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More detailed discussion of the 4 other datapoints: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication (I added McCoy et al 2007 just last night, so now it's 5 total: me, Pandora, Mozilla, LinkedIn, and McCoy et al 2007.)
From the tweet itself, this is 10% of activity, not users. Kind of suspect that someone misinterpreted their own data so significantly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intrusiveness depends on the ad's relevance and value: An ad for a product you don't care about is disruptive. A 30% off promotion for a rarely discounted product you've wanted for a few years is amazing.
In that case it is intrusive...but relevant and welcome. Not all intrusions are unwelcome, but they remain intrusions.
If a game doesn't offer any way to pay to remove ads, it's an instant uninstall for me. If a game does offer it, but doesn't let me play for long enough to decide whether I like the game before it starts serving up unskippable ads, I uninstall it. Most games simply don't give enough time to decide if you even like it before they start throwing ads at you. That seems like a terrible policy in general, regardless of wh…
I’m about to release a fun little ambient physics based puzzle game on iOS and have been debating this. To me ads are a stain on what I consider my art. But at the same time I want to monetize and wonder if people will skip over a $1.99 download. What do you think? Ads with the option to unlock? Seems gross though... maybe free with paid version that includes level editor or additional level packs?
If a game doesn't offer any way to pay to remove ads, it's an instant uninstall for me. If a game does offer it, but doesn't let me play for long enough to decide whether I like the game before it starts serving up unskippable ads, I uninstall it. Most games simply don't give enough time to decide if you even like it before they start throwing ads at you. That seems like a terrible policy in general, regardless of wh…
I’m about to release a fun little ambient physics based puzzle game on iOS and have been debating this. To me ads are a stain on what I consider my art. But at the same time I want to monetize and wonder if people will skip over a $1.99 download. What do you think? Ads with the option to unlock? Seems gross though... maybe free with paid version that includes level editor or additional level packs?
It definitely will not generate as much revenue as an aggressively ad-monetized one, but hopefully it's still profitable.
Surely any user that's going to bail because of advertising is already blocking the ads anyway?
More detailed discussion of the 4 other datapoints: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication (I added McCoy et al 2007 just last night, so now it's 5 total: me, Pandora, Mozilla, LinkedIn, and McCoy et al 2007.)
It also lines up pretty well with the fact that a lot of early stage SV-style startups don't monetize before they have a lot of users. You don't want to lose 10% in the early stages of exponential growth. 10% less users later on would not be a big deal however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, he's not making a prediction on revenue. Gwern is making a statement about traffic. Did your traffic increase ~10%? From the Pandora paper, (which showed that as more ads were played during pandora sessions, subscriptions were boosted but free users left) it sounds like there's an "optimal advertisement" rate for revenue. Enough to not push away users, but not too much to deter users altogether.
> Did your traffic increase ~10%? It followed the same pattern as I've seen for years. > Enough to not push away users, but not too much to deter users altogether. That could be. I might've had a goldilocks amount.
Removing advertising doesn't have the same kind of immediate effect because the "audience" for it is people who haven't even heard of your app yet, and have no idea whether you're ad-free or not. (Here I'm discounting the possibility that there's a bunch of people waiting, hoping you eliminate ads so they can finally join.)
So the effects of removing ads probably have a much longer lag-time, governed to a significant degree by the usual mechanisms and rates of user acquisition.
Edit: you can also argue that the pre-existing users of an ad-free app have to some degree self-selected based on a hatred of ads, and that in a more general sample, the proportion for whom ads are a deal-breaker might be lower than 1 in 10.
I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…
It takes some trial and error, but eventually (in 1-2 minutes) you will be able to have blocked out all the ads by simply not allowing connection to download the 'ad content'.
Yes, the developer made free game and expects to be paid (via ads)
No, the developer and his/her/their ad partners don't have the right to violate your privacy when you (or your kid) play a game.