iOS An Experiment with Advertising...

[sesnir]

So I obtained a free $100 advertising credit for Facebook (just search for the Visa Business Network and register and Facebook sends you a $100 coupon code)... and I set up an ad campaign for my iPhone game, Rogue Vertex.

I set it up to run over 4 days, spending $25 each day.

The number of impressions is irrelevant (but it's over 500,000). I got about 52 people clicking the ad every day.

So about 200 people clicked on the ad. How many of them translated over to sales? I'll share...

For each day the campaign ran, Rogue Vertex had 0 sales. As I expected, advertising was completely ineffective. Most people don't even click on ads, and the few that do probably did it by mistake lol.

I lost nothing because the ad campaign was free... but now I know not to be tempted by advertising in the future.

 

[freshking]

Thats actually quite interresting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jeremy1026]

But, that isn't exactly targeted advertising. I would expect higher return for advertising on app review sites.

 

[CommanderData]

But, that isn't exactly targeted advertising. I would expect higher return for advertising on app review sites.

Exactly. I'm putting together a budget for some time on touchArcade right now... A great gaming site with a good reputation should be a much better use of your money than Facebook or adwords or anything along those lines.

 

[mkrishnan]

It seems like 200 clicks is too low, also, and your base rate of sales at the time was too low to generate a comparison.

For the 200 clicks, as far as I know, click-throughs have a low success rate but it isn't zero. Isn't the rate low enough that you would need to generate a lot more than 200 clicks to get sales?

If your app had zero sales across the days, then one could apply the logic that no one wanted the app, whether they were made aware of it or not. If you had sales, but they were static in level, then you could conclude that the increased exposure didn't help you.

OTOH, I think you bring a fair point in that you will probably get a lot more sales by getting your game reviewed on TouchArcade, Apptism, and the other sites that review games than you will by advertising it on FB....

Interesting experience, though. I'd be curious to see if something like advertising on FB helps sales of a more established product that was getting more sales at the time.

 

[Four20]

so you paid 50 cents per click?

if you get a big enough keyword list you can do google adwords for between 3-6 cents per click(and that's a lot more targeted)

 

[sesnir]

Yes, 50 cents per click was the bid. Since it was 100% free, it didn't matter to me though.

And it was sort of targeted advertising - you can specify who the ad will appear to. I chose tags like 'iPhone', 'Games', etc... But right, you would probably get more sales after a review from a widely read site.

It's by no means a perfect study... my game has been out since September and it's sales have died down to 0 because it just wasn't the lottery ticket we all hope our apps will be. It's day is done, it's month of attention is long over.

 

[Cromulent]

So about 200 people clicked on the ad. How many of them translated over to sales? I'll share...

For each day the campaign ran, Rogue Vertex had 0 sales. As I expected, advertising was completely ineffective. Most people don't even click on ads, and the few that do probably did it by mistake lol.

I lost nothing because the ad campaign was free... but now I know not to be tempted by advertising in the future.

Just because your ad didn't work does not mean advertising is ineffective. It just means either your website is poorly designed, your advert was misleading or people simply thought your application was not worth the purchase price. There are so many variables that to say advertising does not work from an extremely small test is ridiculous.

 

[sesnir]

What I found mirrors another 'experiment' that someone ran (link was posted somewhere on these forums a month or more ago)... they spent thousands of dollars on advertising... but also found that it was not worth the money.

I'm not saying all advertising everywhere doesn't work. I'm just saying it didn't work for me and that's what I expected.