Boost your App Revenue with Tapgage Interstitial Ads
We added a new ad platform for our developers in Andromo 3.0.6: interstitial ads served up by Tapgage.
What are interstitial ads?
Interstitial ads are full-page ads that appear ‘between’ activities
in your app. Since they really grab the user’s attention, they can be
more effective than banner ads at generating clicks. However, you don’t
want to show them too frequently, or you may risk annoying some users.
How often should you show an interstitial ad?
Unlike banner ads, which don’t interrupt the user’s flow through your
app, interstitial ads occupy the full screen and need to be dismissed
by the user. Although this can make them very effective, if shown too
often they can become frustrating to your users. When choosing how often
to show interstitials, you need to balance the increased revenue
potential from showing more ads, with the possibility for decreased
revenue potential from having fewer active users.
Since user tolerance for interstitials can vary greatly from one app
to the next, there is no universal answer to this question. (You might
even want to annoy your users a little bit in a free app when you also have a paid, ad-free version available.)
Andromo lets you set the minimum time between ads from 10 minutes to
24 hours. You should choose an appropriate interval based on how often
you think your users would want to see an interstitial ad. Keep in mind
that shorter times aren’t always better — setting this value too low may
cause some users to uninstall your app, decreasing your app’s long term
revenue potential.
Experiment and use analytics
You may wish to experiment with different interval settings, and take
advantage of the new app analytics to track how your users respond to
the different versions.
If you have Google Analytics enabled in your app, an event will be
generated whenever a Tapgage ad is shown. You can use the “Secondary
dimension” feature in Google Analytics to differentiate your Tapgage ad
impressions by activity (“screen name”), app version, and other useful
metrics.
All for the low price of…free
There is no additional charge to use interstitial ads. Simply sign up for a free account at www.tapgage.com, and enable the interstitial ads on the Monetization tab in your Andromo project settings.
Comments
I added Tapgage to one of my apps yesterday, and set Andromo to show an add every 20 minutes. It got a constant 20% CTR or click thru rate for the first 24hrs. In layman's terms: If 100 people used/installed my app, 20 of them clicked on an advertisement. Pretty impressive.
Just for some kind of comparison (not really fair), Admob get's about a 1% CTR.
Admob typically avg 500 clicks per day.
Tapgage ads got 1,400+ clicks yesterday.
I was worried that there would be a lot of uninstalls and bad feedback, but the results from last night are 4 new 5 star ratings on Google Play and not a single complaint about ads. I really think it somehow made my somewhat boring app look better/more alive. The ads are pretty easy on the eyes and very tempting.
This comment was my favorite of the bunch:
"Keep it up
Props
to you and your team man. Prob the only app that does exactly as the
description says. No bull either. Hope you have plans for future apps I
know they would be awesome."
I guess I have to thank my "Team", Andromo and Tapgage haha
Good job team!
The interstitial is shown as soon as the first activity is clicked on. The user clicks or decides to dismiss by press in the "X" in the corner or I found that the phone's physical "back" button works too. If the user is still using the app after 20 minutes, another ad will appear.
Free apps tend to get lots of uninstalls. The good thing about the first initial ad is the fact that it could get a click well before the user tries your free app and decides to uninstall it.
I also noticed that when the app is closed at let's say 5 minutes of use... if the user decided to open it back up before that 20 minute mark, they won't see another ad immediately (tested on 2 different Galaxy Note IIs). The timer set by Andromo remained. Very nice.
Pandora (free) users have seen interstitial ads before and shouldn't be shocked to see them. The trick will be finding the right ad frequency that brings the most revenue. You can also create in-house ads in Tapgage to promote your Pro or Upgraded no-ads version. Good stuff.
Tapgage has said they are still in the process of ramping up their ad inventory for some locations and it may take some time to get higher eCPMs; in the mean time you will see a higher proportion of ads that are cost-per-action (e.g. paid for an actual install) rather than cost-per-click.
I think all advertising networks struggle with a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. The increased traffic from Andromo apps should help Tapgage attract even more advertisers.
And there is basically no documentation at the Tapgage site. What do the DA and HA percentages do in the Adfill settings?
It's odd that you have to log out of your Tapgage account to find the wiki, glossary and more info on the main page. Once logged in, there needs to be tool tips ("?") next to every button or drop down menu for all the new novice Andromo users. I sent them an e-mail about it. Kinda frustrating to figure out in my opinion.
Thoughts that ran thru my head when setting up Tapgage.
I
couldn't find any info but I'm guessing that DA is Direct Advertisement
and HA is House Ads. That section could not be more vague. I literally
laughed out loud when I figured it out what they were referring to.
Why not spell it out? There's plenty of space for words instead of
abbreviations. You can't exactly Google search for "DA" or "HA" and
get an answer.
mention of those abbreviations there either. So I would assume that
adjusting those percentages should affect how often your own
advertisements show up. I haven't changed them from the default 25%.
Still, not a single house ad I set up is being displayed.
What file type are we supposed to use? I tried PNG, maybe it's looking
for .jpg. Are animated .gif acceptable? No idea...no documentation
that I can find. Do I have to fill out every single ad size to make it
work? Maybe...I only tried one file resolution. I guess we have to
duplicate our ad graphic a dozen different sizes? I don't know. I
didn't get an error message when I uploaded only one size.
It's
odd that we have to log out of our Tapgage account to find the wiki,
glossary and more info on the main page. (Am I missing something?) Once
logged in, there needs to be tool tips ("?") next to every button and
drop down menu for all the new novice Andromo users. I sent them an
e-mail about it.
Also, when you setup a house ad, you choose
your graphic(s) but never see them again. It's scary to hit the "run"
button and never see a preview of what it will look like until it
eventually shows up on your app. I really don't have time to hit
refresh every 20 minutes till I hit the lottery and see my House-Ad.
You have to view it in the app to make sure you chose the right
graphic. I still haven't figured out how to edit the house ad once it
has been uploaded via Tapgage. Delete the campaign and restart.
Overall, it works (minus house-ads so far) but it's very frustrating to figure out in my opinion.
I
explored and used Admob to its fullest potential, but Tapgage is giving
me a headache. :P With all that said, I'm still VERY grateful that
Andromo team put this in place for us. Kudos!
I am just chiming in. I am actually the CEO of Tapgage.
Thank you for addressing those little issues and clearing other things up. I'm definitely not giving up on Tapgage. The Andromo team made a wise decision! Count me in. The potential is clear and we're making money that we certainly weren't before.
I'll send you an e-mail about the free advertising credits. (How cool is that!).
Thanks again,
Mike
Also, I've noticed that on my phone (Google Nexus 4 with Android 4.2.2), the actual ad graphic shows up very tiny on the screen (I was actually originally thinking HA/DA might have something to do with sizes). But on my tablet it is about the size I would expect. Most of my app users are on phones, according to Google Analytics.
Although I'm still seeing abysmal results on ad revenue from Tapgage, it has at least had the effect of increasing the sales of my paid ad-free versions!
we will be doing some heavy advertising start early next week and will
be hitting hard on the sales side to get more advertisers on board" Fingers crossed and rooting for ya.
P.S. I noticed a type-o in a couple of places where House Ads (HA) and Direct Ads (A) are mentioned. At the top and right side of the page I think it should have read (DA) instead of (A).
arfan_tapgage I noticed that the website could use a Favicon. It would be helpful for people that leave a lot of tabs open while browsing/building. I have trouble finding and getting back to my Tapgage tab quickly sometimes.
I spotted an "App Wall" option below "Interstitial", but haven't tried it...wondered if it was ready to be used yet. Sounds interesting.
I've just implemented TapGage in my new app, with a 10 minute interval of showing ads, but I haven't seen any yet. What does 10 mins actually mean? That an will be shown only after a user has been using my app for 10 mins? Or is an ad shown per 10 minutes of total usage time?
Thanks!
I currently have house-ads working in Rectangle 300x250 format. They look perfect on my Galaxy Note II. There was a bug that has been fixed by Arfan and Tapgage team. Full or half screen house ads are not working for me, yet.
thanks for your reply, I appreciate it!
By the way, I'm grateful for Tapgage, but I would like to know, why would a developer choose Tapgage over AdMob's Interstitials (for those developers who can implement whatever they wish)? What makes Tapgage different or special? I thinks that's quite important for the long-term outlook of the company and attracting advertisers.
Thanks!
Tapgage has potential, I just hope that they up their game! They haven't had any press releases since December 2011, their founder says he's "lazy" and a "serial entrepreneur". This doesn't give me much confidence, but let's wait and see what will happen. I hope they start getting more advertisers real soon. A friend of mine is using AdMob's Interstitials and he's making tons of money with simple apps like I have, but he codes them himself and he can use whatever he wishes and whatever platforms he wants.
And an answer to my previous question would make me more relaxed.
OK, I'm happy that at least something is happening.
You are right, showing ads while exiting an app may hurt user experience. To be honest, it does bother me when I see exit ads, but I'm not sure how most of other users react to these things. I also felt uncomfortable (at first) using AdMob banners in apps or AdSense on my websites, but now I see that people don't mind those. Maybe an exit ad could be implemented as an option only and we could decide if we ant to use this option or not.
I'm looking forward to the CPC campaigns!
And again, a big thank you to Andromo and Tapgage for enabling us to use interstitials now.
However, I received a complaint yesterday about one of the ads. Is there any way we can disallow certain types of ads like we can with other companies? The ads shown in my apps really aren't appropriate for the users (which might actually also explain why there isn't much in the way of revenue). In fact, the screenshots above are very deceptive. Those particular ads would be OK. Instead, all I'm seeing are ads for a dating site (which isn't really appropriate for my apps). The complaint I got yesterday was about a scantily clad woman advertising a gambling site (which is even less appropriate for my apps), and caused the user to uninstall.
But, this gives me worries: I had 825 impressions so far, 156 clicks (19% CTR), and $1,23 of revenue. At the same time, I'm seeing a lower CTR for my AdMob ads, and lower earnings from those ads, even if I now have AdMob enabled on the Dashboard (which means that I should earn more)! So basically, Tapgage ads are taking away my users, and I don't get any revenue from it.
I'll leave Tapgage in my apps for the rest of the week, and if there is no improvement in revenue, and I'll earn less from AdMob that I did BEFORE implementing ads on the Dashboard, I'll temporarily remove Tapgage.