Developers

Do you use GoogleAds?
What do you think about Games-Advertising-Online?
Are referral-links useful?

i dont use any kind of advert at this time - may game is not finished, though.

but i plan a "campain" mostly on mouth-propaganda.

I dont have such a big budget (hey! im a poor poor student! ;) ), so i will mostly use the "cheap" ad-solutions.

- Promote the game in Forums and Newspages (GN etc.)

- Introduce some kind of "reflink" (but not this "make as many people click there"). I thougt about some kind of reward if the referred player is active for a specific amount of time (i.e. 2-3 weeks), so people get rewarded for adverting my game.

But this all is "just planned". First i got to finish my game. ;) 

We are not advertising Weewar - 0 budget for marketing. We have geared our whole communication to a certain crowd, though.  And that crowd is not necessarily gamers or gaming. We also support our own community in spreading the word and we are closely following anything that is published about Weewar and often follow up, seeking ways to cooperate with others.

We feel that in order to make a difference with advertising on the internet you need to have a huge budget. Anything less and you might as well not do it at all.  You time and effort can be much better spent.

I list on GN, TWG and the other gaming "top 100 type sites", just because it's so easy and it does produce some traffic even if you aren't #1 (I think I'm number...200-something?)

And I offer a small turn bonus for people to vote on TWG, and a small referall bonus for new players referred.  I only have about 250 active accounts but since I don't have the server setup to handle too much more than that it hasn't been a problem so far.

Well we have huge investor behind are back now so adds are no problems. Soon we will make huge campain etc. 

When i was working for popcode ( thecrims) we were using SMS campains, it was working better then we planed. 

For the start, I SEOed my site and got some extra players to the game.

This is a breakdown where I advertise

Results

* ApexGamingAds
- bonus 20% first deposit
- clickfraud 1% (acceptable)
- impressions low
- singup conversion rate: High

Note: One month RON campaigns cost is close to $100

* AdToll
- bonus None
- clickfraud 0%
- impressions Very High
- singup conversion rate: medium

Note: RON ad campaign , $50 ,category online communities and gaming lasts 1 month with millions of impressions. Dedicated site advertising eg on CE starts from 20 cent per week.

* ReachAds
- bonus None
- clickfraud 2%
- impressions [blow[/b]
- singup conversion rate: low

Note: very basic adsite, same engine as advertiseyourgame which explains the clickfraud. Low budget $25/month for a ad campaign.

* AdvertiseYourGame (AYG)
- bonus 20% first deposit
- clickfraud +5%
- impressions low
- singup conversion rate: medium

Note: after contacting the owner about the clickfraud, got a nasty mail back with forged logs so I asked a full refund through paypal.

* Ad2games
- bonus 25 euro (around $35) no deposit required
- clickfraud 0%
- impressions high
- singup conversion rate: high

Note: high budget needed to use them 75 euro deposit is gone in a few hours.

* Game-Advertsing-Online 

- bonus None
- clickfraud 0%
- impressions high
- singup conversion rate: high

Note: extreme high budget needed, euro 250 deposit vanished within 3 hours, same engine as apexgamingads

* pbbgads
- bonus None
- clickfraud 0%
- impressions low
- singup conversion rate: low

Note: You have to ad how many clicks/day else the ad will not be published even after selecting it as campaign

* advertbox
- bonus 10k Free Impressions
- clickfraud - didn't check yet -
- impressions medium
- singup conversion rate: low

Note: Cheaper to buy advertising through their rate card at AdToll than on their site $9/12 weeks

No compiled stats yet for

* cpmstar

min campaign deposit $1000 lasts 5 days possible for lower

*adgames

min campaign cost $100

Now I had a discussion with the owner of AYG as I posted it also on one of my forums topic can be seen on one of my forums but I'm not sure if it's allowed to post a link offsite. So PM me if you want the link.

Main issue was about clickfraud and next to that some nasty moves from the owners side as he has also a browsrbased game and well voting site. NO voting for his game at the voting site yet always nr1, at the ad network he owns. His game seems to get the majority of impressions.

I didn't try Google Adwords out yet as I had poor results advertising a different site (non game) which started to cost a bit to much for the results obtained.

md

Great info, I was doing the same tests to find the best advertiser for my site. I have no trouble with AYG, works fine for me, alot of signups (20-30%). Currently trying adtoll and waiting if apex accepts me.

They are ok but as advertiser I hate clickfraud hence why I don't like them.

Lets say each month $20 clickfraud, on a yearly base that's $120 paid to much.

Take into account the time to gather the logs from the server, and having them disected. lets say 1h/month at $150.

So we come on a global cost of $1,620.

Signup/conversion rate is also flawed kinda as you need to check how many stay active after 7 days and how many became a premium player within 30 days. And how many created multi accounts.... if you don't have the correct tools (IP based ones is the worse tool there is) it's a time intesive part for game staff to go multi hunting. While game staff imo should be customer support instead of multi hunters.

md

I agree on clickfraud being bad, but I don't really care about it as long as the overall costs per registration are low

Isn't that the most important figure really?

As a representative of AdvertiseYourGame.com I feel obligated to post the following. This will be my only post as we have no desire to stoop to mdshare's level and engage in his typical trolling.

There is no click fraud on our network. Any and all reports of such click fraud on our publishers is investigated.  Such activities serve no purpose but to destroy an advertising network and are the actions of the foolish.  No logs were faked and mdshare was emailed the Accurate records of all 1067 clicks he received and the 3 clicks which were mis-billed were acknowledged (.02% not 5%).  In addition, due to his dissatisfaction, fictitious or otherwise, we did not hesitate to issue him a full refund.

In addition he claims we issued a nasty email. Hardly.  Below is that email for reference.  And for the record, this was not the first time we've researched and responded to his claims.

"We at AdvertiseYourGame.com run a clean operation.  Attached is the log of the 1067 clicks for which you were charged.  You will note from our logs, which are real and 100% accurate, that only 3 clicks or .3% (9 cents) of your clicks were invalid per the 24 hours.  One of which was already credited to you.  While we continue to hunt down this very tiny abnormality, we do not have time to research your complaints every other week.  If you wish to continue witch hunting, I suggest you do so with another network.  I am sure there are plenty of much smaller ad networks that would love to have your $20 in revenue but we simply do not have the time for such antics.  Thank you and have a good day."

You are free to judge for yourselves, but our company will not just sit back and let such lies be spread without a response.  If former-American, MdShare, were not hiding from the law over in Europe, we would have him in court immediately for his libel comments.  Conversion ratios, publisher traffic, and click-through IPs are monitored and analyzed regularly to ensure the best performance for all sites, advertiser and publisher, on our network. There are a very large number of advertisers and publishers who are happy with our network and use us regularly.

Thank you for reading and have a great week.

i like to use advertiseyourgame and reachads. they both seem to bring in players .  and thats the most important.  id like to say thanks to mdshare for posting more ad campaign places hopefully i can hit my goal of 10k

www.alpha.battlestar-warz.com