Chartboost is good, however it’s community sourced code and you’d have to update. People sell plugins for it. Chartboost hasn’t directly written a lua module though, which is really stupid but whatever.
At one time I was hovering around $110 to $155 eCPM per 10k downloads on a flappy bird clone for about a month. You have to realize that you need 1000k a day downloads to convert and make about $10 to 100$ a day (depends if you show ads on boot up, on game over or constantly, if it’s full screen or ads or banners or what. Now I’m about $10 to 40 ecpm.
there is no magic bullet, it depends on Daily active users (DAU) and also downloads. If they just open the app once for a while and close it then that’s not that great, unless you have 10k a day doing that. For DAU, if you constantly have 1000 a day coming back, then you could make money but it’s not crazy money. Churn rate (people that drop the app delete it whatever) will be high, so if you get 1000 a day, and 500 come back, then you are bleeding users but gaining them…anyway you can google all the terms and read in depth about it…it’s a bit complicated.
That’s just my quick experience. Chartboost has been pretty good, iAds has been great at times and a punch in the face at others. Applovin’ has been $50 ecpm or more usually consistently (I use that on a couple cocos2dx projects, not sure if it’s available on corona without some library import in which case you’d need enterprise).
Ads can make you money, just be realistic about it. Don’t think you can just throw an app out there and expect to make quick money. You need something that engages the user and not just a open once and toss app.