Microsoft Advertising Solutions and Independent Developer Earning Revenue

Today, I have the pleasure of presenting at AppNation in San Francisco, California with Elbert Perez, an independent XNA Windows Phone developer. Elbert has quickly become a prolific XNA game developer with a strong community of players.

Elbert has been developing XNA games for Windows Phone since November 2010. His revenue quickly grew beyond his expectations, and to his surprise soon covered his mortgage. He has learned best practices for building and marketing his games, including when to bring in help from other developers. As Elbert develops more high-quality games for Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, and PC, he looks forward to increasing his revenue potential.

Why Microsoft Advertising – in Elbert’s own words:

“Microsoft’s pubCenter and Marketplace make it very easy to get a game up and earning. In the last six months, I’ve earned over $29K in revenue!

Easy to get started – It was easy to post my games, easy to monetize, with literally just a couple lines of code to put ads in my XNA project. PubCenter and Marketplace did the rest. I don’t have to babysit it. For example, if no ads are showing the ad space collapses automatically. I can thus simply concentrate on building the game.

Good money – Once I made the move from paid games to ad-supported games, I realized how much easier it was to make money. In the last six months, I’ve made over $29,000 in revenue across my portfolio of games. Plus, looking forward, I recognize that the number of devices is expected to explode and more regions will be supported.

Access to Data – I found the data easy to get to, and figure out which of my games had the highest monetization. Through pubCenter, I can generate reports and discover which of my games is generating the most revenue.

Best solution for monetizing your apps – Microsoft Advertising:

In addition to this real-world example of an up and coming independent developer, I will present why Microsoft Advertising stands apart as the best solution for monetizing your apps, and provide insights across our various offerings.

Our large global sales network offers you the opportunity to maximize your mobile ad revenue by providing superior targeting abilities, flexible sales models, and a well-established ecosystem of top national and local advertisers. In addition, we provide automated sales solutions via our real-time-bidded ad Exchange (half a second from ad requested to ad shown), significantly boosting your earnings.

For example, in June of 2011, two Windows Phone 7 developers set out to see which advertising platform would help them make more money with the apps they develop: Microsoft Advertising or Google’s AdMob. The result: the Microsoft Advertising SDK deployed in our Mobile Exchange drove a 71% higher yield compared to Google’s AdMob SDK.

Our ability to sell advertising across multiple screens – across mobile, online, and Xbox 360 –allows us to attract larger ad dollars and thus offer you increased revenue. We bring the same one-stop-shop approach to mobile, supporting a seamless ad integration and experience across all leading operating systems including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, as well as mobile web.

For developers, advertising revenue allows you to put your talent in the hands of numerous users out there…for free. This may be the inspiration you need to expand beyond the “9-5” and on to developing for yourself. Imagine your apps influencing people right down to the phone they decide to buy, while you turn entrepreneur. Advertising solutions, combined with marketing and merchandising opportunities available in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, make this an exciting and we hope lucrative time to be a developer, advertiser, and publisher working with Microsoft Advertising solutions. Please keep those great new and updated apps coming!

For mobile developers and publishers interested in Microsoft’s ad monetization solutions, please contact mobilepubs@microsoft.com.

Thanks,

Kashif Ali, Director of Business Development, Microsoft Advertising