4 ms·

I'm not sure what makes the OP think that you can run a conclusive experiment with a $20 ad budget… you're not going to get any conclusive numbers out of that.

by SeoxyS 13y ago

I'm not sure what makes the OP think that you can run a conclusive experiment with a $20 ad budget… you're not going to get any conclusive numbers out of that. With click-through-rate and install-rate both typically in the low single digits, you're likely to get, if you're lucky, a handful of install for a thousand impression. In order to have a sample size big enough to make conclusive statements like this, you'd need at least 500 installs - ie. an ad budget of $1,000 for each network. Disclaimer: I work at Chartboost, now the largest mobile gaming ad network.

calbear81 13y ago
I wish more people would point this out everytime someone makes a claim that "x ads don't work" and I read the article and the punchline is they spent $5 over 2 months.
codeka 13y ago
That may be true, but I did get a noticeable increase in install rate with the AdMob campaign, with the same budget. With a bigger budget, I might have been able to get more of a boost from Facebook, but I'm an indie developer and I really don't have the time or budget to spend hours and hundreds of $ tweaking a campaign.
- SeoxyS 13y ago
  I think you're missing my point. I wasn't trying to say that the ROI would be better on Facebook with a bigger budget (though, I guess anything is greater than 0%). I'm saying that your budget is too small to make the numbers you're seeing anything else than statistically insignificant luck. Imagine taking a coin toss and trying to figure out whether heads or tails came up more often, but only tossing the coin three times. Imagine you get HHT, and conclude that head is a better bet than tails. This is essentially what you're doing, by concluding that one option is better than the other, based on a single-digit install sample size. Now, I'm not saying you should be spending massive ad budgets, and spending a lot of time tweaking your campaigns, I'm merely pointing out that you don't have enough raw data to make conclusive judgements about the effectiveness of these two networks. Being a major player in this industry, I can tell you that the numbers I'm seeing seem to indicate that Facebook (and Chartboost) are in fact much more effective ways to buy installs for mobile games than AdMob, with a properly set up campaign. Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more insight regarding this.

by SeoxyS 13y ago

calbear81 13y ago

I wish more people would point this out everytime someone makes a claim that "x ads don't work" and I read the article and the punchline is they spent $5 over 2 months.

codeka 13y ago

That may be true, but I did get a noticeable increase in install rate with the AdMob campaign, with the same budget. With a bigger budget, I might have been able to get more of a boost from Facebook, but I'm an indie developer and I really don't have the time or budget to spend hours and hundreds of $ tweaking a campaign.

SeoxyS 13y ago
I think you're missing my point. I wasn't trying to say that the ROI would be better on Facebook with a bigger budget (though, I guess anything is greater than 0%). I'm saying that your budget is too small to make the numbers you're seeing anything else than statistically insignificant luck. Imagine taking a coin toss and trying to figure out whether heads or tails came up more often, but only tossing the coin three times. Imagine you get HHT, and conclude that head is a better bet than tails. This is essentially what you're doing, by concluding that one option is better than the other, based on a single-digit install sample size. Now, I'm not saying you should be spending massive ad budgets, and spending a lot of time tweaking your campaigns, I'm merely pointing out that you don't have enough raw data to make conclusive judgements about the effectiveness of these two networks. Being a major player in this industry, I can tell you that the numbers I'm seeing seem to indicate that Facebook (and Chartboost) are in fact much more effective ways to buy installs for mobile games than AdMob, with a properly set up campaign. Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more insight regarding this.