Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

Hey guys - I've been an Android developer myself for over 4 year now. One of the biggest pain points has always been the monetisation part - which I've always felt is out of my control.

I've been focused mostly on free apps with ads - mostly Admob - but the little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc always seemed to bother me. That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.

I wanted to ask you what monetisation strategies to you have for your apps and if you've ever felt the same way when you added ads in your app.

> That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.

I like the idea in concept, but as an advertiser this intuitively tastes like a strictly worse product.

Doesn't this model mean I now have to vet the inventory (users) of the app -- another cost, as well as structure my campaign around the publisher's willingness to serve my ads -- additional variance and risk? This is no doubt great for app publishers on paper, but why is this better for customers? That is, advertisers?

At RadBots we basically built an ad network for bots as well. We do automatic targeting via insights and models built to match the audience to make it easier on both sides. I like the idea of picking available ads, but haven't had any users ask for this feature yet. There is also another issue of fulfillment. All ads aren't available all the time, how do you handle that?

I'm not too familiar with Admob or other mobile ad platforms, but don't they let you sell inventory directly already? I think the reason this is less desirable for both publishers and advertisers is the amount of work involved in direct sales efforts. As an app publisher, you may not have time to go out and sell direct spots on your network (which will be necessary if you don't already have the kind of data about your users that facebook / google provide). Advertisers have a similar problem on the other side, in that using facebook/google services allows them to easily target their audience based on data about them. How will your adnetwork address that need?

We publish games. Our free games all include ads, plus a one-time in-app purchase to turn off ads.

What we've found is that we can price that product relatively high ($5) because the kind of person who's willing to put $1 in your tip jar to turn off ads is also willing to put $2.

But this strategy works for us because our games are "consumable" products. Our customers will play one of our games for a while, have a good time, and then they'll be "done" with that game; hopefully, they'll then go on to buy one of our other games.

If I were to launch a non-consumable long-term app today and wanted to monetize it, I'd do it as a subscription with a generous free trial. Once I had at least 100 paying subscribers, I'd start raising the price until the churn rate tells me it's too high.