Question Thoughts on Ads? + Update

Hey All,
Hope you are all enjoying the warm weather (if it is where you live) and are not out starting any forest fires, etc...

Wanted to give you a brief update and get feedback on Ads for Free Rider HD.

First update, we will be working on the Offline Editor for Chrome and prototyping the iOS app. We will continue to makes some refinements to the layout of the game etc (like we have been doing) but we won't be releasing any big features until we make a lot of headway on the iOS version.

Ads
We just started to test out some new interstitial ads on Facebook and wanted to get player feedback. We have had feedback that certain types of display ads currently ran on web interfere with performance of the game, this is something that we definitely would like to avoid.

Couple questions:

• would you prefer to see an interstitial ad like the one below either on pre-load of game or in-between levels as opposed to the display ads being run now?
• have you encountered issues with current display ads on web?
• any other thoughts?

With the interstitial ads you would be able to exit the ad early (5 seconds or so in) or if you like / are interested in the video you can watch it. Similar to how youtube works but we would only show x ads per session.

Anyways, wanted to get some feedback, so feedback away!

 

Agreed, we would be very concise of when the ad would be shown. Like either on first load of the game (current implementation for Facebook) or at the start or inbetween levels not during.

Adding a pre-roll ad would enable us to hopefully remove all current display ads which we have been told does/can impact game play.

 

Right now it is only on Facebook, showing 1 ad on first load per play session.

The idea would be to replace all current display ads in the web version of the game with non-intrusive ads at opportune game breaks like before starting a new level or just completing one.

 

Depending on how fb test goes, but removal of display ads while playing the game seems to be a really big pro in making the switch.

 

I hear you guys and that is not our plan.

They would be placed at moments where it doesn't impact in the zone play and they wouldn't be shown frequently. So either before a track is played or in-between levels so that we can remove the current ads that are shown during play which players have complained about.

Yep we will serve extra ads to your accounts then. About 10-20% of people do use an ad blocker, other than purchasing coins which removes ads or watching videos for coins, ads are what support on-going development and support of the game.

 

There won't be more, if anything there will be less.

 

We gave a bunch of reasoning & thoughts behind points / coins and why we felt it was important to for progression tied to it to keep players more involved, can look back on that on why coins / points are in the game and those are still applicable.

As for legal guarding side of things, our hope is that anyone that is using the internet under the age of 18 has permission to do so from their parents and they are involved with what they are doing, if they aren't there are a bunch more scarier things on the internet than Free Rider HD. Our terms are pretty standard.

Allowing people to purchase coins + get a perk of no ads, gives people the choice to disable ads while still supporting the site. Purchasing coins removes ads, removing the option to remove ads while supporting the game doesn't make sense to me. Also fail to see how giving the option to remove ads while supporting the game is greedy.

The only reason we are looking at running ads at opportune moments that don't negatively impact game play is because with the current ads we have had players complain about them impacting performance of the game depending on what the ad is about.

 

That won't change, if anything it will load faster as we won't be loading as many ads (that would be the plan anyways).