Rewarded video ad networks for HTML5 games in 2021

[MeltdownInteractive]

Which rewarded video ad provider is everyone using for their HTML5 games in 2021?

My game has been out with the first provider and I'm getting ridiculously low eCPM's, like $2 in the first month from 40 000 impressions. 
It's not even worth making my players watch ads for that amount of revenue. 

I tried signing up with Applixir and they didn't even respond to my support request after 10 days, and my account manager just ignored my emails when I asked if they could follow up on it. 

Does anyone have any suggestions on a good provider to use, or are there alternatives, like full screen interstitials that need to be watched, and then allow the player to continue?

What is everyone else using?

Thanks

 

[b10b]

Oof ... yet $2 eCPM is relatively "good".  So my suggestion is to accept how it is and stop using ads - they are annoying to players and create negligible value to advertisers.  Or, the benefit does not warrant the cost.  By totally rejecting eCPM it may lead to discovering something new?

 

[MeltdownInteractive]

2 hours ago, b10b said:

Oof ... yet $2 eCPM is relatively "good".  So my suggestion is to accept how it is and stop using ads - they are annoying to players and create negligible value to advertisers.  Or, the benefit does not warrant the cost.  By totally rejecting eCPM it may lead to discovering something new?

 

It's not $2 eCPM, its 0.05c eCPM. 
Players opt-in to watch rewarded video so it is not 'annoying' to them. 

Let's see what Google's rewarded video brings for us when it comes out of beta. 

 

[b10b]

7 minutes ago, MeltdownInteractive said:

It's not $2 eCPM, its 0.05c eCPM. 
Players opt-in to watch rewarded video so it is not 'annoying' to them. 

Let's see what Google's rewarded video brings for us when it comes out of beta. 

All ads are annoying, the value to obstruction ratio is negative whether someone is aware of it or not.  Your players hate the ads; they don't click on them; no value is earned for the advertiser; eCPM plunges.  Mathematical proof: at $0.05 eCPM you are needing to present 20,000 ads to earn a single dollar.  Those ads have consumed hours and hours of players' time to display (even if dismissed immediately) to create the equivalent game content that can be developed for $1 of your creative time.  This isn't just annoying, it is an irritation inflicted on others of such magnitude that it is easier to ignore completely and pin vague hopes on Google's next big thing.

If it was $2 eCPM would it suddently make sense?  You'd still be looking at approx 3 hours of ads (assuming 10 secs per reward ad) to generate a few dollars.  Consider - if we can influence people for 3 hours - surely we can make more than $2 of value from that interaction?!  Whereas eCPM going down has been the trend for ~10 years now, and recent privacy changes means it'll dump yet further.

 

 

[MeltdownInteractive]

1 minute ago, b10b said:

All ads are annoying, the value to obstruction ratio is negative whether someone is aware of it or not.  Your players hate the ads; they don't click on them; no value is earned for the advertiser; eCPM plunges.  Mathematical proof: at $0.05 eCPM you are needing to present 20,000 ads to earn a single dollar.  Those ads have consumed hours and hours of players' time to display (even if dismissed immediately) to create the equivalent game content that can be developed for $1 of your creative time.  This isn't just annoying, it is an irritation inflicted on others of such magnitude that it is easier to ignore completely and pin vague hopes on Google's next big thing.

If it was $2 eCPM would it suddently make sense?  You'd still be looking at approx 3 hours of ads (assuming 10 secs per reward ad) to generate a few dollars.  Consider - if we can influence people for 3 hours - surely we can make more than $2 of value from that interaction?!  Whereas eCPM going down has been the trend for ~10 years now, and recent privacy changes means it'll dump yet further.

 

 

I agree with you, hence why I'm asking if there are networks out there that pay better that would make it more valuable to show ads. 

But tbh at this rate, I'm thinking of just removing them altogether. 
I do offer a no ads IAP for $2.99, but players don't seem to be purchasing this, with many preferring to opt-in to watch ads. So who am I to say which the user prefers then?

[b10b]

35 minutes ago, MeltdownInteractive said:

But tbh at this rate, I'm thinking of just removing them altogether. 
I do offer a no ads IAP for $2.99, but players don't seem to be purchasing this, with many preferring to opt-in to watch ads. So who am I to say which the user prefers then?

I am wondering about your audience, who they are, where, what they spend money on, and how?  At such low eCPM and no uptake on the IAP the answers might not be good news and hitting reset may be appropriate.  Then pivot the positioning of the game towards a higher value audience and build the audience back up?  But for sure, removing non-performing ads in the meanwhile is a very good thing.

[MeltdownInteractive]

12 minutes ago, b10b said:

I am wondering about your audience, who they are, where, what they spend money on, and how?  At such low eCPM and no uptake on the IAP the answers might not be good news and hitting reset may be appropriate.  Then pivot the positioning of the game towards a higher value audience and build the audience back up?  But for sure, removing non-performing ads in the meanwhile is a very good thing.

The game has been out for a month now, currently only on one popular gaming website, with most users from US and India, most others from UK, DE and RU. 

To be fair, it has had it's fair share of technical issues in this first month, it is a very large/resource intensive game for an HTML5 game, so have had problems with browser memory, another issue I picked up was players were leaving because they had an ad blocker installed and couldn't progress after opting to watch a rewarded video. So this definately affected retention and most likely players tendency to spend. 

Now that these issues are resolved, and the game is in a better state, it is going on and getting featured on the front page of an additional 3 high traffic game sites. 

I'm seeing on average 0.06% are players are making an in-app purchase in the first month, what sort of % of your players in your games are you finding tend to make IAP's ?

 

[Slicks]

I tried Applixir.  Their stats didn't line up to what my Google Analytics were saying.  My game only gets around 3500 users / month, however, they were reporting they only saw around 300 requests for a rewarded video.  I chatted to them about it, and they admitted, I needed a lot more users for them to serve up ads, so I discontinued.

Then I implemented PayPal payments.  That was also a fail.  The friction for someone to enter a credit card is just too high.  I wish PayPal would accept Apple Pay and Google Pay!

I'm now trying AdinPlay.  They are showing great results so far!  The rewarded video ads are bringing in RPM €2.36!  And they also support banner ads, the large desktop ads have great RPMs, but the small mobile ones are very low RPMs.

However, I've only been with them for a month, and they are supposed to payout if you cross €50 at the end of the month.  I just made it at €53, and their site removed my earnings from display, but no payout.  I contacted them to ask what happened, and their response was I needed to get over €62.50 for a payout (even though their site says otherwise).  I asked why my earnings no longer shows up, and no response.  Going to let it run for another month, but if no payout after that, I guess I'll have to discontinue with them as well.

HTML5 game development is hard to make a profit.  It was much easier to make money making Android apps.  I won't be quitting my day job.

[MeltdownInteractive]

12 hours ago, Slicks said:

I tried Applixir.  Their stats didn't line up to what my Google Analytics were saying.  My game only gets around 3500 users / month, however, they were reporting they only saw around 300 requests for a rewarded video.  I chatted to them about it, and they admitted, I needed a lot more users for them to serve up ads, so I discontinued.

Then I implemented PayPal payments.  That was also a fail.  The friction for someone to enter a credit card is just too high.  I wish PayPal would accept Apple Pay and Google Pay!

I'm now trying AdinPlay.  They are showing great results so far!  The rewarded video ads are bringing in RPM €2.36!  And they also support banner ads, the large desktop ads have great RPMs, but the small mobile ones are very low RPMs.

However, I've only been with them for a month, and they are supposed to payout if you cross €50 at the end of the month.  I just made it at €53, and their site removed my earnings from display, but no payout.  I contacted them to ask what happened, and their response was I needed to get over €62.50 for a payout (even though their site says otherwise).  I asked why my earnings no longer shows up, and no response.  Going to let it run for another month, but if no payout after that, I guess I'll have to discontinue with them as well.

HTML5 game development is hard to make a profit.  It was much easier to make money making Android apps.  I won't be quitting my day job.

Thanks for the info. 

I ended up implementing Xsolla for in-game payments, it works well so far, but agreed people are definately hesitant to make payments in HTML5 games, whereas on mobile, they are more used to making IAP's.

I will check out AdInPlay, thanks. 

I signed up for the Google AdSense beta for HTML5 games, and someone from Google emailed me last night to setup a call next week, so I'll keep you all updated on how that goes.

[Slicks]

4 hours ago, MeltdownInteractive said:

Thanks for the info. 

I ended up implementing Xsolla for in-game payments, it works well so far, but agreed people are definately hesitant to make payments in HTML5 games, whereas on mobile, they are more used to making IAP's.

I will check out AdInPlay, thanks. 

I signed up for the Google AdSense beta for HTML5 games, and someone from Google emailed me last night to setup a call next week, so I'll keep you all updated on how that goes.

Awesome!  I suspect AdSense will be the gold standard.  I applied a year ago and never heard back.

[Megabyte]

I use adinplay.com. I just checked dashboard and its shows ecpm EUR 1.47 for rewarded ads. And €0.94 for  fulscreen ads.

But it is really depend on location your users from. I have mostly US players. Other regions have less ECPM.

PS. As example, ECPM by countries: https://www.bannertag.com/google-adsense-cpm-rates/

Edited July 8, 2021 by Megabyte

[Slicks]

Hi @Megabyte  Does AdInPlay pay you okay?  Does anything show in the table in the Payment Balance screen?  Mine was showing my payment, but has now disappeared, and I've received nothing.  Thanks!

[Megabyte]

I had no any issues with payouts at adinplay. Ads shows amount is matchng with google statistics aproximatelly, and RTP is about 1$ and more. All payments go in time.

Sometime charts has issues, but they always fix the problems.

[Slicks]

Just received my first AdInPlay payment!  Woohoo!  3 months after signing up.  First month I was under the required amount to get a payout.  Second month pushed me over the requirement limit.  Then it took them 26 days to pay.

My RPMs seemed to have dropped a little since signing up.  Rewarded video ads are still by far the best at RPM €2.12.  While small mobile banner ads (320x50), only get RPM €0.15.

Overall, I think AdInPlay is still good.  My game visits have only increased to around 4K users / month, so the revenue is really only covering the server costs plus a little.  Still a long way to go before my game makes any sort of decent money.

@MeltdownInteractive How are you finding Google Adsense beta?

[MeltdownInteractive]

9 hours ago, Slicks said:

Just received my first AdInPlay payment!  Woohoo!  3 months after signing up.  First month I was under the required amount to get a payout.  Second month pushed me over the requirement limit.  Then it took them 26 days to pay.

My RPMs seemed to have dropped a little since signing up.  Rewarded video ads are still by far the best at RPM €2.12.  While small mobile banner ads (320x50), only get RPM €0.15.

Overall, I think AdInPlay is still good.  My game visits have only increased to around 4K users / month, so the revenue is really only covering the server costs plus a little.  Still a long way to go before my game makes any sort of decent money.

@MeltdownInteractive How are you finding Google Adsense beta?

Google Adsense Beta didn't work out too well for me, after 2 weeks, the dashboard had only registered 4 impressions, which is crazy, considering I have between 500-750 DAU (With at least 250 DAU on my direct site traffic)
I let my contact know about the issue, and he asked me to log a bug. 

My integration code was definitely working, and all checked out, the other problem I had was any site that IFRAMED my game, I got a warning in AdSense that I need to update that sites ads.txt, else I won't get revenue for it, so not a good provider to use if other sites are IFRAMEing your game, as you can't update the ads.txt that is owned by other sites (and I doubt many sites would even do that for you.) 

It was 2 weeks of lost ad revenue, and they only had interstitials working at that stage, not rewarded video, and at that point, I couldn't be bothered spending any more time trying to fix the issue or wait for Google support. 

I ended up implementing AdInPlay, I've been very happy, their interstitials and rewarded videos look really good, with a lot of options, and they work well when your game is IFRAMEd on another site, and their videos don't crash the browser (I had this issue with LifeStreet, who also had ridiculously low eCPM) 

Revenue so far has been around 3.70 Euros CPM, and my account manager responds in a business day.

My contact at Google has said he'll get in touch again when things are more polished with their AdSense for games. 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by MeltdownInteractive

[Slicks]

On 8/27/2021 at 7:56 AM, MeltdownInteractive said:

any site that IFRAMED my game, I got a warning in AdSense that I need to update that sites ads.txt

Wow.  Apart from the bug that it wasn't recording the impressions, that's a show stopper right there!

Thanks for letting us know.

[MeltdownInteractive]

On 7/8/2021 at 11:40 PM, Slicks said:

Hi @Megabyte  Does AdInPlay pay you okay?  Does anything show in the table in the Payment Balance screen?  Mine was showing my payment, but has now disappeared, and I've received nothing.  Thanks!

I like a dummy forgot to setup my payment details in AdInPlay, I did so the other day, and just received my first payment!
Once again, can highly recommend!

Here is my revenue from since using them from mid-July...
I use interstitial's and rewarded videos. 

 

[Slicks]

@MeltdownInteractive  Good choice just going with video ads.  How did you implement preroll videos?  Do they need to be attached to an existing video?

I previously had a look at your game (great game btw, very polished), however, it looks like you have taken it offline, and it's being replaced with some blockchain thing.  Or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

Here's my stats for the end of the year.  I have a lot of mobile users, and those small banner ads, while they do get good revenue in total, their RPM is so low.

Still, overall, happy with AdInPlay.  ?

[Slicks]

AdInPlay seems to have died.  I can't even log into it anymore.  Anyone else using it?  Any better alternatives?  Thanks.

Currently giving the error:

[codergautam]

Adinplay working well for me still. $100 a day from my webgame revenue. If anyone wants email me [email protected] and I can refer you to my account manager. I also have access to the Adsense H5 beta and would be interested to partner if anyone is a game dev