In order to successfully operate your free-to-play mobile game, you may decide you will need a way to generate revenue and keep your players engaged to continue playing your game.
What is Monetization?
Monetization refers to a set of strategies and tactics which developers and publishers can use to generate revenue from their apps.
Recently though, a trend on diversifying monetization strategies has been on the rise. Just like in business, it’s not good practice to risk placing all your resources in one single deal. Usually, the more diverse your source of income, the less risky your venture.
If you’re an indie developer just starting out, all these monetization possibilities may feel a bit overwhelming. It’s important to explore various approaches, to reflect and understand what is right for your game as soon as possible.
What is User Acquisition?
Another key component of the health of your game business is to grow your player base or to learn how to acquire the right users and keep them engaged. User acquisition (often shortened to UA) refers to gaining new users for an app, On mobile, this is generally designed around generating installs, which is typically achieved through advertising or promotions.
And while you focus on increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of current users and ensuring you have the best monetization strategy, you may also want to continue adding more potential high value users through both paid and organic tactics. But how does it all work?
The advertising ecosystem - For Games.
---Supply is the opportunity to sell the ads. In game advertising, these are either publishers or developers - the actual game where the ad unit or a single advert will show up.
---Demand is the opportunity to buy that ad space and show your adverts, or advertisers.
---For example, if you want to sell ads within your game, you would be the publisher/developer. If you want to buy ad space in order to show you game ads and hopefully get people to install your game, you would be the advertiser.
You can be a publisher/developer and/or the advertiser. The choice is yours and depends on your goals!
With the vast majority of games being free to play, monetization strategies allow for "free to play games" to continue. It is ultimately up to the developer to ensure that monetization activities or touchpoints are native to the user’s experience, keeping them engaged with relevant content both within ads and gameplay.
Content owners implementing ads in a way that generates many accidental clicks or taps in order to artificially inflate revenue.
None of these practices should be condoned or followed.
Initial Exchange Offering, commonly referred to as an IEO, is a fundraising event that is administered by an exchange.
Initial Coin Offering (ICO) where the project team themselves conduct the fundraising