Tapjoy, the small development shop that brought us the incredible TapDefense for the iPhone [iTunes link], has quietly built out an extremely strong toolset to provide monetization options for app developers. Through two strong offerings, they claim to increase ad revenue for free apps by more than 250%. I first met them at the TechCrunch50 DemoPit, and was thoroughly impressed by the Tapjoy platform.
First, they aggregate ads from all the major mobile ad networks and serve the highest-paying ad for an app. This method leaves the developer with nigh an unfilled ad; Tapjoy boasts a 99.9% fill rate. Second, they enable developers to sell virtual goods within their apps (such as extra points in Mobster or extra towers in TapDefense) for real money. They do this by providing the user with the option to download an app in exchange for the virtual good. Be sure to read about this later on in the article, because it is truly the most innovative 3rd party platform I’ve seen on the iPhone all year.
First, the ad aggregation. Similar to AdWhirl (recently acquired by AdMob) and Mobclix, Tapjoy has a platform that combines ads from 10 mobile ad networks and provides your app with the one that has the highest PPC. And this platform is completely free for developers. In the nacent mobile advertising market, fill rate is crucial to developers, since the major ad networks are struggling to independently keep up with demand for advertising. Tapjoy, like AdWhirl and TechCrunch50 startup Mobclix, scours the networks for the highest paying ad and fills your ad with that advertisement. Meanwhile, they are collecting a gold mine of data about the habits of the users of the roughly 1,000 applications running the Tapjoy SDK. Co-Founder Lee Linden told me that ad networks like Tapjoy because they provide the networks with a large amount of data and increased fill rates. Furthermore, they work hard to build relationships with the networks – something that will serve them well in the long haul.
The second, and more unique, offering of Tapjoy is its virtual goods platform. Essentially, if you have an Android or iPhone app and want to add an in-app revenue stream, this is the way to go. You create extra level packs or upgrades to your app (such as additional characters or special skins) and provide them to your users for free. The users can only get these upgrades if they download another free or paid app as well. Publishers of free apps pay $0.25 per download, and Tapjoy takes 50% of the price of any paid app sale. They track the sale using the device owner’s Unique Device Identifier (UDID) so there is no confusion on whether the app is downloaded or not. This is a win-win-win scenario for all three parties. Of course, the developer at the point of sale earns revenue he never would have gotten otherwise via the in-app virtual good sale. Tapjoy says apps with the virtual goods system see between $75 and $150 per day per 1000 daily-active-users. The publisher gets to buy downloads at $0.25, which is far cheaper than the $0.70-$1.00 cost of buying a download via traditional mobile advertising. Publishers are getting more than 10,000 new installations per day via this method. Finally, Tapjoy may just be the big winner – they’ve created a cash cow of an ad business. In fact, Tapjoy has more demand from the publishers to pay for downloads than they do developers selling in-app virtual goods.
Clients such as Playdom and Papaya have taken the most advantage of the virtual goods platform, and Tapjoy is expanding its rapidly expanding its client base: Digital Chocolate, Gogii, imeem and ngmoco are all on board, along with hundreds of smaller publishers. They have worked extremely hard to build relationships with these clients as well; both co-founders Lee Linden and Ben Lewis provide all of their customers with their cell phone numbers. Lee joked about how they’ve had a few late-night wake-up calls from their clients.
I dont want my ad networks optimized by PPC – who cares what the cost per click is if no one is clicking on the ads.
As a developer – I’ve had the worst latency and performance with Tapjoy. The integration on the virtual goods platform with offerpal does not work.
Good idea…poor execution….better luck next time!
Hi John,
I’m so sorry to hear that you had a problem integrating the Tapjoy library. Whatever the issue, we’d be happy to help you address the problem.
As mentioned in the article, there are real publishers – big and small – making real money with our platform today. So if there was an issue with your specific app we’d be happy to help diagnose the problem and generate revenue today.
Ben Lewis
Tapjoy Cofounder
“As mentioned in the article, there are real publishers – big and small – making real money with our platform today.”
Versus real publishers making fake money or fake publishers making real money?
Sorry–couldn’t resist.
I’m late to the party, but I’d like to share our experience with TapJoy.
We developed one of the only (first?) location based RPG’s in the store, gpsAssassin (http://itunes.com/app/gpsAssassin). The problem: The game is most fun if you’re playing with other people within a 5 mile radius.
As other comments stated, its very difficult to rise above the noise and get your app noticed. Even if you have a strong viral component, that ‘kick start’ is rough. TapJoy’s innovative, rewarded-installs are easily the most cost effective way to drive new users. In fact, we actually turned it off because our server load is maxed out (yes Ben, I know you warned me about AppEngine!)
From a revenue stand-point, gpsAssassin has its own virtual goods, but we use TapJoy to let users get more currency. They complete offers and get ‘Blood Money’ in return.
Offers can be tricky due to the varied nature of quality and payout policies. The TapJoy platform let me remove the offers I didn’t like and Ben/Lee even added a custom offer to reward my players for a certain ‘real world’ action (very awesome!).
From a revenue stand-point, TapJoy represents about 42% of my overall revenue and it monetizes much longer than direct payments or micro-transactions (at least for us). I think its because offer payouts are MUCH LARGER than the tiny amounts in a micro-transaction.
Customer service is great – they even get involved if their offer partner is slow in responding.
Just so this doesn’t look like a paid endorsement, I’ll give them a few ‘constructive criticisms’ :)
1) Their site is slow, but they know this
2) Their reporting is pretty weak – but I’m an A-Typical publisher in my need for data
3) They have to be careful about the inventory they maintain of ‘rewarded installs’ – some of the games are ‘dead end’ games that don’t refuel the rewarded install process (aka: creating a demand for more rewarded installs)
All in all, the guys are awesome & the service is top-notch. A+ in my book.
They take 50% of your revenue on virtual goods? That seems pretty steep…
We take between 15% – 30% of the revenue from virtual goods, depending on the source.
I thought APPLE just solved monetization of free apps on the iPhone?
It would nice to have something like this for Android.
The second offering seems like an outstanding idea if they can get it to work exactly as promised.
Here is the detail of what happens:
1. User click and downlaod the free APP for getting more goodies of respect points. Opens the app and then close it and never use again
THE DARK Side:-
2. Download gets high , brining the applications in top downloads :)
3. So , now you have applications in top download those paid higher to TAP JOY – not the best applications :)
4. This is like paying people to downlaod your application : and hoping that it would get to top downlaod and would remain there
You know what – you’re right. We should ban advertising apps altogether so nobody can get the word out about their app except through Apple or PR.
You cannot “monetize” an app. To monetize means to convert to legal tender. It is unlikely that I will be able to go to a gas station and exchange my app for a tank of gas.
Thanks for that extremely helpful clarification. Millions of TC readers have been trying to trade apps for tanks of gas, loaves of bread, office rent, etc. Now they know why it’s not working.
Danko’s comment is dead on. These internet ‘journalists’ should get their act together, or not write at all.
Why would I want to use this rather than an in app purchase? Seems like a band-aid solution. Is there some advantage that I am missing here?
There are a few reasons to use this system over in app purchases:
1. People prefer free. All else being equal you’ll get a lot more volume if users can download a free app instead of paying money.
2. The minimum payment for in-app purchase is $0.99. Oftentimes virtual goods aren’t worth a whole dollar.
3. Our SDK will soon support in-app payments as well as our alternative monetization methods. So that means users will have a choice: Pay with money or Pay with virtual currency.
4. Setting up in-app purchases on your own is a huge hassle. With Tapjoy, we have an easy to use website interface for you to upload new virtual goods, a beta program so the items only appear on your devices until you are ready to launch them, and the ability to have the items appear without waiting for Apple to approve them first.
What about Urban Airship? I am not affiliated with them, but know they do some pretty awesome stuff to make in-app really easy.
This is great! What’s 250% of $1/day again?
Rick the advantage is that with in-app purchasing you don’t get paid for promoting a free app. With the TapJoy system there’s free apps that are suggested downloads in exchange for an ingame item.
Each time the free app is installed the referring app developer is getting paid.
I tried out tapjoy’s (unreleased beta) android sdk the other day. It was really easy to integrate and get ads showing up in my app. It is really nice to be able to configure which ads show up in my app from the tapjoy website – so much easier than releasing a new version of the app just to update the ads. I can’t wait for it to be officially released.
Tapjoy SDK was easy to get up and running!
Tapjoy’s Rewarded installs helped push our app into the top 10 for our category – much more effective than paying more for ads from other networks…this program is unique and worthwhile.
I found the Tapjoy to be easy to work with and they have been effective at monetizing my app – much better than display banner ads. I think it makes sense to try out different payment methods and ad formats, currency, etc and see what monetizes better for your own app. The integration was pretty fast so its a quick way to get real data about whether it works for you or not.
We were recently introduced to Tapjoy and have had a pleasant experience. Ben/Lee have been extremely responsive and the integration was smooth as they have access to a lot of relevant mobile offers.
I would say that this company stands out for how nice the guys from Tapjoy are. Their customer service is superior and I feel they understand what I need to get my apps monetized. I think this guys published games before and that’s why I think they understand the market so well.
Great product, easy integration and awesomeness in Customer Service. Kudos for Tapjoy!!!!
TapJoy has been great for Aerende’s app, Love Or Not?. TapJoy’s Rewarded Installs boosted our Love Or Not? app to #24 in Lifestyle. Sure, people buy the apps to get virtual goods, but people choose an app from a list of apps to purchase on TapJoy.
There are few places outside of the app store to get high visibility for one’s app. With users playing TapDefense, TapJoy provides some of the highest visibility for an app. To create visibility for our next apps, TapJoy is at the top of our list.
The support at TapJoy has been extremely rapid and helpful, and the SDK is easy to integrate. TapJoy’s Rewarded Installs is an ingenuously unique feature. I’m also looking forward to TapJoy’s new features coming soon: Wagered Tournaments, Friend-to-Friend Challenges, and Unlockables. TapJoy really stands out above the crowd.
Excellent write-up, Gagan. Offerpal has been very impressed with Tapjoy ourselves. That’s why we decided to partner with them. For a case study on how one iPhone app — gpsAssassin — used Offerpal & Tapjoy to monetize virtual currency, see http://bit.ly/16JAam.
Pro’s
TapJoy’s customer service is top notch! They usually respond within minutes from posting a question. They take the time and TRY to help solve small issues.
The Rewarded Installs is the best advertisement system in the market. No one else can Guaranteed or even come close to the money to download rates that they offer.
Cons.
The website is sometimes cumbersome and slow.
I had a big issue with the ad’s. For some reason the ad’s have a transparency of .25% which does not work with my app because of the light background color.
Very little help as far as getting the virtual goods implemented. So I went with another solution.
All and all TapJoy API is great addition to any app. But there’s some work that need’s to be done. And i just don’t have the time.
I will continue to use the Rewarded installs. This system should be the model of every ad company. Keep up the good work Ben & Lee. But don’t stop working.
We have utilized TapJoy’s ad network for over two months and have been VERY happy with the results. The daily revenue we have been able to generate has eclipsed the revenue we receive from our app being on the App Store.
After exploring the possible ad systems (AdMob, Quattro, Smaato, etc…) available for us for the iPhone, we elected to use the TapJoy system because we: 1) liked their prebuilt iPhone interface (it was nearly a plug and play concept), 2) liked the concept of spreading our ads (i.e. revenue) among several ad networks, 3) were able to get their support people on the phone when we called.
The TapJoy team has a very strong working knowledge of the various ad networks. Anyone who has tried to interface with each of the ad networks will realize their systems are a bit complicated and their support is often non-existant. Nearly any question we’ve had about an ad network, the TapJoy team has been able to resolve for us.
Soon, we will be rolling out their virtual currency. We have completed our testing and are quite happy with the results. Again, the TapJoy team has built a magnificant tool that is easy for our development team to install.
As a customer of TapJoy that has utilized their system within our application, we can tell you that we are VERY happy with the results.
Hold on:
1. 99.9% fill rate – if the ads are CPC, shouldn’t the fill rate be 100%? it’s not like there’s any incremental cost to the advertisers to show another CPC ad. This is just a sill selling data point that’s irrelevant.
2. So this platform is a yield management / intermediate engine. Probablem – that 250% will surely go down once more and more people start using this platform no? Everyone will be ‘maximized’ and ‘yielded’ to get the ‘best’ rate then what? nuclear arms race?
This is a truly innovative and functional solution.
Great job guys!