Experience using BuySellAds to promote iOS games
Hello dear friends,
Today I want to tell you about my experience using the BuySellAds service.
If you are developing software, services or applications and plan to advertise them in the future, then I think this site is already in your bookmarks with the intention of trying it out. The site quite often flashes in various posts and comments including here, on Habré.
If someone does not know, then this service allows you to buy ads directly from a specific site at a certain price for a while, such as a month, or the number of times an ad banner is displayed. Prices vary depending on the popularity of sites. The cost of a monthly placement of your banner can cost $ 20 and maybe $ 1000, it all depends on the size of your advertising budget.
Also, the site offers the so-called Bundles, when you in one fell swoop buy advertising on many sites united by one theme. The theme of Apple, the App Store and everything connected with them is very popular nowadays, so bundles like the iPhone App Starter and iOS Games are among the most expensive and cost $ 7,806.85 and $ 7,555.50 respectively, only Web Design Flood with a price tag of $ 10,199.00 at the time writing these lines.
And when one of my games was over and it was time to launch an advertising campaign, I first went to BuySellAds to choose the sites for placing banners. In view of their high prices, the bundles were thrown away immediately, buying a banner for a month from sites with good traffic was also not very cheap, so I couldn’t have anything left but to buy the number of impressions. I chose one banner for TouchArcade (20K impressions) and 148Apps (40K impressions), and two banners for Cult of Mac (20K impressions each) for a total of $ 315. It is not difficult to calculate that the cost of 1000 banner impressions in this case is $ 3.15
I added my order to the cart and paid. Here I want to warn that you are buying not a one-time display of banners, but a monthly subscription, that is, if the subscription is not canceled, then you will be charged such a sum every month. If you buy advertising there, do not miss this moment.
After the launch of the advertising campaign, a surprise was waiting for me, I expected that all these shows would be turned off immediately after payment for 1 - 3 days, since I wanted to use this advertisement for the so-called starting boost, but it was not there, this number of impressions is stretched to month, which did not give any visible effect neither at the beginning of this campaign nor any further.
')
Another nuance was that the 148Apps ad didn’t show up at all, I didn’t see any data about impressions and clicks on the Dashboard. All this lasted about 10 days, after which I decided to write to them and ask them to return the unused funds, since I didn’t get what I expected at all, and such an ad doesn’t give me any effect what I was told that they cannot return the money, such are their rules. Then I asked to return only part of the money intended for 148Apps. The advertising campaign did not even start there. My request for a refund was completely ignored, but I received thanks for reporting a bug and in the next few days advertising on this site reported to me about 5K impressions per day, I vigorously gained the missing amount, after which I leveled off to 700 impressions a day and held on to the end of the month. If the impossibility of returning funds to sites on which advertising has already been shown, I understand, then the time with 148Apps seemed rather unpleasant to me, and I have doubts about the reality of the impressions received in those few days after talking with support.
Here are the full figures for impressions and clicks received during this campaign:
Impressions: 100,055
Clicks: 997
That is, the price of one click turned out to be equal to almost 32 cents, which is far from the cheapest option.
If you imagine that they installed the game, and it is available in the App Store for free, 10% of people clicked on the banner, the installation price will be $ 3.2
And this is taking into account the absence of any targeting at least across continents, not to mention countries.
Well, 10%, as it seems to me, this is quite an optimistic option, the number will actually be even smaller, but unfortunately the App Store does not allow to track the user who downloaded the game from where it is, so we can only guess about the real numbers.
Also, it is possible that my banners were not very attractive, and with a good, beautiful banner, it will be possible to achieve better CTR results, for example, at 3% instead of 1%, but it’s hard for me to judge, you need more data to compare.
This post, I do not want to advise you or discourage the use of this service. I just decided to share my experience with them, on the basis of which it will be easier for you to decide on the appropriateness of using this type of advertising. Perhaps if a similar post appeared earlier, I could save $ 300 and spend it on something more worthwhile, but I hope that it will help you to better plan your advertising expenses.
PS
Not sure which hub will be targeted for this post, chose what I could. If you think that you need to move to a more suitable place, tell us where in the comments or in a personal.
Today I want to tell you about my experience using the BuySellAds service.
If you are developing software, services or applications and plan to advertise them in the future, then I think this site is already in your bookmarks with the intention of trying it out. The site quite often flashes in various posts and comments including here, on Habré.
If someone does not know, then this service allows you to buy ads directly from a specific site at a certain price for a while, such as a month, or the number of times an ad banner is displayed. Prices vary depending on the popularity of sites. The cost of a monthly placement of your banner can cost $ 20 and maybe $ 1000, it all depends on the size of your advertising budget.
Also, the site offers the so-called Bundles, when you in one fell swoop buy advertising on many sites united by one theme. The theme of Apple, the App Store and everything connected with them is very popular nowadays, so bundles like the iPhone App Starter and iOS Games are among the most expensive and cost $ 7,806.85 and $ 7,555.50 respectively, only Web Design Flood with a price tag of $ 10,199.00 at the time writing these lines.
And when one of my games was over and it was time to launch an advertising campaign, I first went to BuySellAds to choose the sites for placing banners. In view of their high prices, the bundles were thrown away immediately, buying a banner for a month from sites with good traffic was also not very cheap, so I couldn’t have anything left but to buy the number of impressions. I chose one banner for TouchArcade (20K impressions) and 148Apps (40K impressions), and two banners for Cult of Mac (20K impressions each) for a total of $ 315. It is not difficult to calculate that the cost of 1000 banner impressions in this case is $ 3.15
I added my order to the cart and paid. Here I want to warn that you are buying not a one-time display of banners, but a monthly subscription, that is, if the subscription is not canceled, then you will be charged such a sum every month. If you buy advertising there, do not miss this moment.
After the launch of the advertising campaign, a surprise was waiting for me, I expected that all these shows would be turned off immediately after payment for 1 - 3 days, since I wanted to use this advertisement for the so-called starting boost, but it was not there, this number of impressions is stretched to month, which did not give any visible effect neither at the beginning of this campaign nor any further.
')
Another nuance was that the 148Apps ad didn’t show up at all, I didn’t see any data about impressions and clicks on the Dashboard. All this lasted about 10 days, after which I decided to write to them and ask them to return the unused funds, since I didn’t get what I expected at all, and such an ad doesn’t give me any effect what I was told that they cannot return the money, such are their rules. Then I asked to return only part of the money intended for 148Apps. The advertising campaign did not even start there. My request for a refund was completely ignored, but I received thanks for reporting a bug and in the next few days advertising on this site reported to me about 5K impressions per day, I vigorously gained the missing amount, after which I leveled off to 700 impressions a day and held on to the end of the month. If the impossibility of returning funds to sites on which advertising has already been shown, I understand, then the time with 148Apps seemed rather unpleasant to me, and I have doubts about the reality of the impressions received in those few days after talking with support.
Here are the full figures for impressions and clicks received during this campaign:
Impressions: 100,055
Clicks: 997
That is, the price of one click turned out to be equal to almost 32 cents, which is far from the cheapest option.
If you imagine that they installed the game, and it is available in the App Store for free, 10% of people clicked on the banner, the installation price will be $ 3.2
And this is taking into account the absence of any targeting at least across continents, not to mention countries.
Well, 10%, as it seems to me, this is quite an optimistic option, the number will actually be even smaller, but unfortunately the App Store does not allow to track the user who downloaded the game from where it is, so we can only guess about the real numbers.
Also, it is possible that my banners were not very attractive, and with a good, beautiful banner, it will be possible to achieve better CTR results, for example, at 3% instead of 1%, but it’s hard for me to judge, you need more data to compare.
This post, I do not want to advise you or discourage the use of this service. I just decided to share my experience with them, on the basis of which it will be easier for you to decide on the appropriateness of using this type of advertising. Perhaps if a similar post appeared earlier, I could save $ 300 and spend it on something more worthwhile, but I hope that it will help you to better plan your advertising expenses.
PS
Not sure which hub will be targeted for this post, chose what I could. If you think that you need to move to a more suitable place, tell us where in the comments or in a personal.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/182568/
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