Insights · 31 October 2026

Ad formats: earning from ads without losing players

Ad revenue is easy to raise for a week: show more ads. The cost arrives later, when players stop coming back. The useful question is not how many ads a game can carry, but how much ad revenue it earns over a player’s whole lifetime.

Start with rewarded video

Rewarded video is the format players choose for themselves. They watch an ad and get something in return, so it tends to cause less friction than an ad they did not ask for.

The offer has to be worth it. A good rewarded placement sits at a moment when the player already wants something: a continue after failing a level, a doubled reward, a free booster. If nobody taps it, the reward or the moment is wrong. Adding more buttons will not fix that.

Treat interstitials as a budget

Interstitials interrupt play, so they belong at natural breaks such as the end of a level. Google’s rules for AdMob also warn against placing them where they surprise players or get clicked by accident.

Decide three things up front:

• When the first one appears. New players are still deciding whether to stay, so many games hold back interstitials for the first sessions.
• The minimum gap between ads. A time cap protects players who are moving quickly through short levels.
• Who sees fewer of them. A player who has just paid or just watched a rewarded video may deserve a break.

Use banners with care

Banners earn little per impression, but they are always visible. They suit menus and slower screens better than the middle of play, where they take up room and invite accidental taps.

Test against retention

Never judge an ad change by ad revenue alone. Run it as an A/B test and compare the groups on:

• ARPDAU, average revenue per daily active user, from ads and purchases together
• D1, D7 and D30 retention
• Session length and sessions per day
• Revenue per install over time, the number that shows whether a short-term gain lasted

Let the test run long enough for the slower effects to show. A change that looks like a win on day three can turn into a loss by day thirty, because the players who left stopped earning anything at all.