Crossy Road has generated $1m in-game ad revenue

Smartphone hit Crossy Road has proved that in-game ads can still pay the bills, even in games that have IAPs.

The Guardian reports that, according to Unity, Hipster Whale’s title has made in excess of $1m from in-game ads alone since its launch on iOS in November 2014.

And that figure doesn’t even factor in the cash it has made from purchases of the in-game currency used to acquire new characters.

Crossy Road was released on Android via the Amazon Appstore just before Christmas and on Google Play late last week. It was downloaded 10m time on iOS in its first month and then another million times on Android over the weekend.

We wanted it to be free, so that everyone has a chance to play,” said co-creator Matt Hall. I thought that video ads were a really good way to earn money without getting into people’s faces. We just needed to figure out a fun reason for players to watch them.

We didn’t want any consumable purchases, we wanted to do something that everybody could pay a little bit for if they wanted to, but where it wasn’t necessary to keep paying.”