Ad Strategy and AdMob Download Exchange

[Pyrrhic Victory]

I have a single app that's less than a month old. I'm in the process of coding two more apps, but I'm seeing what works with the first one.

I call it my sacrificial app because it really was testing the iPhone App Store. Its a free, ad-supported app that only gets about 150 downloads a day. Judging by updates, at least 1000 people have kept it on their iPhones/iPods.

I noticed that iAds pay a lot higher eCPM than AdMob. So I decided to pump the Download Exchange to the max. The idea is to take other apps ads and then promote my app (later apps) on theirs. While keeping the premium paying ads of iAds.

I hope to introduce paid apps soon enough and the idea of having ads for them on other apps appeals to me.

Is this a decent strategy? What do other people do?

[Pyrrhic Victory]

Just to be clear, I'm using AdWhirl with iAd primary and AdMob secondary. So it tries to fill iAd first and if it can't, it falls back on AdMob.

[Joseph Nardone]

Originally Posted by Pyrrhic Victory

Just to be clear, I'm using AdWhirl with iAd primary and AdMob secondary. So it tries to fill iAd first and if it can't, it falls back on AdMob.

I just checked it out - I have not used it so this advice is theoretical:

They say that they show your ads about 1:1 for ads that you show with your inventory. They also say that for free apps you can expect a conversion rate of 10% on a clickthrough rate of 1% so you get one free app download for every 1000 impressions.

Assuming that those results are not overly optimistic - which they probably are - your are giving up whatever eCPM you currently get for each free download - if you have a 0.25 eCPM then you are giving up the 0.25 you would have made on the 1000 impressions that you are giving to the exchange that it takes to get you one download.

At this time I think you can use a pay-per-download service like TapJoy to get free app installs for 0.25 each - but the big difference is that the TapJoy customers don't actually want you app - they just download it to get some virtual goods or some other prize while the AdMob 0.1% that download you app will probably use it.

Given all that - I would definitely use it for your unused inventory and I would use it in place of your regular inventory if your free app can generate more than your current eCPM per install.

The install rate for a paid app will be considerably lower than that of a free app so you really need to find our your click-through and conversion rate for your paid app's ad. I have a feeling that a pay-per-click ad is probably a cheaper way to drive installs of a paid app than giving up your inventory to that program.

Joseph

[Pyrrhic Victory]

Originally Posted by Joseph Nardone

I just checked it out - I have not used it so this advice is theoretical:

They say that they show your ads about 1:1 for ads that you show with your inventory. They also say that for free apps you can expect a conversion rate of 10% on a clickthrough rate of 1% so you get one free app download for every 1000 impressions.

Assuming that those results are not overly optimistic - which they probably are - your are giving up whatever eCPM you currently get for each free download - if you have a 0.25 eCPM then you are giving up the 0.25 you would have made on the 1000 impressions that you are giving to the exchange that it takes to get you one download.

At this time I think you can use a pay-per-download service like TapJoy to get free app installs for 0.25 each - but the big difference is that the TapJoy customers don't actually want you app - they just download it to get some virtual goods or some other prize while the AdMob 0.1% that download you app will probably use it.

Given all that - I would definitely use it for your unused inventory and I would use it in place of your regular inventory if your free app can generate more than your current eCPM per install.

The install rate for a paid app will be considerably lower than that of a free app so you really need to find our your click-through and conversion rate for your paid app's ad. I have a feeling that a pay-per-click ad is probably a cheaper way to drive installs of a paid app than giving up your inventory to that program.

Joseph

thanks