Why do I see ads on my own game?

It gets a bit annoying when I’m running through 4 browsers testing compatibility for new features.

Originally posted by delosford:

It gets a bit annoying when I’m running through 4 browsers testing compatibility for new features.

Advertisement revenue also goes into a pool for all developers, it’s not necessarily specific for your game. The advertisements you’re viewing on your game help pay all developers.

Originally posted by Zachary:

Advertisement revenue also goes into a pool for all developers, it’s not necessarily specific for your game. The advertisements you’re viewing on your game help pay all developers.

I believe delosford means when you are in preview mode, and how it is frustrating to just test your game and have to wait for ads. (However, in theory your game should be able to work in a local test environment without Kongregate)

I can’t find anything about this shared advertising pool in any provided information by Kongregate on the developers site (or anywhere else). All references to ad revenue sharing refer to ad revenue generated by a specific game. This is also how it’s broken down in the revenue view. Am I missing something here?

And yes, it is especially silly that I see the ads on preview versions of games.

Originally posted by delosford:

I can’t find anything about this shared advertising pool in any provided information by Kongregate on the developers site (or anywhere else). All references to ad revenue sharing refer to ad revenue generated by a specific game. This is also how it’s broken down in the revenue view. Am I missing something here?

And yes, it is especially silly that I see the ads on preview versions of games.

You can find all the official information about ad revenue here.

Originally posted by delosford:

I can’t find anything about this shared advertising pool in any provided information by Kongregate on the developers site (or anywhere else). All references to ad revenue sharing refer to ad revenue generated by a specific game. This is also how it’s broken down in the revenue view. Am I missing something here?

And yes, it is especially silly that I see the ads on preview versions of games.

Ah, thank you for clarifying. That is an interesting point, though I’m not sure if it’s something that can be easily changed. Certainly worth discussing though.

Though, preview games aren’t published yet. When you publish it, you’ll get to the Ad revenue page and so on.

Originally posted by TheCongressman:

Originally posted by delosford:

I can’t find anything about this shared advertising pool in any provided information by Kongregate on the developers site (or anywhere else). All references to ad revenue sharing refer to ad revenue generated by a specific game. This is also how it’s broken down in the revenue view. Am I missing something here?

And yes, it is especially silly that I see the ads on preview versions of games.

You can find all the official information about ad revenue here.

Yes… I’ve read all the official information and it says nothing about a shared advertising pool for all developers. This is the only thing it says about how you generate ad revenue:

“How much ad revenue does Kongregate share?

Kongregate shares between 25% and 50% of ad revenue generated by games with their respective developers."

It probably wasn’t documented because it’s not important information. You’ll still get your revenue and get your fair share of revenue, so who cares how Kongregate does it on the back-end?

It’s probably like that for financial/accounting reasons, which is none of our business.

Originally posted by adv0catus:

It’s probably like that for financial/accounting reasons, which is none of our business.

It also means Kong doesn’t need to track clicks for each game individually, or what ads are shown on what game (which is probably impossible for the ads they don’t serve themselves). Plus, unscrupulous devs can’t artificially increase their earnings by getting people to click their own ads a bunch.

Just so I’m clear: there is no official information stating that there is a “shared developer pool” of any kind?

I’m also 100% certain Kongregate tracks all the information you’ve listed, saybox. There are provisions in the official literature from Kongregate stating that botting for ad revenue is disallowed, meaning that someone can do exactly what you said within the system (but will be manually banned for it).

Originally posted by delosford:

Just so I’m clear: there is no official information stating that there is a “shared developer pool” of any kind?

I’m also 100% certain Kongregate tracks all the information you’ve listed, saybox. There are provisions in the official literature from Kongregate stating that botting for ad revenue is disallowed, meaning that someone can do exactly what you said within the system (but will be manually banned for it).

An administrator just told you:

Originally posted by Zachary:

Advertisement revenue also goes into a pool for all developers, it’s not necessarily specific for your game. The advertisements you’re viewing on your game help pay all developers.

That should be pretty official. I’ve also been told the same thing in a different conversation over a year ago.

But the documentation tells me nothing of the sort, and also heavily implies that shared ad revenues are directly tied to your own game. The revenue screen for my different uploads also shows different amounts per game, lists the number of plays and revenue generated specifically by my game. The generated revenue has also been very obviously tied to the number of plays my game gets (it has greatly accelerated as more people have started playing more regularly).

So who’s right: the admin, or the documentation? These two official responses seem to contradict one another.

Kongregate doesn’t host all the ads they serve, eg the Google ads. While I’d expect Google tracks the pages they come from, the idea of trying to import all that data (for 66k games!) every day would be a pretty inefficient way to do things. Putting the day’s total in a pool and dividing it up based on gameplay numbers makes much more sense. Plus, it’s a fairer system if everyone is playing by the rules – there’s no reason other than random chance why two games with an equal number of plays should get a different number of clicks on ads.

[Sidenote: who knows, maybe Kong does do this. It would still be inefficient if so, though! I’d guess they have stats on clicks, but not on price per click per game.]

I’m fairly sure that the botting in that context refers to using auto refreshing or bot loads to boost your gameplays. Using them to click ads over and over wouldn’t benefit your own CPM noticeably if the revenue is in a shared pool.

Originally posted by delosford:

But the documentation tells me nothing of the sort, and also heavily implies that shared ad revenues are directly tied to your own game.

They are. more plays means more ad revenue, since you’re taking a slightly bigger share of the pool.

Where does the documentation imply that there is no pool?

Having a pool doesn’t contradict anything the documentation says. The more plays your game has, the more revenue your game has. A little math and you can calculate the individual revenue per game. (total revenue * your plays / total plays)

The documentation states that ad revenues are based on the revenues your game creates. Zachary has stated that the advertisements are not game-specific.

I can potentially interpret Zachary’s post to mean that SOME of the generated revenue for each game comes from some shared pool, and the rest is based on your number of plays/views/clicks/whatever. But again, the documentation doesn’t mention this at all, nor does the revenue screen (which represents exactly what the documentation seems to imply, at least to me).

Anyway, I doubt I’ll get any more of an official response on this, so I’ll just assume there might be some reason why I have to see these ads.