O'Reilly iPhoneLive Conference

Exciting times indeed.

Raven and I are really excited about this event and can't wait to see you there!

Ad Supported iPhone Apps?

This is a question I've been asking myself a lot recently. With the release of my (iTunes link) third casual game for the iPhone/iPod touch I am starting to get a feel for what the market is like for casual games.

The number of downloads for Riddle Racer Lite (iTunes, the free version of Riddle Racer) is in the thousands a day, despite it's really bad average rating, while the $1.99 games get far fewer. Honestly I'd prefer it if Riddle Racer Lite would fall off the chart and get no downloads because people really don't get the app and I don't really like having an app with 1.5 stars average rating on my resume. But it continues to be in the top 15 or 20 of family/puzzle games. If we were to put ads into the app we could probably make some money on the download count despite the bad rating.

But, is this what we should do? I don't think so, and there are 2 reasons why. First free games require no investment on the part of the purchaser. Even if the app is horrible and the user deletes it after one use the developer still gets credit for the download. That encourages developers to crank out apps without regard for usability or even usefulness. Having a huge number of really bad apps on the store is bad for users and developers because it becomes impossible for the users to find good apps in the sea of bad ones. It also has the potential to dilute the brand as pointed out here in an article on Forbes.com.

Second big reason is that general advertising does not work, users totally ignore ads. Why should I put stuff into my applications that annoys my users. Why should we as users put up with stuff we just ignore? Does anyone not ignore ads? When ads come on TV we go get a drink, when ads show up in a popup we turn on the popup blocker, etc etc. Some argue that relevant ads are not annoying. I might agree with that but, how do you choose ads that are relevant to someone playing the Dot Game, chances are it can't be done. So if I were to put ads in that game they'd just be ignored. That would irritate my users and I would hate that.

My $0.02 worth.