Unity ads question

Say I want to implement a coin system in my game where the players can use to unlock things or maybe even pay using this system to remove ads from the game. Can I put a button in the menu which gives the user points by watching ads?

I was thinking that collecting these coins will be in-game, but also if you want to fast track, you can just click on the watch ads button in the main menu to gain more point. Would this be something against the rules?

 

Not against the rules at all. In fact, its encouraged by Unity Ads. Incentivised ads are kind of what the platform is built around.

 

Yea, I was thinking IAP but I feel like it's somewhat of a drag at the moment, so giving the user something like this to gain extra points is a good idea.

 

My game (Turboprop Flight Simulator) uses ads to reward players with in-game currency, in two manners:
1. Rewarded ads: you click to watch the ad, the ad is shown in full, and then you get the currency reward;
2. Packs of interstitial ads: you choose a pack of interstitial video ads (example: 6 skippable ads for 1000 currency) and it gives you the currency reward right away, but then you owe the game to watch those 6 ads, which will be delivered automatically one at a time after missions, or on-demand by pressing a button.
In this manner, I don't use in-game purchases, nor I harass the player with unsolicitated ads.

 

That's an interesting approach I've not seen before. How is it working out?

 

I don't have a baseline for comparison since it's the first game that I have published myself, but I'll give you the current numbers and you get to judge based on them:
- 48$ won today, and on average in the past few days about 40$ per day, but keeps growing.
- On average 8000 impressions per day with Chartboost and 17,000 with UnityAds.
- Chartboost eCPM about 1.5$, UnityAds eCPM about 1.9$, but both growing.
- 97,000 active installs to date out of 300,000 total.
- 30,000 new installs today, the average in previous days about 23,000.
- 22,000 uninstalls today, the average in previous days about 17,000.

So, you tell me how it's working, because I don't know to what to compare them.

 

wow that s some huge number, how do you manage to get that amount of download? You got featured?

 

In the first month after release to production, it didn't received much attention. The number of installs grew steadily but slowly. However, the growth was not linear, it was exponential, for example: one weekend I would get 10 installs a day, the next I would get 50, the next 300, then 2000, and so on. So, at some point the number became quite significant.

I did almost no promotion, apart from some Facebook ads for 5 Euros which run for 2 days and achieved almost nothing in terms of lasting increase in downloads. And I didn't got any replies or support from the "influencers" that I contacted either (mainly YouTube game review channels and online publications).

What I did do, was to make a high quality game which makes people play it and tell others about it. Also I did a bit of ASO on my app's description to make sure it has all the buzzwords related to flight sims in sufficient quantities, and made sure to include several references to "NEW" and "2017", because when people seek this kind of games, they search for new games made in the current year. I also made translation of that description in several languages (even though my game is only in english).

The game eventually begun growing in the charts, and got featured in the simulation category a handful of times, but that happend after the growth that I spoke about.

I think the game's ascension is due mainly to its quality and the fact that the "flight simulator" genre has a pretty significant crowd who looks for such games.

The saying "If you make it they will come" is actually true, if the thing that you make is good enough.

 

that was a really interesting insght view, thank for sharing, actually i didn t think that you could be feature even after launch, that s really cool tho.

 

There is a myth that the only way to get featured on Google Play is to deal with them behind closed doors, or by purchasing expensive adwords. And I wish to stress the term MYTH, as in not true at all. Google Play seems to be quite fair in allowing good apps to emerge out of the overcrowded swamp of bad apps.

So, if you have great games, don't worry about the overcrowded status of the appstores, because they will emerge to the top eventually. But I stress again: YOU MUST HAVE GREAT GAMES WITH HIGH PRODUCTION VALUES which compel people to play them and to spread the word about them.

 

that s encouraging words for certain developers even " YOU MUST HAVE GREAT GAMES WITH HIGH PRODUCTION VALUES" i wonder if it s the same for Apple editorial, releasing a game and because that game got traction, apple decide to feature it even it was release ages ago.

 

I have been watching Turboprop Flight Simulator almost from the beginning and I definitely agree with @AxPetre; it is merely the quality of his game that promoted itself so nice and I am glad that is the case. In fact, I would be very disappointed if his game hadn't got so popular. Well done @AxPetre and thanks for sharing the numbers regarding to ads!

 

Thank you @bulutp. However, my game did slowed down in some ways and stagnated in other ways since that post with the numbers:
- The earnings have plateaued at an average of about 45$ per day.
- The Chartboots impressions have remained at between 7500 to 8500, while UnityAds at about 19,000.
- The eCPMs for both ad networks have remained pretty much the same (1.5 and 1.9).
- Active installs are now 130,000 out of 563,000 total (high rate of uninstall).
- The installs per day dropped to an average of about 14,000 (half of what it once was).
- The uninstalls per day is now at an average of about 13,000, and in a few days they even exceeded slightly the installs.
- And my game's rating keeps going down (slowly but surely), and I don't know why that is.

So, for my first self-published game I think it's ok, but I still need to tweak things to find a better way in my next games.

 

yes, yes, yes, i'm dragging up an old thread, but i don't care! this information is very important, especially for new game producers who are wondering how they should handle their release, i'm in the beta test stage of mine and i was wondering how i should go about getting my game "out there" @AxPetre was kind enough to give me all this info(through this thread), especially the part about how you don't need to approach reviewers especially if your game is quality, it should sell itself.

 

Yes, but don't dismiss the possibility of approaching reviewers. If you can and know how to do promotion properly, then by all means do so.
You also mention the word "sell", which I don't know if it's just part of the metaphore, or if your game is actually a pay-to-play, but if it is the latter, then you'll probably need some promotion and advertising in order to find and compel enough people to buy your game. My advices given previously were based on my type of game which is free, so I'm not sure how well they would work with a paid game.

 

just metaphore!