I’ve been using LeadBolt (an in-app advertising network) for a few months now, with mixed results. The rich media content unlockers offered by LeadBolt are very effective, especially if you’re developing a game where the interstitial format makes sense (e.g. a blocking advert between levels). However, their banner advertising hasn’t been as effective for me, offering a CTR and eCPM slightly less than AdMob.
This week LeadBolt announced a new advertising format, called an “App Wall”. This is a full-page advertisement, which is actually embedded in a WebView (so no SDK integration required). The app wall offers the user a list of free apps to download. If they click and download one of the apps, Leadbolt will pay you a referral fee.
It’s a pretty simple concept, but one that I think could work very well as a non-intrusive method of advertising. For example, you could include an entry on your main menu, that says “Top Apps”. By linking this to the LeadBolt app wall, you’ve got an effective “pay per download” revenue source integrated right into your main menu. People can simply choose to ignore that menu item if they’re not interested in the advertising. And because the list of items on the app wall changes frequently, users are likely to keep returning to the advertisement day after day.
Based on my testing so far, the App Wall format seems to be quite effective. I’ve been getting a CTR of about 6.4% (compared with 5.4% for Rich Media Unlockers, and 2.8% for Banner ads). I’m also getting an eCPM of about $1.50 at the moment. Has anyone else tried LeadBolt with the new App Wall? Want to share your results?
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