作者：Paul Johnson

有些人应该知道我们最近面向PC和手机（iOS/Android）发行了自己的第一款免费游戏《战斗怪兽》。即距离这款游戏的发行到现在已经过去了几个月，而我将在之后写下一些有关游戏发行后的事宜。

但这并不是我今天要说的全部内容。我现在要做的是大声地咆哮——一方面是为了释放压力，另一方面则是希望手机广告发行商能够阅读本文并重新回到现实中来。

许多独立开发者走上免费游戏道路的主要原因是零下载定价将删除准入门槛，并提供给他们许多“能够轻松获得的”玩家。

在我们的例子中的确如此。我们拥有一款利基游戏——意味着游戏中没有农场或任何类型的家畜，这里存在真正的游戏玩法，所以我们需要将其呈现在许多人面前。我们的计划是，少量愿意玩名字不带“clan”或“saga”的游戏的玩家仍然与大规模的用户相当。

所以我们便开始着眼于游戏内部广告——但当我们与各种提供者间进行更多对话，我便觉得自己更加脱离现实。我逐渐觉得自己好像受骗了。

这真的是英语吗？

以下段落是来自我最近与一个人关于数字展开的对话。我只要几分钟便能够得到这些数字，但是在探索前我却需要记录下这些内容。

你的以下数字是正确的，但是你错过了一对低于ARPPU数字的变量。显然效果广告（UA）的主要目标是直接基于“合理的成本”推动下载。但是第二个利益是广告有机提升了你的用户基础数量。关于少部分用户将在游戏中进行IAP自是没错；但其他95%的用户对于驱动更多用户来到你的游戏中是非常关键的因素——不管是关于排行榜排名还是与好友的社交分享。此外，如果你选择整合广告到游戏中，那么这些“非付费”用户也能够带来盈利。总的算起来，所有的这些元素都将对整体的CPI目标做出贡献，并以正面ROI的形式退回。

对不起，我只是不会讲这种语言。你是否在我身上使用这一语言而让我处于劣势？我是有经济来源的人，所以为什么要用这些技术胡话赶我走？

（万一作者看到这个，我会对其表示道歉。我与广告供应商的所有接触都是使用同样的内部交流，所以这只是我的列举。总之，我解释自己是着眼于推广游戏的程序员—-所以请以我所能理解的语言和我说话。）

为了那些也在思考如何为自己的游戏进行广告宣传的开发者们，我根据直觉提供了一份有关上述术语的列表。

用户基础：我认为这是“玩家”

ARPPU：当尝试着去理解嗡嗡嗡的说话声时我的脑子里出现的噪音。

效果广告（UA）：“效果广告”的首字母缩写并不是UA。如果存在“效果”广告，为什么还有一些含蓄的“非效果”广告。谁会想要它们？

自然提升：说实话我并不知道。

CPI：我想这意味着“每安装成本。”但是我想要的是广告，而不是安装什么。

退回：[哆嗦]

正面ROI：值得的？

所以让我们着眼于数字。谁获胜了？

最近有报道说“付费获取广告”有望在圣诞节之前达到7美元的每安装成本。

这是免费游戏开发者之间的一个公认格言，基于各种原因（游戏邦注：很少是关于游戏质量）你只能将5%的下载用户转变成付费用户。《战斗怪兽》的数值是这一结果的两倍—-但这仍然是伴随着大额偏差的信息，所以我仍将使用5%作为例证。

基于5%的比例，那么20个下载用户中便有1个会变成付费用户。基于每次7美元的下载费用，你需要每个付费用户花费7美元*20=140美元才能保持稳定。

让我们再次陈述这一点，因为它很难理解这一荒谬的命题：广告商期待每个单一的付费用户的价值为140美元。等等：假设你通过App Store或Google Play出售货币，你需要在每个商店促销并回到140美元的价格前从每个用户身上获得200美元。

只有我发现这种情况很荒谬吗？我说真的，这究竟在搞什么鬼？！难怪人们对免费游戏抱怨连连：玩家可能需要花费数百美元才能玩这些游戏。

另一方面，我想我们能够很清楚地看到谁是胜利者。

这些人是否与我处于同样的商圈中？

如今，我多次接触了一些提供各种不同“一天免费应用”服务的公司。前提是他们至少需要拥有10个观众每天去检查他们的twitter信息或网页以寻找免费游戏。

我经常会从中获得10万至20万的安装，但这却是没有保障的。让15万名自我选择的“吃白食者”尝试我的游戏的成本是多少？大约是2万至3万美元。

让我们尝试一个可视化实验。想象你知道一个小型独立开发者需要这样的帮助—-并且他碰巧拥有2万5千美元。如此我可以获得大约15万的安装量。我们已经在iOS和Android上获得了15万的安装量—-在那时，我们从每个版本所获取的利益都不到2万5千美元。这不是那些到处晃荡寻找着免费游戏的人，我们早前游戏的现有粉丝都更倾向于尝试其它游戏。

诀窍：胜利者不是你，也不是我。

这到底公平吗？

回到付费获取问题中：上述提到的7美元代表源自2至3美元的固定基础的预计增加值。这仍然意味着你需要每个付费用户价值86美元。太离谱了！

我继续重新计算这一算式是因为它并不成立。肯定是我在那一部分出错了—-但是我却找不到它。

回到现实世界中，《战斗怪兽》当前能从每次下载中赚取13美分。这是合理的数值，并且是基于5或4颗星的评级。根据我们的玩家，这是一款真正“优秀”的游戏。所以13美分应该是合理的，对吧？

所以为什么我们不能基于每次新下载的付费接近13美分而进行广告宣传？

这也是为什么我开始觉得所有的这一切都是骗局的原因。在我所看到的结果以及广告上所创造的有关这些结果的假设间存在着一个巨大的差别—-可能是因为他们高估了服务，或者我的游戏盈利存在某些严重的错误，我真的应该成为一位百万富翁而不是受到这样的压力束缚啊。

不是这样的，我做得并没错。

看到并未包含我们的大型在线媒体网站的角度所引发的“瘟疫”，我们需要以某种方式去宣传《战斗怪兽》。所以我便设置了一些内容作为测试。

苹果自身的应用内部广告便是廉价地尝试某些内容的快捷方式，我想“这就是苹果”便足以让我们相信他们的定价具有代表性。所以我便设置了某些内容，并明确自己误解了那些咆哮过的真正成本，这一切都将明确我何时应该添加一些真正的数值。

我添加了一些真正的数值。它们是：

上图是花费了500美元使用iAd进行1周的广告宣传所获得的结果。根据他们的网站估算，基于我的500美元投资，我可以获得8次下载。真的吗？

作为免费游戏我们一天能够获得500次下载。当然他们不会期待我会为多余的8个支付500美元吧？谁会这么傻呢？

基于我自己的数值进行估算，8×13 = 104。所以对于每500美元的投资，我将收回1.04美元的利益。或者换另外一种说法，每当我支付给苹果500美元，我将损失498.96美元。

让我们翻过来看，并提供另外一个数据视图。苹果希望我为基于他们帮助所获得的每一次下载支付62.5美元。他们将每次下载的价值定位62.5美元，然而我对此的估值却是0.13美元（游戏邦注：即使用真正的性能结果）。

是否有人认为这是一次合理的交易？我当然付不起这一价钱。我认为自己需要找到更便宜的广告渠道。

那么胜利者是？

（顺便一提的是，在此我并不是选择了苹果。比起我所听过的其它服务，他们确实算得上很便宜了。我只是先尝试了他们。后来也发现尝试其它服务没有任何意义。）

但是等等，这还不够。我们也出售广告空间！

我们多次在网上看到有关开发者X将广告商Y的广告放在自己的游戏中，如此一天就能赚得500美元的收益。我并不打算进行举例，因为网上真的有太多这样的情况。

所以我们便想：“啊哈，这些不支付钱的人可以用时间替代并观看一则广告”，所以我们将插播广告添加到游戏中让那些从未花过任何钱的玩家去观看这些广告，并告诉他们如果付费的话便能够略过这些内容。

我们不想疏远玩家，所以我们尝试着在少于完整容量的基础上设置这些内容，并且平均每天能够生成7000多的观看数量—-并伴随着广告出现了1000多的应用安装。平心而论，这并不算多，如果我们真正想做的话还可以更大程度地进行提高。以下是我们不这么做的原因。

对于那些7000多的观看，我们得到了大约17美元的收益。也就是每次观看是0.002美元。或者如果你忽视了观感并只是着眼于安装，那么每次生成的安装将让我们获得0.017美元的回报。

苹果想要为每次下载向我们收取62.50美元，但是该广告商对于每次广告观看却只给我们1美分。

所以胜利者是？

我完成咆哮了，所以现在怎么办？

在2013年，我们将从自己所有的游戏中删除所有不同的广告流—-并且不会用其它内容替代它们。这意味着我们的一些小游戏，即现在获得一些广告的支持，将完全趋于免费。因为比起利用这些方法，我更倾向于免费赠送。多亏了媒介的贪婪，我们终于看清了事实！

我们是努力支付给一只资深团队（他们理应获得更好的报酬）正常工资的小型独立开发公司。牢记着这点，我决定终止让那些中间人和观望着们受益，而作为内容创造者的我们不得不勉强糊口的情况！

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Misadventures in Mobile Advertising

by Paul Johnson

Some of you may know that we recently released our first ever free-to-play title, Combat Monsters, on PC and mobile (iOS/Android). It’s been out a couple of months now, and I’ll write a post-mortem later on how that went—in the same vein as all my other PMs; if you can’t wait, the short answer is “reasonably well but could be better.”

But that’s not what I want to talk about now. What I want to do now is to have a really, really good rant–partly to blow off some steam and partly in the hope that mobile advertising publishers may read this and then re-join Planet Earth.

The main reason many indies go the free-to-play route is simply because the lack of a download price removes the barrier to entry and provides squillions of ‘easy to get’ players—at least for a quick look.

This is definitely true in our case (and I’ve written about this in the past). We have a fairly niche game—meaning there’s no farm (or farm animals of any sort) in it—and there is actual gameplay), so we need to get it in front of a lot of people. The plan being that the small percentage of downloaders who will play a game without the words “clan” or “saga” in the title can still equate to a decent sized audience.

So we started to look at in-game advertising—but the more conversations I had with various providers, the more divorced I felt from reality. I actually started to feel like I was being conned. Seriously, nothing adds up. But first…

Is this actually English?

This is a paragraph of text from the end of a recent conversation in which I questioned a person’s numbers. I’ll get to those numbers in a minute, but I really need to get this alien text down on paper before I explode. Here it is:

Your numbers below are correct, but you’re missing a couple variables that should lower that ARPPU number. The primary goal of performance advertising (UA) is obviously to drive downloads directly at a “reasonable cost.” But the secondary benefit is that advertising increases the organic lift of your user base. You’re absolutely correct that a minority of users will ever pay for an IAP in your games; but the other 95% are absolutely essential for driving more users to your game – whether that be chart position or social sharing with their friends. Further, these “non-paying” users can be monetized if you choose to incorporate ads into your games. Taken together, all of these factors should contribute to an overall CPI goal that backs out in an ROI-positive manner.

Sorry, I just don’t speak this language. Are you using it at me to put me on the back foot? I’m the guy with the pocketbook, so why drive me away with all this technical drivel?

(In case the author recognises this, I apologise for singling it out. All contact I’ve had with advertising providers uses the same insider speak, so am just using yours as boilerplate. In all cases, I explain that I’m a programmer looking to promote my game—so talk to me like one. Please.)

For the sake of other developers who are thinking about advertising their games, I’ve provided a crib sheet of the terms above, based on nothing but intuition.

User base:  I think this is “players”

ARPPU: The noise my brain makes when trying to figure out buzz-speak

Performance advertising (UA): “Performance advertising” does not acronym down to UA. And if there is “performance” advertising, why is there by implication some “non-performance” advertising. Who wants that?

Organic lift: Seriously no idea.

CPI: I assume this means “cost per install.” But I want to advertise, not install anything

Backs out: [Shudders]

ROI-positive: Worthwhile?

So let’s look at the numbers. Who wins?

It’s been reported recently that ‘paid acquisition advertising’ (see, I learned a phrase!) was expected to hit $7 per install in the run up to Christmas.

There is an accepted maxim amongst free-to-play developers that you will only convert about 5% of your downloaders into paying customers, for a variety of reasons—very few of which are related to the quality of your game. Combat Monsters is actually double that—but that’s still on message with a generous standard deviation, so I’m going to use that 5% for my illustration.

At 5%, one in 20 downloaders will become a paying customer. At $7 per download, you need each of your paying customers to spend  $7 * 20 = $140 just to stand still.

Let me just state this again, since it would be easy to not understand this obviously ridiculous proposition: Advertisers expect every single one of your paying customers to be worth $140. Oh wait: Assuming you sell your currency through the App Store or Google Play, you’ll need to actually get $200 out of EACH OF YOUR CUSTOMERS before each store takes their cut and passes back that $140.

Is it just me that finds this preposterous? I mean seriously, what the hell?!? No wonder there’s so much whining about F2P: It may cost hundreds of dollars to play one of these things.

On the other hand, I think it’s clear to see who the winner is…

Do these people live in the same commercial sphere as me?

Several times now, I’ve been contacted by various companies providing some sort of “free app a day” service. The premise for this is that they have 10 bazillion punters checking their twitter feed or webpage every day looking for free games.

I’m usually offered somewhere between 100K – 200K installs from this, but no guarantees of course. And the cost of getting around 150K self-selected freeloaders to try my game?  Oh, somewhere around twenty to thirty thousand dollars. Yes, really! (I typed it longhand so you wouldn’t assume a typo.)

Let’s try a visualization experiment. Imagine you know a small indie who needs help like this—and who just happens to have, say, $25K handy. And from that I can get around 150K installs. Well, we’ve gone past 150K installs on both iOS and Android—and at that point, we’d made less than $25K from either version. And these weren’t people hanging around especially looking for free games either, mostly existing fans of our earlier games and (hopefully) predisposed to try another one.

Tip: The winner is not you… or me.

How fair is this exactly?

Back to paid acquisition: That $7 mentioned above represents a predicted increase from a very solid base of $2-3 that’s usually quoted per install. This still means that you need every single paid user to be worth $86. Outrageous!

I keep redoing this math because it doesn’t work. There must be a misunderstanding on my part – there must be – but I can’t find it.

Back in the real world, Combat Monsters is currently averaging 13 cents earned per download. We have decent but not crazy numbers to base that on, and a whole bunch of glowing five and four star reviews. Hubris aside, the game is officially “good” according to our players. So 13 cents should be about right then, shouldn’t it?

So why can’t I advertise at a rate where I’m paying at least close to 13 cents per new download?

This is why I’m starting to feel like all of this is a con. There is such a massive disparity between the results I’m seeing—and the assumptions being made about those results by advertisers—that either they’re massively over-valuing their service, or there is something cripplingly wrong with my game’s monetisation… and I really should be a millionaire and not getting stressed by crap like this.

Nope, I really did get it right.

Having developed the pox from the perspective of large online media sites who just won’t cover us, we need to get the word out about Combat Monsters somehow. (We believe the game is far superior to the press-magnet known as HearthStone for example. ) So I went to go set something up as a test. Dip a toe in the water as it were.

Apple’s own in-app advertising seemed like a quick and easy way to try something out cheaply, and I assumed that “it’s Apple” is reason enough to trust that their prices are representative. So off I went to set something up, determined that I’ve misunderstood the true costs I’ve been ranting about, and that all would become clear when I put some real numbers in.

I put some real numbers in. Here they are:

The above is for spending $500 over a week of advertising using iAds. Their own website calculates that from my $500 investment I can expect to see 8 downloads. Really?

We get over 500 downloads a day just from being an available free to try game. Surely they don’t expect me to spend $500 for 8 more?  Who would do that?

Plugging that estimate back in to my own numbers, 8×13 = 104. So for each 500 bucks invested, I get back $1.04. Or put another way, each time I pay Apple $500, I simply lose $498.96. Sounds compelling huh, where’s my check book…

Let me just flip that over and provide another view of the data. Apple expect me to pay $62.50 for every single download they pass my way. They value a download at $62.50, whereas I value it (using actual performance results) at $0.13.

Does ANYONE think this is a good deal? I certainly can’t afford that. I think I need to go find a much cheaper advertising alternative, so will give Saatchi and Saatchi a ring later…

And the winner is…?

(oh, by the way. I’m not singling Apple out here. They’re pretty cheap compared to some of the other things I’ve been hearing. I simply tried them first. Afterwards, there seemed no point trying other sources.)

But wait, there’s more. We sell advert space, too!

Several times now, we’ve read online about developer X who put advertiser Y adverts into his game and instantly made an extra $500 a day. I’m not even going to link to one; the Internet is full of these.

So we thought, ‘A-ha, those guys not paying any money can pay with time instead and watch an advert’—so we put interstitial adverts into the game for players who’ve yet to spend anything, plus a message that a payment gets rid of them.

We didn’t want to alienate people for nothing, so we tried them at less than full volume in a place that generates 7,000 views per day on average—with 1,000 installs of the app being advertised. In all fairness, this is not a great number—and we could increase it dramatically if we cared to. Here’s why we didn’t.

For those 7,000 views, we get paid about $17. That’s $0.002 (zero point two cents) per view. Or if you ignore the impressions and look just at the installs, each install we generate pays us out the princely sum of $0.017 (one point seven cents) in return.

Apple want to charge us $62.50 for each download they provide, but this Advertiser (who is meant to be the best payer) is giving us just over a cent for one.

I just deleted another paragraph that was drawing comparisons between those two numbers, but none is really needed is it. Pretty self-explanatory all of this.

And the winner is…?

I’ve finished ranting, so now what?

In 2014, we shall be removing all the various advertising streams from all of our titles—and not replacing them with anything else. That means a couple of our minor games, currently just supported by adverts, will be going totally and utterly free. I really would prefer to just give them away rather than continue being taken advantage of like this. Thanks to the intermediates’ greed, we make bupkis out of them either way.

We’re a small indie firm struggling to pay mediocre wages to an experienced team that deserves far better in my opinion. With that in mind, one thing I will not be doing any longer is making middlemen and sideliners rich whilst we, actual content creators, have to live hand to mouth.(source:gamasutra)