The Untapped Ad Revenue Opportunity for Mobile Apps

App Masters' team started adding ads to one of its subscription apps and showed an app-open ad on the user's very first open. Steve flagged it after seeing Nana's list of mistakes and asked the team to change it.

No app-open ads and few interstitials in the first 3-5 minutes; ideally remove app-open and other ads for new users for their first 7 days. After that, cap frequency by session time: first interstitial at ~5 minutes, then every ~10 minutes, rather than every 10 seconds. Check session duration first. Where there is in-game currency or lives, use rewarded ads instead.

Sudoku.com waits until the player has played a couple of rounds before starting ads, then shows interstitials after a short celebration animation when the player completes a row. Block Blast follows a similar pattern.

Bootstrapped app where subscriptions bring most revenue; the ad revenue is set aside and spent on marketing to drive more users.

A ChatGPT-wrapper app targeted Brazilian downloads specifically. No channel or spend details given.

A founder interviewed on the podcast focused only on the Thai market. No further details given.

AI image generator app: users can subscribe, or tap a button labeled plainly like 'Create image and watch an ad' to generate one image for free by watching a rewarded ad. The label makes clear the ad is the price, so users feel in control.

Where the app has currency, lives or earnable items (especially mid-core games), offer rewarded video: e.g. 'double your bonus coins' or double the daily reward. Users choose to watch, so they feel in control and are less annoyed than with interstitials.

Keep ad click-through near Google's 1-3% benchmark. Don't let ads cover content or sit where players tap to play, don't use fake close buttons, and serve relevant ads. Higher CTR makes AdMob treat clicks as accidental or fraud: manual review, lower eCPMs, possible suspension.

20-person Vietnamese game studio went self-publishing and found the whole team busy managing ad monetization. They handed ad monetization to Yango Ads' monetization team with full support.

Founder turned on post notifications for big influencers (in the US, while she was in Australia) and tried to be the first to comment on each new post, even at 2 a.m. After many comments they recognized her; she then messaged them: 'I'm launching an app to schedule your posts ahead, a content calendar. Want to be part of the beta?' Many joined, then the app launched as a paid app.