is there anything out there fundamentally better than AdMob for indie game promotion/monetization?

snerd

I'm making a mobile game with Godot and have currently implemented Google AdMob as the ad network provider. It was kindof a PITA to implement and still doesn't work correctly on iOS. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why and it just occurred to me that even if it did, the simple statement is that so few people are ever going to download my game and play it regularly it kindof doesn't matter. This because I don't have the kind of money to seriously promote the game and because I can't promote the game I can't get enough active monthly players to make admob payout. While making an indie game isn't the kind of thing you get into for the money - I feel like there has to be something better out there than AdMob and I'm wondering if anyone out there knows what that might be. I'm looking for something that: enables indies to meaningfully promote their work, support the work of others, and do so on a 'beer money' budget is transparent to both publishers and advertisers with respect to cost, payout, and placement * provides 'beer money payouts' for games that have, by industry standards, low to non-existent numbers of regular players

Megalomaniak

Sorry to say I have no useful advice to give, but perhaps this GDC talk might be of some useful insight:

edit: these also are, IMO, well worth watching and reflecting on:

snerd

watching these now - ty!

eleven games before making it. ouch. I believe it. just ouch.

I suspect there isn't anything out there like what I described in my last - I did a lot of googling before posting this and came up empty. I posted here as a 'hail mary' attempt to find it. AdMob et al aren't tuned to work for indie games and they certainly aren't transparent. It would be nice if I could connect Godot to something that was all of those things and more.

Megalomaniak

Yeah, I get what you mean, if only there was a perfect platform for it, but alas...

This is why I don't personally find mobile, and especially free-to-play as a particularly enticing model to follow. I think charging even just 5 dollars for a game is better IMO. But this is just personal opinion.

Making just smaller free games to build up a following might be a better way to get started. Once you already have a bit of a following you might be able to start capitalizing on that by releasing something a bit bigger for a bit of money, and hopefully things can snowball from there. But this does require that you have a primary income already and that you just plain enjoy making games.

snerd

This and the xpost convo on /r/godot gave me an idea for what a better way might look like and how to implement it in godot in such a way that it is super easy to implement on any godot game regardless of platform. Going to make an MVP. Bbinabit with links to it and docs.

Megalomaniak

Cool, sounds good.

Megalomaniak

You know what, just watched this, and it's probably worthwhile too:

...

I should probably watch it again.

tathagata

Hi, I get the problems you're trying to address here. I've also faced the same kind of issues. You can check out Immersive Ads from third-party ad networks. They will deal with AdMob on your behalf. So, you just have to worry about creating the games and marking real estate for those ad placements.