In-game banners, after 1,000,000 plays
- October 22, 2009 by Emanuele Feronato
- Filed under Flash, Game design, Monetize | 13 Comments
Some time ago I released SamePhysics, my first Box2D game, a self-sponsored game with a rotating banner placed in the lower play area.
I decided to rotate five different banners, four of them link to my sites/games and one was sold to Rotten Tomato Games.
I published some considerations after 75,000 views
Let’s see what happened after 1,000,476 views

1: Banner to Paypal asking for a donation: 16081 clicks
2: Banner to Red Flowers: 18004 clicks
3: Banner to this blog: 15991 clicks
4: Banner to triqui.com: 15677 clicks
5: Banner to Rotten Tomato Games: did not track the clicks, but we suppose they can be about 16K as there isn’t a great click-through difference among banners.
So the total amount of clicks is 81753, that’s 8.17%.
It’s not easy to give a value to 80K clicks, I can only say 0.81% of Paypal clicks made an average donation of $0.93, and I don’t think any player got fidelized to triqui.
Probably some of them played a bit to Red Flowers and some of them still read this blog.
Anyway, let’s suppose the worst scenario, with all people visiting such sites only once.
At a $1.51 eCPM, triqui scored $27.18, the blog ($3.22 eCPM including sponsors) $51.49 and Red Flowers ($0.17 eCPM) $3.06 while donations raised $135.62 (once converted some euros to dollars)
So the minimum banner earning is $217.35 (about $0.22 eCPM), but we know in some ways (like this blog) every loyal reader is priceless.
I would like to know your considerations about in-game banners.
They can be easily customized to meet the unique requirements of your project.

(11 votes, average: 4.55 out of 5)

Wow this really changes my views on in game banners, I always thought that it would clutter the game screen too much using in game banners. But with earnings like that how can i refuse.
A Great Read as usual Emanuele!
Thankyou
I absolutely hate MochiAds, because the video ads are insanely annoying, and the pregame ad system can render a game unplayable sometimes, especially if you opt for the encryption and automatic updating features.
I have yet to find a good low-end advertising solution for Flash games. I make more money from page ads, though, so I don’t have a lot of motivation to search for Flash-friendly ad networks.
%8.17 click rate is extremely high
Actually people donate for games, that’s interesting. If my calculator is working fine, you could be making about $600 from this game with only the banner for donations. Interesting. Is my math ok?
israel, I guess you’re wrong, the banner switches at every level, so 80K clicks does not mean 80K people :)
It’s true. the eCpm for me is VERY LOW in game banners, but the ECPM in page banners is good. I think that’s why people sponsor games… they want content to their portals because web banners are by far more effective… the in-game banner income is nice when your game got viral and the money comes from different sources, but nothing to get crazy about
It seems like your banner should be a lot more valuable than it was. With 80,000 clicks at $0.05 CPC, you’d get $4,000. If this were through a company like MochiAds (who shares 50% of ad revenue), the developer would get $2,000. At 1,000,000 hits this would come out to $2.00 eCPM, very respectable.
Of course the $0.05 CPC is an estimated guess. And real ads tend to have much lower click rates than ads for flash portals (like Triqui).
Still, banner ads are a cool idea.
Hi Emanuel, It would be cool if you would do a research on ingame monetization like mochicoins and alike too disclosing the analysis of earnings. :)
Thanks, interesting…
Let me make sure I understand this sentence correctly:
“0.81% of Paypal clicks made an average donation of $0.93″
So 0.81% of the 16k people who clicked on the paypal (13k people), each donated $0.93 on average?
I think when putting a banner like that, it’s pretty much the same as taking a piece of the publishers webspace and placing your own ad on it, since the area isn’t used for your game.
Some publishers might not like this for obvious reasons.
“0.81% of Paypal clicks made an average donation of $0.93?
That means a total of 12113 dollars. That can’t be what you mean?!
Unfortunately 13K is 81% of 16K, not 0.81%… sigh…
Good stats :)
If your interested about stats and figures I’ve gotten a game released with CPM star with interesting results. Been out for about 9-10 months.
I recall some t&c saying I can’t publish specifics but if you email me then I can email it to you so long as it doesn’t get published.
Interesting stats as the game uses interlevel ads and I tracked the game plays vs the ad views.