Not as easy as it sounds.

If you’re like most developers you, have tried CMP or CPC banner ads to target your visitors. If so, you have probably experienced one of these problems:

1. Contextually matched ads usually dont provide relevant results in games.
2. The click-thru rates (CTR) are simply too low to drive any meaningful results.

The problem with these approaches is that they arent related to the game in any meaningful way. If legalities weren’t an issue you could, for example, add a feature into a ‘StreetFight’ Facebook game where players level up by clicking on ads, but unfortunately this is not within the bounds of CPC network guidelines.

However with an “offer-based” CPA solution, you can incorporate your monetization into the game without causing any negaticve impact on player experience. For example, in the StreetFight game, a player could either level up using traditional gameplay, or by completing offers to increase their ‘health’, ‘currency’, or any other factor in gameplay. These offers could be a Netflix trial subscription sign up, a Toolbar Download, or even the installation of another Facebook App.

With this mechanism, we have seen clients make on the order of 4x what they would make with traditional banner ads. Upcoming posts will describe this approach in greater detail.