I debated whether I should post this data or not. For one, I had turned off ads on all my older games for most of April, and instead I was running ads for Neil Rajah. Also, Mobclix has been having trouble with reporting revenue numbers, so even now, I’m not sure if these numbers are final, or if they’re going to change. But ultimately I decided to post the data, because this is pretty much the only record I keep, so it helps me go back and cross-check the Mobclix invoices. Also, (and this is mostly vanity), maybe some of you are interested in how Neil Rajah is doing 
Ad Revenue
I’ve changed the format of this table, because adding Neil Rajah created too many columns that messed with the formatting. So I’ve collapsed sCatter and Drippy into one data set. Those games have very low usage and earnings, and the only reason I track them is to have a cross-reference for Mobclix.
sCatter & Drippy | Bus Jumper | Neil Rajah | Total per Month |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total per Game | $135.74 | $896.86 | $35.45 | $1067.46 | |||||||
| Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | |||
| April (2011) | 935 | 16 | $0.18 | - | - | - | $0.18 | ||||
| May | 7,915 | 148 | $3.15 | 277,166 | 2,351 | $59.53 | $62.68 | ||||
| June | 17,871 | 366 | $4.55 | 212,897 | 4,081 | $63.02 | $67.57 | ||||
| July | 35,527 | 670 | $14.90 | 309,395 | 3,113 | $108.60 | $123.50 | ||||
| August | 28,031 | 379 | $4.28 | 259,481 | 2,428 | $44.70 | $48.98 | ||||
| September | 15,142 | 296 | $3.94 | 155,001 | 1,573 | $39.98 | $43.92 | ||||
| October | 28,894 | 378 | $6.50 | 243,578 | 1,735 | $58.16 | $64.66 | ||||
| November | 36,550 | 740 | $13.97 | 264,278 | 3,429 | $72.95 | $86.92 | ||||
| December | 64,640 | 1,693 | $37.38 | 432,863 | 7,447 | $169.21 | $206.59 | ||||
| January (2012) | 71,690 | 1,341 | $21.79 | 461,196 | 8,670 | $128.16 | $149.95 | ||||
| February | 65,653 | 728 | $13.59 | 332,540 | 5,459 | $82.04 | $95.63 | ||||
| March | 33,648 | 836 | $10.18 | 182,024 | 4,586 | $57.48 | 1,957 | 7 | $0.18 | $67.84 | |
| April | 22,517 | 640 | $1.33 | 62,138 | 2,931 | $12.68 | 292,676 | 5,563 | $35.27 | $49.28 | |
A couple of things to mention:
- Ignore the impressions count for Neil Rajah. I fetch a new ad as soon as the old ad is hidden, so I’m basically fetching 2 ads for every level played. I’ve noticed that often, those end up fetching the same ad over and over again. So I’m basically wasting impressions. I’m changing the code to put a timer in, and only fetch an ad if the old ad gets hidden, and 30 seconds have elapsed since the last fetch, or something like that
- The clicks and revenue are what Mobclix is showing today. I had some clicks in March from my beta testers, and that paid about 2.5 cents per click. For April, I earned about 0.6 cents per click. Like I said, I’m hoping that this is a reporting error
- For the other games, I turned off ad refresh, since there’s no point refreshing the same ad. Also, the clicks are mostly on my house ad, so the revenue-per-click can’t be calculated from this data. I had ads turned off for about 3 weeks, so the revenue on the old games is from about a week’s worth of real ads
Paid Games
One sale for Bus Jumper, so Google owes me 63 cents. 2 sales on Amazon. My Amazon sales dropped like a rock after I got my first (and so far only) review, which was a 1-star. I know what I did wrong, I think the “Would you mind rating this app” link goes to the free app, so I failed to ask users of the paid app to rate it. My common code base has moved on quite a bit, and resurrecting Bus Jumper will be a non-trivial task (I tried to build it a few weeks back, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort).
Mobclix, 0.6 cents per click ? Sounds about what I got. I went to MoPub ….
I’m not ready to give up on them just yet
Bus Jumper is getting 1-2 cents per click, which is about what I’ve always seen. So I’m hopeful that the Neil Rajah numbers are temporary, related to the Mobclix reporting bug and/or the fact that it’s a new app in their system. But who knows. If it stays this way over time, then yes, I’ll definitely be looking at alternatives.
What kind of per-click revenue numbers are you getting with MoPub and over how may impressions / clicks?
I use a mixture of Millenial Media and Mobpub and normally get 2c to 3c per add. Its enough for our ‘Pac snake’ game to get over $2,000 a month. Email me if you want more info.
Admob and Inmobi are the worst ones I have used so far and I’ve used most of them.
Martin (Cheesy Games UK)
Well, I contacted Mobclix, and it turns out that Neil Rajah’s per-click revenue is low because most of the ad requests are coming from India, where the payouts are lower. This matches my analytics data, which shows that about 50% of the users are in India. So the main question is, how do I do a better job of marketing the game to US and European users.
I’m not running an ads for my own games at the moment, so if you want I’ll run some ads for it in Pac Snake if you want, i get about 95% fill rate, so I can give you 5% of our ads if you want for a few weeks. Nearly all our uses are in the USA.
Wow, thanks for the offer. I might take you up on that
I had dome something similar, I had Neil Rajah ads running 100% on my other games. I was getting about 5-7% ctr on those. I stopped after about a month. Now that I think about it, I could probably keep it at a lower percentage. It will reduce real ad impressions on those games, but it might be a good move from the ‘bigger picture’ POV.
anyway if you want to try it, email me the banner you want (320*50) and I’ will get it sorted in the weekend.
smartybarlow@googlemail.com