

Android income experiment - or why AdMob sucks - whalabi
http://fanitis.com/2011/08/26/android-income-experiment/

======
andypants
Before I continue, I'll say I'm not a supporter of admob. I don't think ads
belong on mobile phones the same way they do on the internet.

But your experience is hardly revealing. 300 ad impressions is practically
nothing. Standard clickthrough rates are 1% or less, and probably even less on
mobile ads, so it's not a surprise that you didn't get a single click.

The smallest unit when purchasing ad impressions is 1,000. If you can't make
the smallest unit, you shouldn't expect to make much money either.

~~~
scrollbar
CTR on mobile ads averages around 1%. So you're spot on :)

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qeorge
Lots of problems here. First, his apps are Live Wallpapers, and he only shows
ads on the preferences screen. Second, his sample is only ~500 installs and
600 impressions!

AdMob isn't killing it for me, but is a lot better than the OP portends.
Here's my stats so far today:

<http://i.imgur.com/CNJb1.png>

FWIW: 25k installs, ~38% active, 1.7 MM impressions to date (2 months).

~~~
whalabi
Agreed, small sample. However ads on the preferences screen of live wallpapers
is common practise. Don't see why the results can't be extrapolated unless
amount of requests effects inventory served. I'm new to ads - is this true?

~~~
lurker19
First, in this case, sample is so small that noise dominates.

On your main questions, yes, established apps with known average-beating
clickthrough and (where possible) targeted demographics are matched to higher-
paying-per-click lower-volume advertisers.

This is done to optimize total revenue through the network, and to avoid
showing all the impressions of a high-paying advertiser on a junky "back page"
that has low CTR and low spend.

Now, if you are a "brand" advertiser who values impressions and not clicks,
you might be happy on the free back page.

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justinjas
For me AdMob performs slightly better than iAd. This is on an iPhone game that
uses AdWhirl, so AdMob is actually getting the leftovers from iAd.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/117000/hackernews/admob.png>

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/117000/hackernews/iad.png>

~~~
dpcan
Holy crap, what is your secret?

I average 15K impressions a day on one of our games, and get maybe 30 clicks,
and make around a buck.

You get ~2K impressions and close to 115 clicks and make ~$5-$10

If I could get your numbers I'd be making a killing.

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bcl
Note: I use AdMob for my NASCAR Countdown iPhone app. So my experience is with
iOS not Android (yet).

First off, his ad placement isn't very good. It needs to be in a visible, but
not intrusive spot. A preference screen isn't going to be visited much.

A fill rate of 28% is incredible. If I had that fill rate I'd be making actual
money with my app instead of the $50 or so a month. AdMob adjusts your fill
rate to control costs, it starts out high and drops as their system adjusts
for click through and whatever else they throw into the equation.

My app's single ad on the main page gets between 2k-9k requests a day (it
varies as you get closer to a race). The fill rate has been 0.54% to 3.7% in
the last few weeks, translating into 1-10 clicks a day.

~~~
BenSS
I'm surprised you're getting such low fill rates on AdMob. In my HackerNews
Padreader app, I'm using iAd, with AdMob to fill in because the fill rates are
so much higher (but lower payout). Did you change any of the default ad
settings? Certain ad dimensions also have a higher fill than others.

~~~
BenSS
Some additional info:

iAd gives me a 20-70% fill rate (currently 50% for last 7 days)

AdMob gives me a 90%+ fill rate fairly consistently

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mrj
I had a similar experience. I wrote an app that helped parents choose a name
while my wife and I were expecting. I thought I'd see how admob performed, so
I put some unobtrusive ads in.

You might expect with the keywords that I was sending, oh I don't know, ads
somehow relating to parenting? When you're a new parent you have to buy a ton
of new things. What could be better for advertisers?

Not a single ad in the app's entire existence ever targeted anything to do
with the app's audience. The most common ad that I saw was for gamers. Trying
to enable local ads didn't help either, the same ad displayed over and over
again for a spa -- over 200 miles away.

Needless to say, the advertising barely paid for the coffee that I drank while
developing that app...

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fara
AdMob doesnt work for such few installs. I have an app with 900 active
installs which averages 600 impressions per day with 1%CTR. That makes only
30cents the best days...

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.devartis.games.mem...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.devartis.games.memotest&feature=search_result)

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aresant
In the "be careful what you wish for" files, the glut of mobile inventory is
about to bring a scourge of affiliate / direct response driven solutions.

In the world of TV & Radio the "remnant", or unfilled inventory, has shifted
in the last 10 years to performance advertising / per inquiry.

Fantastic stuff like payday lending, marginally legal insurance schemes,
weight loss pills, etc have all gotten major traction due to an over abundance
of ad inventory.

I'm mentioning this because with the excess of unsold mobile inventory app
makers are looking for solutions, and affiliate marketers and direct response
guys are going to start coming on strong.

At Affiliate Summit last weekend this was the topic du jour.

Reminded me of the last go around when the affiliate marketing world was fired
up about the new "advertorial" format.

Hold on to your crash helmets, I predict ugliness ahead.

------
suking
It also sucks for advertisers. At least for my click to call campaign - it
blew through about $500 (very cheap CPC too) in 10 mins and literally every
call was a misclick - not 1 single good call.

~~~
bcl
That's a big problem with mobile ads. App developers need to make sure they
place them away from buttons and OS elements to minimize stray clicks.

~~~
ailon
Or just use pay-per-view not pay-per-click model in mobile advertising
[http://blog.adduplex.com/2011/08/pay-per-view-vs-pay-per-
cli...](http://blog.adduplex.com/2011/08/pay-per-view-vs-pay-per-click-in-
mobile.html)

~~~
suking
Not sure how that would solve the problem unless the CPM is like $0.0001.
Maybe they should do click to call tracking and set minimum call lengths to be
billed - although that might mean AdMob doesn't make any $ b/c it's all
mistakes/fraud.

~~~
suking
@ailon - That still doesn't solve my problem because IT IS all
fraud/misclicks. So unless the CPM is insanely low it still won't register any
good calls. The only thing I can see mobile ads working for, as they currently
are, is for downloading other apps. Mobile->real world doesn't seem to be
working in my experience and some other people I've talked with.

~~~
ailon
In PPV no one can defraud you with fake clicks. You are not paying for clicks.
And generating thousands of impressions for fraud purposes is less trivial
task than just a few clicks here and there.

~~~
suking
I 100% get what you're saying and see there is less risk - however, I'm just
not buying mobile will work for online->offline phone calls after our massive
failures (yes - we tried more than once). Are there any case studies out there
of mobile campaigns bringing in real calls?

