Designing an User Friendly In-game Ad Experience
How not to suck at integrating ads in your game.
Yes, mobile games make a lot of money. However, the ones making big money are only a handful while there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other games which can’t rely on in-app payments as much. That is where the ads come in. If you’ve played any free mobile game, it is very likely that you’ve seen the ads in them which come in various sizes and formats. Some of the popular ones would be:
- Banner Ads — The ones which appear in the form of small strips either below, or above the interactive area of the game.
- Interstitial Ads — These are the full screen ads which take over your screen and you need to close them to continue with your game.
- Video Ads — The upgraded version of the interstitial ads where a video plays on the full screen. In this case, most of the times, you need to wait for some time before you’re able to get the close button to continue with the game.
- Interactive/Playable Ads — The most recent upgrade to the video ads where now you can interact with the content that appears in the ad.
Out of these, the interstitial, video, and interactive ads are either triggered forcefully or through a ‘watch-to-earn(W2E)’ system where the player chooses to watch an ad in order to gain some sort of benefit in the game.
There are many resources and tips available for some of the ways in which these ads could be implemented in your game. Here are some informative links from Tapjoy blog.
All these pointers are very helpful in understanding the ways to implement the ads in your game.
However, while you’re busy making most of the different possibilities of ad integration, you also need to see that you don’t mess with the most important factor of the game — user experience.
There are many instances where games go overboard with the ad integration to an extent that the core experience is damaged in the process. So here I try to point out some of the obvious problems and some suggestions for making your game give a good experience regardless of the fact that you’re using a ad based monetization model.
The Problems
Bugs and crashes
There are different kinds of ads for different products which keep surfacing and there are times where something somewhere goes wrong and either you’re stuck or in the worst case just thrown out of the app altogether.
In addition to this most of the ads are designed to make you click them by mistake with their dubious placements of the close buttons.
How many ads is too many ads?
Even though there is a mix of W2E and forced ads in your game, there are lot of times when it gets too much. To an extent where it could feel like you’re looking for the game in between the ads.
There are games which then suggest you to pay in order to remove all the ads. But if that game has already hampered your playing experience by showing excessive ads, it is likely that I would leave the game by frustration.
How to fix them?
1. Plan
Ad implementation shouldn’t be a last moment addition to the game’s flow. Make it part of your game’s design process.
Think of the experience that you’re giving the players with the ads. Plan the intervals and the locations where which kind of ads will be triggered. If you’re using the W2E model, balance the game such that the benefits aren’t too much or too little. Think about the session lengths that you expect and the number of ads per session you want to surface. Design a fine balance to avoid frustration of the player.
As a designer, you also need to play and test your game with the ads to experience how the end user would feel playing it. If you think it is irritating, then may be it is.
2. Test
Once you’ve planned and implemented your design, get it tested well. By giving dedicated QA time for the ad testing, it will help in getting a better quality of game to the players. If you do not give enough testing time for the ad implementation, you’re basically not caring about most probably your only source of making money in your game.
3. Analyze
The work doesn’t stop at releasing the game. Just like any other part of the game, analyze the data from your ads as well.
Are your ads getting enough impressions? How many ads are people watching every session? Are ads a reason for any sort of engagement drop anywhere? Are the rewards from W2E too high or too low? Which are the networks performing better? Is there any performance issue related to the ad implementation visible in any cohort of users? All these and many more questions could be answered in order to understand whether you’re doing things right.
4. Optimize
Once you analyze your data and your player behavior, you should get more ideas to fix and improve your ad implementation. This is where you can finally maximize your potential of revenue.
A/B test different patterns of ad surfacing just like you would for any other feature in the game. This would help in understanding what works and what doesn’t. Set up your A/B tests from the planning stage itself so that you know what you want to learn from each of them. Once you’ve analyzed the initial data, use that learning to fix and optimize the game for a wider audience.
Easier said than done?
No, not at all. Most of the times it is just carelessness on the designing part which leads to a poor experience in an ad supported game.
Ad implementation needs to be given its due importance. Remember that it is an important source of revenue and an integral part of your product. Consider the ads as a core feature right from the beginning instead of haphazardly trying to fit in things later.
That’s all for my rant on improving the in-game ads. Feel free to comment with your views on what you thought about it. Is there anything I’ve missed out? Did the pointers help you in any way? Go ahead and let me know.
