Reward videos - the future of advertising?

With 'Crossy Road' making over $1million with incentivised video adverts, is this the future for a successful formula with free apps?

Matt Hall explained that “We wanted it [Crossy Road] to be free, so that everyone has a chance to play.” To make money, they devised a monetisation system inspired by NimbleBit's puzzler Disco Zoo.

“I played Disco Zoo and thought that video ads were a really good way to earn money without getting into people’s faces. We just needed to figure out a fun reason for players to watch them,” Hall said.

Full story

Having played the game, it's not totally generous with coins(to purchase different characters) but there's no start up adverts, ads after death - nada.

Every 20-30 mins you are reward free with random coins (10-100 I have had) and if you watch a video, you earn 20 coins. Chartboost recently about reward video adverts in their latest SDK and this could have a good impact until the advertisers bring their rates down due to over supply!

Thoughts?

Comments

  • BigDaveBigDave Member Posts: 2,239

    thanks for sharing

  • ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114

    Combat Monsters by Rubicon Mobile used a similar system of rewarding users for watching adverts, and it seemed to work quite well from a players point of view... Wasn't in your face, and didn't impact gameplay, so felt like it was a fair and honest system of monetizing the game.

    I guess as with all advertising it's as much down to how the individual developer uses it, but in the case of Combat Monsters it seemed to be a well implemented system of advertising.

  • iamcarteziamcartez Houston, TexasMember Posts: 648

    @BlackCloakGS‌ Just curious, are we able to use the reward videos, or is it just the static and video interstitials? I would do a quick test but I'm at work... in a cubicle, 10000 feet underground with spotty underground wifi. :)

  • HopscotchHopscotch Member, PRO Posts: 2,782

    @iamcartez‌, as mentioned in the other thread, rewarded videos require the handling of callbacks via an external server. GS does not support this at the moment. We have a solution for this but it is quite involved. Matching up the user with the callback from Chartboost is the tricky part.

  • jigglybeanjigglybean Member Posts: 1,584

    Incase anyone missed this.

  • Braydon_SFXBraydon_SFX Member, Sous Chef, Bowlboy Sidekick Posts: 9,273

    @iamcartez said:
    BlackCloakGS‌ Just curious, are we able to use the reward videos, or is it just the static and video interstitials? I would do a quick test but I'm at work... in a cubicle, 10000 feet underground with spotty underground wifi. :)

    I'm interested in this too. I hate ads, but I will actually watch a video ad if it gets me that extra 20 coins I need to purchase something in-game. So those video ads work well.

    Thanks for the find, @jigglybean‌ !

  • robertkdalerobertkdale USAMember Posts: 912

    Very Interesting!

  • robertkdalerobertkdale USAMember Posts: 912

    Can we do this with GS?

  • HopscotchHopscotch Member, PRO Posts: 2,782
    edited January 2015

    @robertkdale, implementing rewarded STATIC Chartboost ads is relatively easy, given a backend server.

    Rewarded video ads (which GS does not support yet) is possible but quit involved (in man hours, not so much the tech).

    That is why I suggest everyone up-vote the following feature request

    http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=315

    so life can be easier for us all.

    Rewarded ads is a very fair and lucrative way to monetize your apps.

  • Braydon_SFXBraydon_SFX Member, Sous Chef, Bowlboy Sidekick Posts: 9,273

    @Hopscotch said:
    robertkdale, implementing rewarded STATIC Chartboost ads is relatively easy, given a backend server.

    Rewarded video ads (which GS does not support yet) is possible but quit involved (in man hours, not so much the tech).

    That is why I suggest everyone up-vote the following feature request

    http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=315

    so life can be easier for us all.

    Rewarded ads is a very fair and lucrative way to monetize your apps.

    Voted!

  • jigglybeanjigglybean Member Posts: 1,584

    @Hopscotch said:

    Rewarded ads is a very fair and lucrative way to monetize your apps.

    Crossy Road devs just made $1 million from using these kind of adverts - so personally, this is a 'no brainer'

  • gingagaminggingagaming FREELANCE GS DEV Member Posts: 1,688

    Maybe if we invlove @Dan_Chartboost‌ he maybe able to persuade GS at a higher level....

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 682

    Sounds like they have lots of time for the small guys, I like that. Wish Google would take a leaf out of their book!

    The video ads sound great....I've added my vote to the cause :)

  • KC_GamesKC_Games Member, PRO Posts: 86

    Voted. I would totally watch a 15 sec ad to get that upgrade and I think my users would too. This could have a tremendous impact on our monetization as devs :p

  • RondoRocketRondoRocket Member Posts: 411

    Voted... seems like a great way to implement ads and get people to watch.

  • robertkdalerobertkdale USAMember Posts: 912

    @Hopscotch I just voted! :)

  • robertkdalerobertkdale USAMember Posts: 912

    Hey guys. I just received a very interesting email from the bug report. From GameSalad.

    whaselden said:

    You can use Chartboost video ads already. You just need to enable it in your Chartboost dashboard for your ad campaign.

  • jigglybeanjigglybean Member Posts: 1,584

    These are standard video ads, not rewarded ones.

  • robertkdalerobertkdale USAMember Posts: 912

    OH?

  • 8bitninja8bitninja Member Posts: 367

    So, GS - what's the word on rewarded video?

  • app_sauceapp_sauce Member, PRO Posts: 206

    @8bitninja said:
    So, GS - what's the word on rewarded video?

    Agree its a feature that cant come soon enough. But, gs has said that its on the list they are working on. Check out this recent thread http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/89092/chartboost-reward-videos-in-time-for-christmas#latest

  • 8bitninja8bitninja Member Posts: 367

    Cool! Thanks, @app_sauce

  • ClockClock Member Posts: 308

    This has been mentioned many times in the forum. GS team doesn't have time for this. It's not their first priority.

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