Hi,

I'm currently etching out a marketing strategy for an upcoming game and looking into potential avenues to market the game.

Part of my strategy includes 'conventional' ads at various spots, most of which I have a relatively good understanding of how likely impressions are likely to garner interest/clicks.

I've looked into GDnet's solution (I believe 75$ USD for 50k impressions) but I realized I have no idea what the average conversion currently looks like (bearing in mind that the actual content put there will shift that tremendously).

Any fellow developer around these parts have used it recently? I'd like to get a feel of how valuable this solution should be considered (one or more packages?)

Any admin can chime in with any relevant stats (no need to delve into specifics as to what ad/product, obviously).

Thanks!

GameDev.net allows Crossbones+ and GDNet+ members to put up an ad for $5, IIRC. Correction: It's free for GDNet+ subscribers and Crossbones+ members.

You can get GDNet+ at a discount also, by buying the 'Crossbones' package here. Or take advantage of the free ads, and just donate to help support the site.

I've clicked several of the more interesting ads, since I know they are from community members. Normally, on most of the internet, I ignore every ad.

Selling a game, probably not.

Remember this is mostly a site for game developers, not so much for avid players. Even though we play games, that isn't the point of the site.

The ads do help with exposure to the market, a market of mostly aspiring game developers and industry professionals, and I can attribute some sales to those ads. Just be prepared for real-world ad effectiveness levels, you need several thousand ad exposures to get a small number of visitors, a tiny number of those read your site, a tiny percentage of those consider your product, a tiny percentage of those will pay for a product.

Correction: It's free for GDNet+ subscribers and Crossbones+ members.

That does not seem to work on my end, the total listed is still 75$. I'm Crossbones+ but not GDNet+ though.

Remember this is mostly a site for game developers, not so much for avid players. Even though we play games, that isn't the point of the site.

Would make more sense to advertise resources, I agree.

The ads do help with exposure to the market, a market of mostly aspiring game developers and industry professionals, and I can attribute some sales to those ads. Just be prepared for real-world ad effectiveness levels, you need several thousand ad exposures to get a small number of visitors, a tiny number of those read your site, a tiny percentage of those consider your product, a tiny percentage of those will pay for a product.

Indeed, I'm familiar with these numbers as I've worked with CTR and the likes before. My question is merely what sort of CTR people are getting as the platform where such ads are displayed make the CTR vary significantly.

Correction: It's free for GDNet+ subscribers and Crossbones+ members.

That does not seem to work on my end, the total listed is still 75$. I'm Crossbones+ but not GDNet+ though.

Oh, just for GDNet+ subscribers then. It's hard to tell.

Yep, that promotion is GDNet+ only -- the intent was to thank our paid subscribers and hopefully encourage some more subscriptions rather than everyone just gaining the benefits for free via Crossbones -- as a GDNet+ benefit it's also available to new members without having to gain 1,000 rep first.

Any member with an active GDNet+ subscription can place a leaderboard ad at no additional cost, which will remain in circulation for 50,000 impressions. Higher rep members (I'm afraid I'm not sure of the exact threshold) can place a second ad at the same time, while anyone else uploading a new ad will have it replace the first one.

Taking a random selection of the currently active ads we have the following figures:

31,462 impressions, 36 clicks

23,072 impressions, 38 clicks

21,726 impressions, 61 clicks

6567 impressions, 15 clicks

The highest number of clicks achieved was 1824, while the lowest was 5 (for a duplicated ad). I obviously can't tell you if those clicks resulted in sales, downloads, or whatever the members in question were hoping for, but at $5 for a month of membership (less for a crossbones member) it's pretty cheap to give it a go.

The ads with the best results are for developer resources rather than games, although a couple of games have made it into the triple digits of clicks.

We also have other ad units and the possibility of advertising in our email newsletter, which are not available through the above promotion -- if you'd like details on those shoot off an email to sales@gamedev.net and someone can help you out.

Hope that helps! :)

Thanks Jbadams, very interesting CTR stats!

0.1% - 0.2% isn't bad but I should definitely look into GDNet membership first to make it worthwhile (given the expected conversion rate I'm forecasting and the price the product's pricing!)