Angry Birds On Android Projected To Generate $1 Million Per Month In Advertising | Hacker News Reader

Angry Birds On Android Projected To Generate $1 Million Per Month In Advertising

techcrunch.com

62 pointselblanco18 comments

I downloaded it on my android phone and I have to admit, they have got the advertising pretty right. It's not that obtrusive, sometimes a full screen thing about Bing or T-mobile pops up when the application starts up. There's one ad on top of the game screen that I have found a bit annoying but not too much. The game is addictive enough that I'd go through all those ads to play. :P

However, one thing I don't quite get is do people actually click on some link while they're playing game on their phones? Is it just to grab attention of the users so that some brand remains on the user's mind?

People vary widely in their reactions to advertising. I sometimes click ads because I want to check the validity of a claim that's being made. For example, if T-mobile was bragging about their coverage I might check to see if they have more coverage in New Mexico than they did a year ago. Just an example. I also click ads because I'm interested in a product. I use Google all the time and I'm certainly interested in Bing. In fact, I'm going to check Bing right now and see if they haven anything enticing...and thanks for reminding me of the Bird's Eye View on their maps.

But yeah, impressions are definitely considered when buying advertising.

I've downloaded Angry Birds on Android and seen the ads. I'm very surprised at the irrevancy of the ads, a memorable one was a Romanian programming outsource company. How is that relevant to the game? AdMob is owned by Google, who are very good at making contextual relevant ads on webpage, how come AdMob ads are so rubbish?

I do not know what info they are using to select ads, or whether this one might be relevant, but the goal is not to have ads that are relevant to the game; the goal is to have ads that are relevant to you.

Here, given the rather narrow focused subject, i would say they are fairly good to select an ad that is memorable to you.

Most of the ads I have seen are specifically appealing to Android.. I've been playing Angry Birds a bit and have already clicked a couple of app downloads that look interesting and one for a foldable bluetooth keyboard... I probably have clicked more ads from AdMob than any other ad platform I've seen as they are things I'm interested in.

Are clicks needed to get ad revenue, or do you get paid for just showing an ad? I can't imagine a lot of people clicking on in-game ads..

The ones in Angry Birds for Android show up as a banner towards the top right side of the screen. I imagine a good number clicks are accidental.

It seems that this article was released just in time for the release of "Angry Birds Seasons" (at least on Android)... Well played ;)

I've seen one report [1] of earning 4 cents per click on AdNob. If the same holds true for Rovio (and that's a big "if") that means 25 million clicks per month.

Apparently over 30 million downloads people spend 65 million minutes per day [2] playing Angry Birds. Assume 20% of this is on Android that's about 400 million minutes per month or one click per 16 minutes.

That seems rather high. If true I have to wonder how much of that is misclicks, which doesn't strike me as a sustainable model. Either you'll anno the users or the advertisers will wise up.

[1]: http://www.androidsx.com/admob-vs-mobclix-2nd-round/

[2]: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-m...

If you've never seen an Android advert before, it looks like clicking it will "dismiss" the advert and this seems even more prominent on Angry Birds. I know I misclicked the advert once. There were comments on the market saying that the adverts had been moved to block critical parts of the display, such as the score, possibly this was done to improve the chance of misclicks? I didn't play long enough to really know what part of the screen was important and what wasn't as AB ran so damn slow on my older phone that I uninstalled it right away.

With a paid model, the developer captures the sale and gets paid at the end of the billing cycle. With the ad-based model, the developer's revenue is dependent on ad impressions or clickthroughs, which means the developer's content must be compelling/interesting enough to keep the user's interest long enough for the app to pay for itself. But there are many other complementary products, and Pinch Media has shown that free app usage drops by 50% within 10 days[1]. Even though paid app usage is equally steep, the developer has already captured the revenue up-front.

So the takeaway from this is to make a well-timed paid release first, _THEN_ make it ad-driven after sales have tapered off to capture any remaining holdouts. Which, it would appear, seems to be the trend on the App Store. Apps that used to cost $0.99 are now routinely being made free.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/pinchmedia/iphone-appstore-secrets...

The advertisers won't wise up. Look how much money Google makes with shitty PPC campaigns people haven't set up properly.

The main point I took away was this is replacing TV eyeballs, so what is to stop him from creating his own ad network for his game only.

This is like having a prime-time tv show and the ability to do ANYTHING advertising-wise to it, in real time.

This is Hacker News. The only app environment that makes any money is iOS. Android is just a money pit. Get it straight!

"...with 12 million of those being paid downloads on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches."

That's quite a big chunk of change right there from iOS. It's just nice to see mobile advertising on Android be successful.

I think QE2 was being sarcastic...

If my comment does not add positively to a discussion, I don't hit submit. Comments with no content but just memes, sarcasm, meta-jokes, or in-references are rarely upvoted on HN. Depending on the your point-of-view, QE2's comment didn't meet one or more of the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

* Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

* Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.

* Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

I click the comments link to read useful, insightful, and critical things that others would like to add to the topic. Sarcasm in most cases doesn't fit the bill for me.

Best of all, probably, is humor. Zealots, whatever their cause, invariably lack a sense of humor. They can't reply in kind to jokes. They're as unhappy on the territory of humor as a mounted knight on a skating rink. Victorian prudishness, for example, seems to have been defeated mainly by treating it as a joke. Likewise its reincarnation as political correctness. "I am glad that I managed to write 'The Crucible,'" Arthur Miller wrote, "but looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved."

http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Hacker News is not as consistent as you think it is: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1932278 (Pure sarcasm, no content, 16 upvotes. That was actually a bit of an experiment on my part. I wouldn’t have expected to receive any upvotes.)

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