Johannes is the co-founder of June is over, so it’s time for my monthly money report again.
If you are new to this series, let me explain it to you: Since Android is an open platform, I decided to be open about the income I’m making with my Android apps too. In the last report I aimed to reach $750 for the last month. You will see if it worked out.
For all money reports, please click here.
Which Apps?
You might have noticed that Droid-Blog.net now has its own Android app. The number of ad requests and downloads was enormous and so was its overall success. Here are the numbers:
3D Invaders – about 82,000 installs (+10k), 20% active
AL Voice Recorder – about 335,000 installs (+15k), 26% active
AL Voice Recorder Ad Free – about 650 installs (+-0), 44% active
Droid-Bog.net Android App – 10 installs (+10), 30% active
SmsToSpeech full – about 640 installs (+40), 44% active
What did I do?
As you can see the AL Voice Recorder gained 15,000 new users while the overall userbase declined a bit (about 3,500 active installs were lost). 3D Invaders had some frequent updates and new weapons in the first half of the month. Some days later I also published In-App Billing. While the latter was not quite successful, the overall active downloads increased while the download-active installs-ratio stayed the same. Also, I switched back from Mobclix to AdMob which resulted in an increase in AdMob income.
The Droid-Blog.net app was able to get a total of fantastic ten downloads and brought in not a single cent. AL Voice Recorder Ad Free didn’t sell many copies too, but somehow SmsToSpeech Full was sold about 40 times. I didn’t do any further investigation why this happened, but I positively accept it.
Advertising Stats
Sebastian S. suggested to include not only download numbers, but also ad statistics. Before I start some definitions:
A request happens when a device requests an ad to be served. An impression is an ad that is actually delivered and shown on the device. The fillrate is the impression-request-ratio (#impressions / #requests * 100%). The CTR (Click Through Rate) is the clicked ads-impressions-ratio (#of clicked ads / impressions * 100%). The eCPM is the average money generated by 1,000 impressions or, in other words, the value of 1,000 impressions.
I also use the term adjusted fillrate and adjusted requests . These numbers are the same as described above, but they are taking house ads into account. House ads are ads published by you in your own products. They are free of cost and are not part of the request and fillrate numbers. My settings are made in a way that house ads are only delivered if no payed ad can be displayed which is why I’m introducing these adjusted numbers here (as otherwise the transferet impression could be missleading).
Here is how the two main ad networks I used last month performed:
AdMob:
Requests: 460,532
Impressions: 455,912
Fillrate: 99.00%
Clicks: 8,419
CTR: 1.85%
eCPM: $0.81
House Ads: 23.,739
Adjusted Requests: 484,271
Adjusted Fillrate: 94.14%
Madvertise:
Madvertise doesn’t offer house ads, so the adjusted numbers are equal to the normal numbers here, therefore they are not mentioned. Edit, I received an e-mail from Madvertise: Madvertise does offer house ads, but you have to mail the support for that. In the future, it will be automatically available for everyone.
Requests: 335,352,
Impressions: 55,401
Fillrate: 17%
Clicks: 2,622
CTR: 4.73%
eCPM: $5.44
The bad fillrate of Madvertise is because it is focused mainly on european countries. While the most clicks come from the UK, German clicks are by far the most expensive. They grossed an eCPM of $12.77 in the last month, so if your app targets Germany, go and use Madvertise! By the way, the customer service is also great, while it is almost not existent at AdMob.
The CTR is also way higher on Madvertise, but it seems as if this would change in this month (AdMob is becoming better).
Ok, how much?
Here is how much I earned:
AdMob: $367.96 (+$107.45)
Madvertise: ~ $302.16 (+$7.16)
Market sales: ~$74.41 (+$29.41)
Mobclix: ~$0.32 (-$50.62)
Total: ~ $744.85 (+93.38)
As you can see I disabled Mobclix very early in the last month. I didn’t reach my goal of $750, but I got very close to it. To me, it’s still satisfying.
What’s next?
This month I will have lots of work to do, so I will be able to work on my own apps only in the last third. I will focus on an new fantastic app (you will love it, I hope) and the AL Voice Recorder this time. Because I have not that much time to spend, my goal for the next month will be $800.-
Please feel free to share your own experiences in the comments. Please also don’t hesitate to tell me if there is anything else you’d like to get some information about.
2011/07/02 at 01:34
Those are some great results! Thanks for the in-depth figures as well. I found it interesting that your official blog app only got 10 downloads. I did up an app for my blog using feed.nu as well, and it’s had nearly 500 downloads in the past month (and I only mentioned it once on my blog!). Might be the title vs. how many people are searching for that particular term.
Also, it’s interesting to see that you’ve earned far more from advertising than from direct Market sales. You mentioned in-app billing – is that included in the Market sales figure?
2011/07/04 at 15:56
Thank you for commenting again David.
Probably the fact that your blog gets more visitors reason for the bigger success of your app. We will see how it performs this month.
Yes, the Market sales include In-App Billing. It’s been about $0,70 each week, so nothing worth mentioning.
2011/07/02 at 07:50
Hey,
thanks for posting your ad statistics! Those are crazy (that means really good ;) CTR values!
Thanks again,
Sebastian
2011/07/08 at 11:43
Nice income, I hope your numbers will keep increasing.
You should add Android Market link for your apps. So we can try them out :)
2011/07/08 at 13:33
Hi Oren,
I hope so too :D
You can have a look at the apps site and check them out.
2011/07/10 at 16:55
Hi,
My name is Pete. I just started learning android game development. But I need artwork(sprites, backgrounds etc.) for my game. I’m 16 years old & can’t hire an Artist. Can you please suggest me a good source of sprite & artwork online (paid or free) suitable to include in my commercial games(I’ll make ad-supported games like you)? Do you make artwork for your game yourself or do you have an artist?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Pete
2011/07/10 at 20:25
Hi Pete,
nice to hear that.
I can recommend Reiner’s Tilesets and Opengameart.org. Most of the arts are CC-licensed or something equal. I do artwork most times only myself when prototyping. When I’m doing a good job at design, that’s usually an exception.
Good look!
Best regards
Johannes
2011/07/18 at 16:18
Hi,
my App just started in June, performing fine with around 150 Downloads per day. Since I use Admob and Madvertise I compared my CTR and eCPM with yours and, well.. I found a big gap :-(
Here are my numbers:
Admob
CTR: 0,25%
eCPM: 0,23$
Madvertise
CTR: 0,32%
eCPM: 1,26€
As far as I understand the numbers, users of my App less frequently click the ads, no matter if it are Admob or Madvertise-ads.
My questions are: Did you experience any big changes in your CTR/eCPM numbers in the past (i.e.do they increase over time or not)? Have you got any ideas for optimizing the advertising in an app w/o annoying the users :-)
2011/07/18 at 16:54
Hi Richard,
nice game, I like it.
Unfortunately I didn’t see any ads as I’m not having a good network connection where I am right now.
In general, of course you want ads to be clicked only when the user wants it. Still, you can put them close to the physical menu buttons or to your answer and menu buttons. Personally I think the latter is annoying but the first thing is acceptable.
I must say that I don’t have any request interval set for my ads, so they are only shown when an activity is created in Admob. If you are doing that differently, that might be a reason at this point.
My experiences with CTR/eCPM are that their CTR stays about the same while the eCPM has went down drastically in december 2010 but stayed there ever since.
By the way: Thank you for linking, I added you to my blogroll as well.
Best regards
Johannes
2011/07/18 at 17:06
I must say that I don’t have any request interval set for my ads, so they are only shown when an activity is created in Admob.
I think thats the point. While your app loads the ad once, my app refreshes permanently. So this leads to more impressions per user in my case what causes a lower CTR.
Is there any reason why you suppress refreshing, e.g. save traffic costs?
Btw, thanks 4 adding my blog and trying my game. Its my first one so be indulgent :-)
Normaly Ads are shown ingame below the 4 answer-buttons and above the highscores-list. I reimplemented your switch-between admob-and-madvertise-mechanism. Good suggestion, thanks 4 that too.
2011/07/19 at 09:07
Yes the reason is the fillrate. When apps are refreshing very often, there will be a point where every app is shown. In some countries this happens very fast.
The game looks nice and I didn’t experience any errors yet. Keep it up!
Great that the AdMob-Madvertise-approach was helpful to you :) Thank you for your feedback.
2012/07/19 at 19:45
I see the name of the game…you can’t just create an app, put it out there and watch all the cash come in…you gotta nurture it month to month and work a variety of angles.
Thanks Johannes for putting your app data out there…learning much from it.
2012/07/20 at 20:27
Thank you for all your comments, Gread to see your dedication.
2012/07/25 at 13:23
Hi Johannes,
I want first of all to thank you for posting income reports. They are very inspiring! :)
I’m newbie Android developer and I recently publish my first game on Google Play.
It’s called Fifteen Puzzle X and it’s the classic sliding tile game with resources done using Blender and YafaRay.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.megasoft78.fifteenpuzzlex
I have around 150 downloads per day.
I’m using admob and my CTR is 0.4% and eCPM $0.32. It seems low to me. :(
Do you have any suggestion about ads positioning?
I’d like also to implements madvertise but 99% of my users are from Italy.
Do you know if madvertise perform well in that country?
Best Regards,
Gabriele Ferreri
2012/07/26 at 13:42
Hi Gabriele,
have a look at this.
I’m afraid madvertise is not very strong in Italy. I think I had some impressions some time ago, but they seem to be in something like a crisis right now.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/07/26 at 13:55
Hi Johannes,
I quickly look at your article and I prefere the first way because I’d like to make happy my users.
About Madvertise I think I’ll wait to include it into my game because as I told you I have 99% of my users from Italy.
I’m trying send emails to some websites for a review but they want to get paid and because it’s a free app I don’t want to spend money.
Do you have any suggestion to improve game visibilities to US market?
Best Regards,
Gabriele Ferreri
2012/07/26 at 14:01
If they don’t want to write about you, you have to write about yourself. You can use comments and forums for that or try to build up your own blog, but that probably is too time consuming.
You can also try to pay one bigger blog and use this reference to show it to other blogs, which then are more likely to write about you.
2012/07/26 at 14:05
Thank you very much. I will follow your suggestion.
:)
2012/07/26 at 17:59
Gabriele,
Congratz on your first app! Looks good.
I am a new developer as well and starting on my first app.
Good to see what others are doing and how business is going.
I wish you luck!