A little while ago I was reading an article on a Mac rumor website about how Apple is going to start offering full screen video iAds that developers can chose to show. People seemed less than happy about hearing this. The entirety of 115 plus comments on the article can be summed up in a few words: "ads suck". Or maybe, more specifically, "forced ads suck".
For the most part, it seemed that people were only annoyed by the fact that they would be forced into watching an ad. A few people even said that they didn't mind the current banner iAds, because they could choose to ignore them, but full screen video ads would make them delete the app entirely. So then why would any developer put in a forced, full screen, video ad in their app if it's just going to get the app deleted?
Well. . .
After doing a little research I found, from a Wall Street Journal article, that when a banner ad is displayed the developer makes 60 % of $0.01 and when a banner ad is tapped the developer makes 60% of $2.00. So, on average, a developer isn't making much from the banner ads. One could guess that a forced video ad might make the developer a little more money per view. Maybe somewhere between $0.25 and $1.00 per view. If I had to guess, I would assume somewhere around the 25 cents mark. But that's still 25 times more than the developer was making for the smaller banner adds. Which seems like pretty good incentive to start showing fullscreen ads on start up or to supplement in-app purchases.
So in the end, the developer can make more money by offering a free app (which will attract more buyers) and then display the full screen ads which will make more money than the simple banner ads. Because after all, we're all trying to make a living off of this.
Now might be a good time to say that we don't have any plans to start putting in forced full screen video ads into any of our apps. But banner ads. . . we might start using some of those. The iAds model is actually a pretty decent model when you think about it. Everybody likes a free app and more people will download a free app, because hey, it's free, so why not. If you offer a free app with ads, it gives people the opportunity to try out the app without committing the whole $0.99. If they like it, they can then spend the money to turn off the ads and get a cleaner app. If they don't like it, well then they don't feel cheated out of their money. At the same time the developer can continue to make money even if the buyer doesn't want to directly pay for the app. So it's a win win for everybody (as long as you don't mind the banner ads).
In the end, developers are just trying to make some money for the hard work, time, and effort they put into designing and developing these apps. I know from personal experience that even small apps can be very time consuming. Wether it's because a free app is just more enticing or because you won't have any buyer remorse with a free app, people are more keen to download a free app, then pay a whole dollar or two. But developers still need to make their money because for most developers (like us) we would love to develop games for a living. I know it sounds a little greedy, but one way or another, we'd like to get payed for the hard work we put into developing our apps. So the question just becomes, how do the consumers want to pay for the apps.
Anyways. . . I'd love to hear what you guys think about free vs. paid apps and banner ads vs. full screen ads, so let me know in the comments.
As always, thanks for reading
-Matt.