Interstitial vs Banner Ads - Your Opinions

Ads... I have a feeling no developer actually enjoys the process of having to figure out a way to place the ugly things somewhere into their once pristine app, but part of the current mobile gaming economy makes them something that many developers will have to deal with at some point or another (obviously there are exceptions).
I realize there are many different approaches to implementing ads, all going towards the goal of striking a balance between not annoying the user to the point of losing the battle with their precious attention span but also hopefully being able to make a little bit of money from the app you worked so hard on.

From the bit of research I've done, interstitial keeps popping up as being the most effective in terms of click-through and what not and I've read several opinions that seem to think they're less obnoxious than having a perpetual banner somewhere on the screen. So, for my first app I went down the interstitial route to begin with. Game-overs or Wins in my game are fewer and farther between than say a game like Flappy Bird, so I tentatively put interstitials in the following places: Game over or winning the game, restarting the game from within the game, and also when resuming a saved game. It still feels a little obnoxious to have the full-page ad suddenly pop up, even though they are not during the actual gameplay.

So I was wondering what people's opinions on the two are-- what's been successful for you, etc.. Both in terms of revenue and in making an app that won't scare first time users off.

Thanks.

 

I think you want to have banner ads because they are alot less intrusive. Have your game so the player is dying alot -- flappy bird, etc, then you see the banner ad when you die. The interstitials are super annoying, and if your game was good enough and you didnt annoy the user too much you could have an option to remove ad for $1 (or whatever), so it would be a delicate balance between annoying them, but not enough where they quit your app for good.

 

Well in my particular case it's a take on a 2048/Threes style game (with super-awesome 3D graphics ) and as such I can't really manipulate how quickly the player wins or loses a game and often I think games will go on for a long time (why I put in the ability to quit and resume a game)-so yeah the more I think about it maybe banner ads during gameplay would be the way to go as ugly as it might be. And yeah I definitely plan on putting in an option to upgrade and remove ads + other things.

 

Yeah i would go with the banner ads because they arent that annoying. You could have an intersella when they lose as well i guess.

Look at how angry birds free does it, they basically do something like that, and then when you pause the game they are promoting there paid apps. There is also a button buy there paid app in the store, they are only offering like 5 levels a world each, etc but thats angry birds.

 

Thanks for the advice, yeah I think for this game at least I'm definitely gonna go with banner ads and just scrap interstitials all together. After trying out each one individually the interstitial ads feel like they really break up the flow and, like you said, they do feel more intrusive. The banner ad is ugly and definitely takes away some of the aesthetics of my game but I'm hoping it's not ugly enough to deter potential players.

Still interested in hearing people's opinion/experiences on the two types of ads just in general though, as I did read in several places that interstitial ads are better at bringing in revenue.

 

I have both in my games and I get about 5x more from interstitials with chartboost over banner ads with admob.

I think the interstitials work better cause they occur when not playing so you might have finished your session and ready to try something else. Clicking the banners during gameplay seems to be unrealistic if your game is enjoyable.

 

Well, don't forget to give them the ability to buy out of the ads. But yeah, I finished the GUI for my game, was super proud, then realized a couple weeks later that the ads will block a critical part of the interface, no matter where I put them. It really sucks that you have to either use good design practices or ad design practices.

You should still user interstitial, just don't play them if the player fails a mission/level. That's kind of rubbing salt in the wound.

 

I receive a lot more from interstitials.
Besides, banner ads can compromise the performance of your game, depending on the way you draw them, be sure to test the situation that most processing needs in the lowest end device you can find that you actually support (I for example targeted android 4.0+ because most android 2.x couldn't run the game well).

 

We found that the best thing to do when making our mobile game was to experiment with several networks and ad formats to see the performance differences in each. Some will have higher click through rates but lower revenue (like Chartboost interstitials for us), and some networks will have better cross promotion abilities (like all of Tap for Tap's formats). In general I've found that interstitials tend to make more money, but obviously they're more annoying to your users and can increase churn, which is bad. Best thing to do is to experiment in your own game to see what works for you, though.

We developed a plugin called Ad Wrapper (on sale in the asset store now!) that helps you integrate and maintain multiple networks in your game. You get the source with it, so it's easy to modify if you want to add logic for different types of ads as well. Yesterday I walked a dev through showing different types of ads for different screen sizes, so if anyone that buys Ad Wrapper needs help putting it together you can contact us. Basically Ad Wrapper is at its core a framework that you integrate networks on top of to keep your in-game code generic and maintainable. Beyond this, though, it enables easy A/B testing because you can turn a network on/off very easily and re-order their priority. So if you want to figure out which type of ads does best in your game, Ad Wrapper will help you experiment quickly to get the most revenue out of your ads. Check out our blog post and the documentation page if you're curious.

 

@vvander, Ad Wrapper sounds interesting. I certainly like the idea of easily swapping between networks, but I assume it requires all SDKs to be included in the app?

As you walked someone through ads for different screen sizes, will you be adding an automatic system to your plugin?

 

@moonjump Glad you think it's interesting! It's not just easily swapping between networks, it will pull from an ordered list of networks when it shows ads, actually. This means you can have multiple networks implemented and if one of them doesn't have an ad ready it will pull from the next one down the list. Perfect for situations where one network has a terrible fill rate but great revenue per ad. To answer your question, yes it does require the SDKs to be included and integrated manually since we can't distribute their code (because we don't own it of course).

If there's enough interest in selecting different ads based on different screen sizes, I'd be glad to put it in the next version along with some custom editor features that would be useful for an even faster set-up.