

Paper Toss dev makes $500k per month with ads - scrrr
http://www.develop-online.net/news/36155/Paper-Toss-dev-makes-500k-per-month-with-ads

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brucehart
I have to wonder how many people are clicking (tapping?) on these ads by
mistake. When you play Paper Toss, the ad is in a band across the top of the
screen and you are moving your finger towards it every time you make a throw.
The ads I saw were not very relevant. For example one was for storage rental
in California when I live in Ohio.

The mobile ad space at the moment reminds me of when AdSense came out a few
years ago and all these web site were making huge amounts of money. Eventually
Google tightened the rules and advertisers got a better handle on the real
value of the ads. Now it is much more difficult to make good money unless you
have a very high traffic site.

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hesdeadjim
For a click to register with the ad, the touch must both start and end within
the ad banner. A swipe from the bottom up, even if it ends on the banner, will
not trigger a click.

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ryandvm
Really? I tried Paper Toss a few months ago and was entertained for about 15
seconds.

As an off-hours Android developer myself, I suppose it should be inspiring to
hear these stories, but I can't help but be a little envious to hear about
Paper Toss and iFart millionaires while my app income trickles in.

Ah well - good for them.

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dpcan
When I let my kids play this game I usually hear a "Daaaaad" after two minutes
because they are in the App Store after clicking the ad on accident and don't
know what to do.

Same happens on the Fart apps.

I have a feeling that if you have a game simple enough that kids like it, and
it has ads, you're getting a lot of "kid clicks".

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chaosmachine
This is exactly why the app ads goldrush will not last. I can only imagine
that >90% of clicks are accidental, and the placement of ads right next to key
game/app controls only exacerbates the situation.

I feel sorry for all those adwords users who don't realize they're opted into
Google's mobile ad network.

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dpcan
I won't argue with you there. I've blown my $$ on mobile ads already and don't
intend to do it again.

Ads need captchas. If an ad is clicked, it should popup a message that says,
what's 2+2 or something. If I answer that, then I'm through, and THEN the
advertiser pays.

..... pipe. dream.

Hey, anyone interested in creating a mobile ad network startup that caters to
advertisers so when their ads are clicked, a captcha pops up, and if the
captcha is answered, only then the advertiser pays?

As an advertiser, this would be interesting to me.

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83457
Captcha sounds like a bit of overkill. Simply a confirm prompt on the screen
should be sufficient to stop 99% of the accidental clicks.

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othello
They mention between "600 and 800 million ad impressions a month", 60% of
which "for third-party mobile ads". Using a 700 million average, that's 420
million impressions used for third party ads, which generated $500,000 in
revues.

This amounts to an average $1.19 CPM, which sounds very very high for in-game
advertisement. Mochiads in flash games are usually in the $0.1-0.2 CPM range.

Can the iPhone market really command such a high premium or is there something
specific to Backflip Studio's games that I'm missing?

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bignoggins
I get $4-$5 eCPM on iAds. My admob eCPM has been low (20c) but I know other
devs that get $1-$2 eCPM with admob so it isn't out of the question. CTR is a
big factor for a lot of mobile ad companies.

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newobj
When advertisers realize that 75% of their clicks are from children fat
fingering their parents mobile devices, this well will dry up faster than you
can say iAd.

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bond
Seems mobile is a good space to be in...

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robryan
As with anything you see the success stories often because they are
interesting which masks the fact that the vast majority of those developing
mobile games have trouble just breaking even.

Without anything first hand experience I get the feeling that advertisers are
paying to much at the moment for ad space in iphone apps, given that it's a
relatively new advertising direction I don't think it's really stabilized yet
and going forward it will probably become harder to pull the same kinds of
number from that same traffic.

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tyng
Good point - reminds me of the ridiculous amount of money Yahoo was making
back in the early days of internet, probably not going to be sustainable.

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dminor
From the title I thought this was for 1 game from 1 person, but this is across
5 or so games for the 6 person (according to Wikipedia) company.

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jeroen
The numbers:

.. more than 47.5 million installs on iOS devices to date, and 5.5 million on
Android .. of games including Paper Toss, Ragdoll Blaster, Harbor Havoc 3D,
NinJump and Buganoids .. 15 million monthly active users .. generating between
600 million and 800 million ad impressions a month across its free games

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drtse4
And the flood of Paper Toss clones began.

I just tested this out months ago on Android and don't remember the details,
how are the ads placed? In-game ads or there is an ad in the rankings page?

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ScottWhigham
I just can't figure out what the developer stands to gain from giving out such
private and proprietary information... If you go around telling people that
you make $500,000 in ads on a simple iPhone game that someone else could
clone, you should expect to be hit with tons of clones and SEM trying to take
traffic away. I don't get it.

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jeebusroxors
There's no cost to download or play - what's the incentive to play a clone?
Especially when all your friends are playing the real one.

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follower
> what's the incentive to play a clone?

The funny thing I noticed when I played the free version previously is that
the developer actually manages to tell a story during the game and has little
bits of humour in it. These things make a difference.

(The storyline includes traveling around the world playing competitively and
when you return your waste basket is covered in country flag stickers. Then
there's the audio feedback when you throw paper outside the screen.)

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hesdeadjim
Ha! When we sit around and brainstorm ideas for new levels in Paper Toss or
World Tour (or secret future projects) we always joke about how no one
probably has any idea that there is a storyline behind it. That's pretty cool
you noticed that :)

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follower
Pleased for you to know all that effort didn't go unnoticed. :)

Intrigued to see another tech company based in Boulder. I spent some time
visiting a client there a few months ago. Seems like there's quite the tech
community growing there.

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krosaen
Reminds me of the the success of Tap Defense on the iPhone, which was (is?) a
really successful, free, ad supported game. Its success funded tapjoy.com,
which went on to even greater success and an exit.

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gyardley
Ben & Lee invested heavily in enabling virtual goods before iOS had any
infrastructure for it - I think the Tap Defense revenue primarily came from
people installing other applications in order to get an in-game feature, not
from traditional ad networks like AdMob. And I'm pretty sure Tapjoy still did
a seed round of ~$500K or so to get started, although I forget with who.

No arguing that they did have a nice exit, and it's somewhat telling that
their acquirer, Offerpal Media, has now renamed themselves 'Tapjoy'. That
doesn't happen very often.

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krosaen
Yeah, they eventually took a seed round, but the revenue from tap defense let
Ben comfortably quit his day job at Google.

Didn't know that Offerpal had renamed themselves, cool!

