Subway Surfers · B2C · endless runner mobile game
Let players watch an ad for a reward instead of paying
Ads bring in 80-85% of revenue; still the top game in tier-2 and tier-3 countries
Workedpricingmarket-selection
What they did
Revenue mix of interstitial ads and rewarded videos (players choose to watch an ad in exchange for a reward), plus IAP for characters and unlocks aimed at paying players in the US, Europe and other tier-1 markets. Ads let the game serve tier-2/tier-3 markets where people rarely subscribe or buy IAP. Ongoing questions: where on screen to place banners or rewarded prompts, and whether payers should have interstitials removed permanently or for a period. Guest notes a fairness gap: skilled players who rarely die see few ads.
What happened
80-85% of revenue comes from advertising; the game remains the most downloaded in tier-2/3 markets.
- Stage
- scale
“So it's a mix of interstitials and rewarded videos.”
“what the ads allow us to do is to also be available and support markets that would not traditionally have subscription apps or use in-app purchases”
“And whether that should be permanently or whether that should only be for a period of time to say, well, if you paid, then you won't have any distractions that you haven't chosen yourself.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Subway Surfers: Move the game to a new city every three weeksGuest credits it with keeping the game fresh for 13 years; no numbers
- Subway Surfers: Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Subway Surfers: Have a small in-house team post 5-10 videos a day riding pop culture trendsViral hits of 75M-100M views on salaries only; guest says it lifts app store featuring
- Subway Surfers: Let anyone use the game in their videos, and repost the cool onesCreators, including a K-pop star, make unpaid content; the game became a meme format
- Subway Surfers: Put a few hundred dollars behind posts already going viralTens of thousands of dollars total; helps hits spread to other platforms
- Subway Surfers: Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Subway Surfers: Swap characters with other hit games, with no money changing handsBrings back lapsed players and boosts both games; Crossy Road got the bigger bump
- Slopes: Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers