Has anyone had luck with Facebook mobile advertising for your app?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Alittletf, Feb 8, 2013.

  1. Alittletf

    Alittletf Member

    Dec 5, 2012
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    Marketing at Tiny Factory
    San Diego
    Currently we are looking into advertising on Facebook to boost downloads/sales. We first looked into advertising for our fan page which worked ok until we learned of the expensive pricing to promote a post to all your "likers."

    Now we are looking into ads on mobile facebook that allow the user to download the game straight from their phone.

    Has anyone had any luck with this? Its not cheap.
     
  2. Stephen Richard

    Stephen Richard Active Member

    Jan 2, 2013
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    USA
    Yes, Facebook is leveraging its strength as a mobile app discovery platform with the mobile app installs ad unit. It will give developers new opportunities for growth. It enables developers to drive installs and increase app downloads. Try to find the right audience with more ad targeting when comparing to other platforms.
     
  3. layzerboy

    layzerboy Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2010
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    Outer Space
    Hey, yes we have some experience with facebook mobile ads for app installs. Depending on the audience, the CPC could range from $0.03 - $0.25. So depending on your ad creatives, performance and how much the user is convinced to download your app, you could be achieving very low cost per download.

    So it is definitely worth a shot.

    Hope that helps! :)
     
  4. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
    1,535
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    I would recommend FAAD. For a few thousand dollars they got us 120,000 downloads yesterday and we're expecting similar numbers for the next few days.
     
  5. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    How do you know you got your downloads from FAAD ? I saw your game listed on numerous sites and multiple apps promoting games that went free.
     
  6. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
    1,535
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    Because last year when we tried the previous game free without any fanfare, we didn't get a tenth of that. Then did a FAAD one a month later and saw similar numbers (about 80K a day).

    These things tend to feed on each other, but you need to get them started first and the various faad-alikes are the best thing to spend some advertising money on ime.
     
  7. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    Your game is very popular and I am sure you would get the similar numbers without FAAD. When I switched one of our top games free for a day I got over 500K downloads/day without FAAD. Also, we run FAAD campaign with one of our less popular games and we get only 49K downloads.
    I think popularity of the game counts for well over 90% of the results.
     
  8. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
    1,535
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    Well that wasn't my experience but I guess its possible. Importantly though, it's still the best thing you can do with a bit of advertising budget. It's well known that banner ads and other obvious things just don't pay off. The one we tried had no effect whatsoever although it was admittedly on a smaller site. It was just a test but it failed hard.

    Elsewhere I recommended spending money on a PR agency. We felt we actually got good value there in terms of exposure but you need to make sure your game is going to review well first as that's their main thrust. (Not casting aspersons, just saying.)
     
  9. Appthat

    Appthat Member

    Feb 3, 2013
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    I own an electrical testing company with my wife.
    Australia
    Hi Ribicon, so using FAAD, did you make much money out of it. I know you said 120,000 downloads but do they take a percentage of that. How much do you end up with as apple take their cut too. Is that the way it works?
    Thanks
     
  10. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
    1,535
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    We didn't as it happens. Am now totally disillusioned tbh. IAP sales went up a little bit, but not by much. This time we paid up front rather than a cut.

    It's still the best advert spend, but adverts just don't work ime.

    I'll be amending this later in the month with some numbers: http://www.rubicondev.com/blog/freebies/
     
  11. JasonS

    JasonS Well-Known Member

    Mar 4, 2010
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    Game Dev @ Fun Mob Games
    Australia
    I've used Facebook ads for a paid game and got bad results. You can really target the ads to your exact audience, but we had a really bad conversion rate. It may have been our creatives, but I don't think so. It may work well for a freemium game, i'm not sure. You can test the waters with a small daily spend limit of $10 to see for yourself.

    However, IMO, like Rubicon says, banner ads are waste of money, unless you have a very large budget to push lots of banners ads on lots of popular sites.

    We also used FAAD and went free the day before Rubicons game. I can also say that it works. We got picked up and reviewed/reported on, by many other sites tracking free games, which helped. Especially since we haven't really had many reviews from websites at all.

    Our campaign got us around 100k downloads a day and numerous #1 positions so we're happy with that.
     
  12. webstonegames

    webstonegames Active Member

    Sep 17, 2012
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    If you get the right audience and high ctr with fb mobile ads there is change to get dirty cheap installs.

    We spent about 250€ to our last test campaign and avarge price for install was 0,16€
     
  13. HeliApps

    HeliApps Well-Known Member

    Rubicon,

    I for one downloaded GBWG for free and wouldn't even have known it was a FAAD promotion - visibility on the appshopper app is what got my download...
     
  14. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
    1,535
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    Yeah, maybe other avenues are becoming more important these days. Anyways, hope you you enjoyed it. :)
     
  15. jarredneilsen

    jarredneilsen New Member

    Feb 20, 2013
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    Yes, you should try fb mobile advertising. It's really effective, I have tried it on my gaming blog. Facebook Mobile advertising works really well for developers like us and I can assure you big revenue potential.
     

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