Review of LeadBolt for ads + Finding alternatives

Alright so it's been 5 months we're using Leadbolt for ads on our game 'Hoppu'

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... eart.hoppu

and wanted to share this review of what we feel/went through.

1. No Fill on Blackberry

During our blackberry release we were trying to get the ads work and it wasn't.

Wrote to Leadbolt and after some follow up we got response that we can use Web ads for blackberry.

Painstakingly tested ad banners for our release on Blackberry first. Leadbolt was filling test ads then (since ad banner was in test mode)

And wolah, we released... and wham! no ads!

I went bonkers.. and then after more and more follow up they finally told us 'Blackberry fill rate is a bit less' so sometimes users may not see ads.

OK. We kept testing and looking out for numbers... NOTHING.

Then again after follow up the truth comes out "There is NO FILL RATE for blackberry"

Thank you for wasting our time. A bit of transparency during the first email could have saved the ordeal.

2. Stats Seem wrong.. by a big Margin

Currently on Android, leadbolt's dashboard shows me around 600+ - 800+ impressions being made.

However, we have our internal analytics running on the game that reports 1800-2000+ impressions on Android everyday and ~300-500 on Blackberry (which we can ignore now since there is no fill rate in BB)

The fill rate on Android is supposed to be very high .. like 90-100%.

So, where are the rest impressions?

Let's ask them.

3. Not bothered to reply Developers

As you might have noticed in the earlier text.. follow ups are multiple.

And account executives keep changing AND my new account manager doesn't even respond to email.

I asked him about some stuff regarding rates to impressions and blank. I don't even exist.

4. Low Conversion Rates

Alright, so even after losing 60% of ad impressions to some imaginary blackhole.. even 800+ impressions per day bring in a very horrible eCPM.

Oflate, I also noticed that eCPM doesnt seem to be crediting any money... and eCPC is giving a little bit (clicks are low anyway)

I wrote to my account manager and oh well No reply at all.

So basically,

now I have a game on Blackberry and Android,

with 20,000+ downloads cumulative ....

making 2000+ ad impressions everyday, (that's 60,000+ impressions a month)

but magically 1400 of the impressions disappearing, (making it 18000ish impressions a month... OMG eating away my 42,000+ impressions)

and super horrible eCPM and eCPC making me $2.1-2.5 PER MONTH (and this is last 3 months).

Things like this is what makes indie gamedevs go broke.

Anyway, I was gonna ask you fellow gamedevs if you have found out and integrated a better ad system that goes well with CrossWalk and uses iframe (pode's plugin).

Or if there is something else that works with CrossWalk?

This is why I don't bother with Leadbolt and will not touch XDK until they have a proper ads system like CocoonJS..

Yea, getting things to work in CocoonJS takes more work, but once you get things working like you should with it.. I still find it better than XDK.. especially the performance..

CocoonJS was shifting our backgrounds a bit left and right for no reason.

Also we somehow found better fps with XDK. (Not to mention that cocoonjs compiler has limit of 30MB game)

I thought I wrote to Cjs guys about it and probably never got a response either.

Might give it a try again on next game.

For me, CocoonJS is better in the FPS department.. At least with my latest title... 60+ FPS and ~20 to 35 with XDK..

And actually, if you're a Premium (which you can get free anyway) member like myself, that 30MB upload limit goes to 200MB.. You can't do over 50MB anyway, because Google limits up to 50mb for single APK files, which is why you need to use proper image/audio compression tools..

Thanks Krish to share this numbers and review about Leadbolt!

Seems like there is no good answer to this? I'm also looking for an advertising solution that works with Intel XDK Crosswalk for Android.

InneractiveJS ad (html5: phonegap, crosswalk, cocoonjs) is in beta phase

if you want, request freely, see InneractiveJS in Monetisation section

also looking for advertising solution with crosswalk. my client has just pulled the plug on leadbolt for same reasons.

We need AdMob directly, NOT through a third party like MoPub or what not, just integrate the AdMob SDK and trigger calls directly to google's server. They handle fill rate much better.

Saying that, using MoPub on CocoonJS, I have >90% fill rate from AdMob and the CPM for the past 5 months averages around $2. One of my game, a Flappy Clone (Flappy Sperm!!), had a lot of downloads and even though it doesn't work on half the devices out there that it should work on (due to CJS being crash prone & buggy!), it still generated a lot of impressions. So it earnt me enough to buy some Apple hardware to now test games on and try to put some bigger games onto the iOS store.

I am hoping XDK comes through, but it seems they only support plugins, which C2 needs to incorporate in an update... no word yet on whether thats going to happen.

If it doesn't, I am going to move to Game Maker since they do have proper mobile support that doesn't rely on 3rd party efforts.

While waiting for official support, you can try this plugin for Admob Interstitial Ads on Crosswalk.

Lot of developers say, that Leadbolt is lot better than Admob. And i think Leadbolt do not offer ads for Blackberry, so why do you wonder, that you got 0fill rate?

We need more ad services to support Construct2. There are a lot of good services out there that are available for apps. You would think, with most app purchases being games and C2 being the most popular HTML5 development environment for games, that more would offer plugins for C2.

One of my game, a Flappy Clone (Flappy Sperm!!), had a lot of downloads and even though it doesn't work on half the devices out there that it should work on (due to CJS being crash prone & buggy!), it still generated a lot of impressions. So it earnt me enough to buy some Apple hardware to now test games on and try to put some bigger games onto the iOS store.

I am hoping XDK comes through, but it seems they only support plugins, which C2 needs to incorporate in an update... no word yet on whether thats going to happen.

If it doesn't, I am going to move to Game Maker since they do have proper mobile support that doesn't rely on 3rd party efforts.

Aha, so that's your game Some impressions from me as well then.

Did you say you were able to buy apple hardware with ad impressions! Wow. I envy you

I agree with the C2 to have its own plugins for ads and iaps ... I wrote to Ashley on that earlier too.

I may also (sadly) look for other game engines. I love C2, but .... there are these issues that need some focus.

It must be really tough with just a 3 people team.

Lot of developers say, that Leadbolt is lot better than Admob. And i think Leadbolt do not offer ads for Blackberry, so why do you wonder, that you got 0fill rate?

Well they said they have ads for BB, until I finished integration and testing and then they say they dont.

While waiting for official support, you can try this plugin for Admob Interstitial Ads on Crosswalk.

What's the fill rate?