I love a little drama (and frankly there ain't enough of it in this space)...so I must say I really enjoyed coverage this morning from PocketGamer & GoMo News of Fishlabs CEO Michael Schade's "Network" moment on the subject of how mobile in-game ad network Greystripe has been performing for them (at a BBQ put on by competitor Smaato...btw). Apparently he's "very frustrated" (and doesn't care if everyone knows it) that Greystripe is not selling all the available inventory in the German developer's games. It looks like a rift has developed between the companies over how important targeted ads are within games...with Schade clearly being of the opinion that targeting matters very little and that the focus needs to be 100% ad fill. To me it seems like striking a balance between relevance & placement to maximize revenue yield from CPM or CPC should be the priority...but what do I know? Clearly Schade is moving on...to his BBQ buddies Smaato.
Anyhoo...the whole kerfuffle got me wondering how much money really gets generated from an ad-supported mobile game. I've always heard from publishers that the revenue was pretty pathetic and that ad-supported was only appropriate for games at the end of their pay per download or subscription fee life cycle. I mean even if a game is downloaded by a million people, played 20times, has a $15 CPM with 70% fill rate it would generate about $200k...and that would probably be the Tetris of ad-supported games. Most publishers could beat this result with a lackluster 100k paid downloads across carriers WW. Ad fill, relevance, does it really matter very much...are ad-supported games worth all this acrimony? Probably not...what I'm guessing is that those Smaato guys just rock better brats and beers than the Greystripe crew. Oh snap!
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