Facebook和手机平台的开发商经常会使用交叉推广工具，将原来的用户引向自己的新游戏。

iOS平台的一些开发商在更是擅长此道，例如TeamLava工作室，就通过一个开放式的插页广告，为那些下载了其推出的《Farm Story》或《Bakery Story》等手机游戏的用户，提供一些游戏虚拟货币奖励。而香港的Stepcase公司也通过在原来的产品中交叉推广Labelbox应用，在不费任何广告成本的情况下，成功让Labelbox在25天内实现了100万次的下载量。

但并非所有的开发商（尤其是那些双人组合的工作室）都具备这种时间和精力来创建自己的交叉推广工具。

由Tapulous前成员创立的Chartboost公司，最近却推出了帮助独立开发商应对该问题的解决方案，该免费工具支持开发商通过自己的游戏网络交叉推广新产品。游戏邦认为，Chartboost有可能凭借这项新服务，与手机游戏高价广告市场中的强势对手同台竞技。

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Chartboost支持开发商自主创建所谓的“启动式插页广告”，用户开始运行游戏，体验一个新关卡，或者处理一个基于时间的游戏任务时，其界面就会显示这些广告。

这种插页式广告由框架、广告单元和按钮三个部分组成，开发商可以设计或自定义框架的效果，以使广告更具个性化，更像直接出自开发商之手的推荐内容。

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除此之外，Chartboost还创建了支持开发商管理广告的分析工具。例如，开发商也许不想为向一批用户反复展示相同的广告，或者他们并不想向已下载该应用的玩家显示某个插页式广告，那么他们就可以根据自己的需要进行调整。他们还可以自主决定，是否将其设置为鼓励用户下载其他应用的奖励性广告。

据该公司所称，这种广告效能很强大，因为它可以确保每个独立访问用户刚开始运行应用时就能看到广告。由于其他广告网络常遇到用户总是对移动广告条幅视而不见的情况，所以游戏邦认为Chartboost的这种解决方案可能会收到更好的效果。

Chartboost由两名Tapulous公司（游戏邦注：《Tap Tap Revenge》开发商，已被迪士尼收购）前成员联合创办，其中一名创始人Sean Fannan之前是Tapulous的全职工程师，创建了《Tap Tap Revenge》的后端服务平台，另一名创始人Maria Alegre曾经负责运营Tapulous Labs Studio，并掌管该公司的广告推广和应用安装活动项目。

Chartboost现有5名成员，这款新工具是他们的开山之作，他们还计划推出一个“安装奖励”（pay-per-install）的付费广告网络，为开发商提供竞价购买其他应用的“启动式插页广告”位置等服务。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Chartboost Launches Tool For Mobile Developers to Cross-Promote Their Own Games

It’s the trick that all developers on mobile and Facebook platforms use: always cross-promote your new title to your existing fanbase.

On iOS, some developers are extremely aggressive about it. TeamLava, for instance, has an opening interstitial ad unit that offers in-game currency if players download one of the studio’s other titles like Farm Story or Bakery Story. Another company, Hong Kong’s Stepcase, was able to get 1 million downloads in 25 days for Labelbox without paying for advertising because it cross-promoted across its existing suite of apps.

But not every developer, especially if it is a two-person shop, wants to spend time building this.

Now Chartboost, a company founded by early Tapulous employees and run out of Dogpatch Labs is giving developers a free tool to manage cross-promotion across their own network of games. It’s the first in a series of tools that may help the company establish itself as a player in premium advertising for mobile games.

The company’s launching a way for developers to create what they’re calling “boot-up interstitials.” These are ads that appear when a user opens up the app to play a new level or handle a timed game mechanic like watering virtual crops.

The interstitial has three parts: a frame, the ad unit and the button. Chartboost lets the developer design or customize the frame so the ad feels more personal and like a recommendation directly from the developer.

Chartboost is also building in analytics that let the developer manage the ad. For instance, they might not want to show the same interstitial over and over again to the same user, or they obviously wouldn’t want to show an interstitial for an app the user already has. Developers can also decide if they want the ads to be incentivized or not, meaning they can choose if they want to offer in-game rewards to users for downloading other apps.

The company says that ads right at the beginning of the app are powerful because every single daily unique user will view it. It taps into a larger trend we’ve been hearing about from multiple ad networks — that users are getting far too accustomed to mobile banners, which they ignore, and are responding better to interstitials.

As for Chartboost, they’re a bootstrapped company founded by a pair of early employees from Tapulous, which makes the popular Tap Tap Revenge games and was acquired by Disney. Co-founder Sean Fannan was the first full-time engineer at Tapulous and built the back-end for Tap Tap Revenge. The other founder Maria Alegre, ran Tapulous Labs Studio, and handled advertising and install campaigns for the company’s apps.

The five-person startup is launching this tool to start and plans to seed a network for premium pay-per-install advertising. Later on, a developer might bid to buy up all the “boot-up interstitial” inventory from other app, for example.（source:insidemobileapps）