don’t remember about that 6 month limit, but for you, activity really means that you’d have to serve ads in your app(s). If you link AdMob to Appodeal and serve AdMob’s ads through it within those 6 months, then you’ve got activity. I’m not sure if test ads count towards this.

[rob]

Let me try and clarify a few things.

AdMob, inMobi, Vungle, Chartboost, etc. are “ad providers”. Advertisers buy ad campaigns with them to advertise on your app. This is who you talked to. They thought you were an advertiser wanting people to learn about your product.

Appodeal is an “ad mediator”. They take all of the ad providers, find the best ads for your app and show them. AdMob is one of the ad providers that Appodeal can use as part of their offerings, but if you use the modular (recommended) version of their plugin, you do not have to include AdMob at all.

Appodeal is free to use and you can use AdMob for free through them. If you want to use AdMob without using Appodeal (or Chartboost, Unity Ads, or AdColony), those plugins require a fee to use. Other providers like Vungle, inMobi and others are totally free for you to use.

Many people will start with a single ad provider to get used to working with ads. You probably should start here. Appodeal really needs a fairly popular, high usage app to outperform individual ad providers.

There are a couple of concepts about ads you need to understand too. 

First, different ad providers have different fees they pay you. Typically measured by eCPM (effective Cost Per Mill or per 1000 ads delivered) one provider might have an eCPM for interstital ads of $1.00 / 1000 while another might have an eCPM of $5 / 1000. So why not just use the one that’s $5? Well…

Secondly, different ad providers have different fill rates. Your app might ask to show an ad and that provider doesn’t have one for you. Because of this your $5 eCPM advertiser make take 5,000 attempts to show 1,000 ads meaning at the end of the day, you still only made $1 for the attempt to show those ads.

To get around the “fill” problem, many developers will setup a waterfall system where they try their best eCPM provider first, if they don’t get an ad, they then attempt to show an ad from their next best provider, if that fails, then they go to the next providers either eventually giving up or using a high fill, low paying ad service.

This is kind of what Appodeal does for you. It finds you the highest paying ad and gets works to make sure you always have an ad. But for mediation to work, you need like 10,000 active users a day for the mediation to work right. Advertisers don’t want to advertise on apps that no one is looking at.

AdMob, at the end of the day, has the best fill rates around the world. You might find that another provider will have a good fill rate in the US, but a terrible one in France. AdMob also has one of the higher eCPM rates you can get making it the most attractive ad provider.  You, of course, could build your own AdMob support into your Corona app if you do native builds, but if you put a value on your time you will find it’s actually cheaper to use our plugin rather than you having to learn native iOS and Android development and work with native builds instead of simulator builds. 

My recommendation is for you to focus on building the best game you can. Think and learn about monetization types (banners, interstitial ads, rewarded video) and see how your app can work with those types and perhaps start with a couple of the free ad provider plugins. Spend time getting analytics in your game so you can get an idea of how many daily active users (DAU) you have, how long your sessions are and other metrics that can help you figure out the best way to monetize the apps, then you can figure out if there are good places to show full-screen interstitial, interruptive ads vs. placing banners or if you can give value to your users allowing them to choose to watch a video. You can start with Appodeal without AdMob if you wish.

If your usage shows that AdMob would be a better choice, buy the plugin, setup the AdMob account and then you will have the activity there to make Google happy. If your usage gets to the 10,000 DAU level, then look to Appodeal (with AdMob setup).

Rob