Written by CEO of AppyNation, Peter Williamson.
AppyNation is a developer and publisher of free-to-play puzzle games. Founded in 2011 and based in the UK, AppyNation builds games for players of all ages and skill levels.
We have been working with Amazon on games for their Kindle devices when they first launched the Appstore. We had confidence that they would make it a success, so it was a natural step for us to include it alongside the Apple Appstore and Google Play. Another perspective was that we make puzzle games that appeal to an older audience. Our thoughts were that the Kindle reader audience would move to Amazon Fire and therefore the user of those devices would match our core demographic well.
We’ve released all of our games on Amazon Appstore and currently have 12 games live. A few of our biggest titles on Amazon Appstore are Puzzle Page, One Clue Crossword, Picture Cross, World’s Biggest Crossword and Picture Perfect Crossword. All of them having at least half a million downloads.
CHALLENGES
Monetising via ads on Amazon Appstore has its challenges. Only a few ad networks are on Amazon Appstore so there is less competition and it’s harder to fill.
The user base is smaller and therefore less variety of users, such as players that are watching a lot of ads and don’t do IAP, commonly known as ad whales. There are more of them in Apple Appstore and Google Play due to the larger audience with more diverse player groups.
SOLUTION
We have been partnering with Chartboost for monetisation on Amazon Appstore since we launched our very first games. Our partnership has been uninterrupted for the past 6 years.For monetisation optimisations on Amazon Appstore, we’ve worked very closely with the Chartboost team on testing different setups and also flat CPMs. We saw great results from the latest optimization made in January 2020, with a setup where Chartboost is in the first position in the waterfall with a specific flat CPM price.
“Chartboost is one of two companies who are responsible for most of our ad revenue on Amazon, so the partnership with them is really important to us.”
RESULTS
On Amazon, IAP represents about 80% of our revenue and 20% is from ads. Chartboost contributes to 10% of the total ad revenue from Amazon which makes them a key partner of ours.While we’ve been partnering closely with Chartboost for years to help us optimize monetisation on Amazon Appstore, just in the last month, January 2020 compared with February 2020, they’2ve been able to help us boost our performance on Amazon Appstore across all key metrics.
“The ecosystem is far less competitive than on other appstore platforms, but Chartboost is highly competitive on Amazon.”
Q&A
How easy is it to publish app titles on Amazon Appstore? If you can launch on Google Play, it’s very easy to launch on Amazon Appstore. Find our interview with Amazon Appstore about launching our games here.What type of quality users do you see on Amazon Appstore?Generally very high-quality users. Our per-user revenue is higher on Amazon Appstore than on either of the other platforms.What are your thoughts about the future of the Amazon Appstore?The performance has been really steady for us. In our early years, it was our biggest market! It’s a distant third behind Apple Appstore and Google Play for us now – but that’s a function of our business expanding there, not of it declining on Amazon. Hopefully, it will remain steady for a while yet.What advice would you give developers who want to launch apps on Amazon Appstore? Speak to your Amazon account manager. Growing your audience via UA is more difficult on Amazon than on other platforms, so a supportive account manager is really useful.
