💰 Ad Monetization Trends - Prison games take over by Felix Braberg

Prison Life by Super is earning about $17,000 per day in ad revenue, which means that this is a total yearly run rate of about $38 million in ad revenue, which is quite significant. But I can't stress how impressed I am with this mechanic that essentially you're given the speed up, the first character speed up for free. And I guess this is something we're going to see more and more in the idol arcade genre because that's a very clever little thing they did there. It's 4 a.m. and we're rolling the dice drops knowledge made of golden eyes. Felix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mat Felix Shaku bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight. Master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jacks lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. Ads are beautiful,

they light the way. Click it fast, don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Aha.
Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast. Today I'm doing a solo episode on some of the ad monetization trends that I'm seeing in the mobile markets. If you like content like this, please let us know in the comments. So to start off, what is the overarching theme in this ad monetization episode? It's summed up quite easily in two words, prison themed. That's right. Today is going to be prison themed because from what I can see in the charts is that prison themed games are managing to scale and there are more and more games entering this genre with prison themed gameplay. Today I'm going

to show you four games and how they monetize with ads. It's going to be Prison Life by Super which is an idol arcade game. Uh, Prison Survival by Highgame, which is more of a hyper casual game, and Prison Escape Journey by XG Games Global, which is a take on a supermarket simulator. Also, Prison Escape Simulator by Digital Melody, which is also kind of in the Supermarket simulator space that's kind of been refitted with a prison theme. But before diving into the four games I want to talk about, I want to talk about kind of what I think is at the center of what's allowing these type of themed games to scale. And that is of course user acquisition. Everything in mobile always comes back to how effectively you can run UA and how well your themes resonate with the audience. I think the game that best personifies the rise of prison theme games is the Forex game Lands of Jail. And as we know, the Forex genre is

very competitive where your success is defined by your UA and themes. Forex games generally do a lot of testing and will never really reach scale unless their theme really resonates with an audience. So in short, if a Forex game manages to scale on a certain theme, that's something that you should take note of because that's essentially how users convert and they really resonate with that theme. meaning that you should probably be testing those type of themes, too. Lands of Jail has earned about 37 million since launch and managed to scale to 500K DAU. Even looking at their creatives, you can see that it's packed with creatives that almost look idle arcade themes. So, this essentially tells me that there's a large audience on iOS and Android who want to play prison style games. Right now, I'm going to share a couple of these charts and kind of talk about the games that I want to go through today. Here are the games that you can see that we're going to talk about today. And you

can see that pretty much the first game I want to talk about is Prison Survival, which is by our friends at Super. And this game was launched uh mid June uh 2024 and has really managed to scale to crazy levels in the last couple of months. So as you can see here the active user base is 2 between 2.1 million and 1.7 million dau. So this game monetizes I estimated pretty much 99% from in-game ads. And essentially what it is is an idle arcade game where you have to essentially manage a prison. So if we share the screen here, essentially how it works is essentially like all other idol arcade games that they've made. You're a prison guard where you're managing a prison and you have to do tasks essentially that earn you revenue. So here's me putting a

prison to prisoner to his cell. This one I have to set free. And essentially by doing all these different tasks I earn revenue which means that I can upgrade my prison and then move forward. So this is an idle arcade game as you can see. So it's based on the fact that either you watch a lot of rewarded ads and rewarded ads are always kind of in three main big buckets. So, it's either to speed up the character movement, to increase the amount of rewards that you're getting in terms of monetary rewards, or it's to increase the carrying capacity of your playable character. So, very similar style of games to the other type of games that they've done before in this space. I'm thinking about pizza ready and their sneaker game that I just forgot the name of, but yeah, very similar where you do tasks. Now, one of the main clever things that I noticed here, right? So, you can definitely see the banners at the bottom which are being changed at about a 10-second interval. You also have interstitial ads that pop up on

random time frames. But one of the interesting things that I noticed with this game was during the onboarding. So, one of the main themes when I've worked on these type of games before is that you try to get users to speed up character movements. And usually you do this by watching a rewarded ad. So, it usually means you can get a tricycle or something like that to speed up character movements. How they do it here in this game is extremely clever because what you do when you start playing the game is you actually get the tricycle or I think it's a segue that you get to use for free for a certain amount of time period. So, what this does, it's the first time I've actually seen this. Here's one of the beautiful interstitial ads. So, what this essentially does is that it allows users to get a feel of the premium feel of the game, which probably increases the amount of conversions that you actually have on that ad placement when you show it later. As you can see here, a lot of lot of uh rewarded ads and a lot of interstitials. So, of course, you get redirected as well. Uh anyway, let me go

back into it. Right. So, currently this game, let me just bring it up here on my notes. I'm estimating that this game has about four rewarded impressions on 50% of the user base. So on a 2 million user base, that means every day this game is earning about $42,000 from rewarded ads. Interstitials is way more aggressive in this game, which means that probably it's closer to six uh on the DAU on 70% of the user base. And you can see that we've already watched two interstitials just during this short videos. very packed on interstitials which means that with the user base and eCPMs that I've seen on a 100% IAA related game that should be about a day which brings us to the rewarded app open ad which they also employ all supercent games employ this and this is the Google style one which means that they're probably earning 2 to 5k a day from the rewarded app open interstitial from this game and then of

course there's the banners which I've long talked about because one of the main themes that I've see kind of in the admon space lately is how banner ads eCPM is absolutely getting demolished. So I handicap the kind of banner eCPM in this game on very low levels because that's kind of what I'm seeing especially for these type of geos. So that means that this game is earning about a day from banner ads. So that means that currently Prison Life by Super is earning about $17,000 per day in ad revenue, which means that this is a total yearly run rate of about $38 million in ad revenue, which is quite significant. But I can't stress how impressed I am with this mechanic that essentially you're given the speed up, the first character speed up for free. And I guess this is something we're going to see more and more in the idle arcade genre because that's a very clever little thing they did there. So this brings me to the next game that I

want to talk about which is Prison Survival uh by Highgame Global. So this is of course a Vietnamese studio that's part of the Vietnamese success that we've been seeing. This game was launched already in 2024 in November. uh had a big peak and essentially right now is has about 600,000 DAU uh which is quite impressive. But what's even more impressive is that this game I guess is one of the few surviving hyper casual style games where there's necessarily pretty much no AP revenue at all, but it's still managing to scale. Let me just close this and show the game play. So the reason I say that this is a hyper casual style game is because it's essentially designed around a core loop which is very popular in the hyper casual space which is a ad monetization style core loop and what that means is that you want actions or gameplay or the core loops to take about 50 to 80

seconds to complete. Why? because essentially you want to have the opportunity to show users either a rewarded ad or a interstitial ads on a rolling basis that's no longer than 80 seconds. So that means you can have 10 to 15 minute style gameplay on average and you're still getting to that magical number that you need for scaling with ads which is about seven interstitial ads per daily active user and about five rewarded ads. So let me show the game here. So you can see here loading and the reason I'm loading it is because sometimes they actually load mrex here on the main screen. Here's the app open interstitial. This of course is the Google one. Usually I don't recommend using this one because essentially Google is the only one that uses this theme that says splash screen open interstitial that covers pretty much 80% of the screen. But you can click through it. Usually on this, the eCPMs I see in the states is about $2 cuz there's no other networks competing against it,

which is why I usually recommend just load an interstitial instead because the interstitial ECPM on the same ad unit in the same time period is probably closer to 15 in the states, right? Anyway, let's move to the game play. So, prison survival theme, it's actually a bit of a lie. I think they actually have it more to actually get a lot of organic downloads as the title, but what it actually is, it's a take on Squid Games where you do games that take 50 uh 50 to 80 seconds to complete and if you don't complete it, I'm just running through this. Uh you have to watch an ad essentially. And they employ uh this kind of ad monetization strategy that I always call convert or die. Let me just focus on the game. can progress are faced with choices that if you don't watch the rewarded ad, you're shown an interstitial ad. So, this one, let me just run through it. It's really hard to do these things when

you're actually also talking about it. Come on, shoot the rock. There we go. So, what you can do, you can increase time timers with a rewarded ad or you can just play the game and you have to throw solve a lot of these problems and the mini games that you're always doing are always different, right? So, it kind of has this novelty factor. I'm just going to let this run out on the 10 seconds, but what it shows is that prison themed uh UA and organics really work because there's still a lot of users that are using this. So, revive here. So, if I don't revive, you're shown an interstitial ad like right there. So, that's the convert or die kind of rewarded or rewarded or interstitial ad placement that so many hyper casual games is based around. And the reason why is because it works super well. So you give users the option to watch a rewarded ad and if they don't convert with a rewarded ad you show them an interstitial right. So this game let me bring up the numbers here. So about 620 Wait let me see here 20,000 DO let me

just bring up the last numbers. So that means that this game is currently generating anywhere between $21,000 to $32,000. And the main mechanism here of course is the interstitial ads. So I estimate that this is showing about 6 to 8 interstitial ads on 75% of the user base. The eCPM is really low due to the different geos that this game is actually large in. So I think it's about 12 to 15k a day in interstitial ads. Rewarded ads here probably no longer than no higher than two. The reason for that is that there's no real need to watch the rewarded ads after you kind of try it, which usually decreases the yeah the overall impressions per DAU, especially in this type of genre. Then you have the rewarded app open interstitial, which I'm assuming in non US geos, the eCPM is probably anywhere between 30 to 50 cent on this ad unit

and in the states probably somewhere around $2, I would say. But the thing is this game has no more than 50k users in the states. Yeah, probably from rewarded app open is probably about a grand a day that this game is earning from uh from rewarded app open interstitials. Then you have the banner ads which I already talked about. Catastrophic how low the ecms are this day these days. So, I think this game is earning about $1,500 a day on banner ads, which means that the run rate of this game is about 7 to8 probably $9 million per year. So, that brings me to the next two games. And this is more of a I guess prediction as well because we know that one of the best performing or hidden gem or unexpected successes of the last 2 years was probably the rise of the supermarket simulator games where essentially you

act as a store clerk and you stock items and you take delivery of items and you sell the items and then you close the store. And this style of games, a bunch of games that jumped into this genre because it was fueled by so much organic growth, especially from Brazil. And there were kind of two or the one big company called Digital Melody Games that kind of took this genre by storm. And one of the things I want to say here is like if we look here on the last 90 days, right, let me just take off this game and this game, right? So you can see that the active user base of Prison Escape and Prison Escape Journey has really jumped and basically is getting a lot of organic downloads. And what's interesting here is that for Prison for Prison Escape by X Games, which is of course a Vietnamese studio, they're still managing after launching to have about 60K active DAU. So, I'm just going to show this game and I think

you're going to notice how similar these games actually are to the Supermarket simulator game. So, let's start with Prison Escape by X Game Global from Vietnam. So, I guess this is story driven cuz the starts how it begins is a beautiful AI created cartoon where Yeah. And here we actually have them following my advice. So you can see here that what they're actually doing here is they're loading an interstitial ad on app open instead of using the uh app open format which is means that they're going from an eCPM of $2 to actually a normal interstitial ecpm which is probably somewhere closer between $8 to $15. So, how this game works is, let's see if I actually mapped it perfectly, is you have days and then you have your mattress and you have your economy. And all you're doing, oh, the guard just let me in. And all you're doing is you're trying to escape. The the kind of main economy in this game is ramen, I guess, cuz it's prison themed and that's

what kind of they do. But what you have to do is you have to dig a hole and escape. No, I need to pick up my tool and interact. So, here's my plate that I used to dig. And yeah, you can see here I'm digging. I'm digging. I'm digging. And what I have to do is just dig, make deals with the guard. And how this game monetizes is pretty much you can remove ads by making an AP which removes the interstitials which are shown I think on a 182nd loop in the game and you can watch rewarded ads to actually increase the amount of ramen which is kind of the in-game soft currency that you use to trade goods with other prisoners. Okay, now I started washing the reward ad which I think was a bit of a mistake. But as you can see the controls are exactly the same that you got on the supermarket simulator but essentially just recreated the theme and it's about escaping and trading. So it's extremely similar to what you're getting on the supermarket simulator kind of category. And you can also see that if we look at

uh Prison Escape Simulator by Digital Melody. Of course, this studio uh from Pakistan, I think they are known for the I guess the best performing supermarket simulator game, but we can see here the ad won't finish. Anyway, I'm just going to load the other game, Prison Escape Simulator. So, you can see here the theme is very similar. It's even very similar, I would say, to that's a bit more sophisticated, I guess, than the supermarket simulator that we talked about before. You can see here the guard is coming. He's going to sell me some items. Dismiss the guard. As soon as I have the guard out of here, I can begin working on my hole. So, you can see these games very similar, except here, instead of using a a plate, I'm using a spoon. So, this game monetizes a bit less aggressive uh than X Games uh Prison Escape Simulator where essentially you dig up items, you find

things, and you basically watch less ads, which is why I think they've actually gone for using the interstitial in the first app open style because I think they don't have that high imp. Anyway, here you can see duck. This is the items I can use to essentially sell to the guards, right? Of course, I can't even grab the duck. Anyway, let me get to the estimates what I think this game is earning. So, let me go back here. So, this is Prison Escape Simulator by Digital Melody. So, this game has way less interstitial, but probably it monetizes a lot more on the rewarded app open, right? So the amount of interstitials that they currently show, I'm estimating to be about 8 per day, which means that this game at 221 DAO,000 DAU, which is still mainly in tier three geos, is earning about 5 to 6K a day on interstitial ads. Rewarded

ads, cuz they're quite hidden in the game, I only think they're showing about one, which is about 1.7K per day right now. And of course, no banners, which means that this game is currently earning anywhere between 6 to 10K, but it's still early days cuz it launched in mid August. Uh, but essentially, it's still kind of scaling, right? And I kind of want to summarize this episode by just showing the simulation trends, right? So, this these charts uh probably a year ago, they were dominated by all these supermarket manager, which is still here, right? So you have number five, number six, and number seven. Oh no. Uh number five, six uh are still yeah the supermarket simulators. And essentially now what you've seen is the prison escape journey has kind of taken over the number one spot in the simulation. And then you have the prison simulator games which are really growing. And I guess this is kind of the overarching theme of today's admonetization episode that essentially I expect that the simulation genre is

going to be pretty much taken over by prison style themes because I think that this theme really resonates a lot with audiences everywhere. So that sums it up for this month's or week's ad monetization special episode. If you like content like this, please let us know in the comments. Then we can do more of it. But until next time, just wanted to say thank you and have a good day. Bye-bye. [Music]