Study: ‘Big ad payouts’ for free iPhone games

Popular free iPhone games can return $4 ad revenue each month, a new study has concluded.

App Store games that are either downloaded 500,000 times – or have 75,000 active users – are said can make startling amounts in ad space and clickthroughs.

The study, undertaken by Mobclix, reached its conclusion after analysing data from games that met the download/active user criteria, while presuming that each individual game had been played for at least five minutes three times a week.

A final condition is that these games spent an average of two weeks in the App Store’s top-10 free games chart.

The research was, under these stipulations, able to analyse 50 qualifying games. Half of those were from Google’s rival store, Android Market.

Those free apps, the study found, generated an average of $4 per user on iOS, but only $1.90 on the Android platform. The figures appear to show advertisers pay more for ad space on Apple devices.

No research was provided on what percentage of the ad revenues were passed on to the developer.

On both Android and iPhone, games had generated far less advertising revenue than apps in the utilities and entertainment categories. Popular iPhone utilities, for instance, generated an average of $9.50 in monthly advertising revenue per user.

Further data from Mobclix’s study can be found here.