03/13/07

Last night, Kongregate launched its advertising program, the revenue from which is shared with developers. Developers can view their current balance in their profiles.

Now, as Ricky Ricardo might say, I've got some 'splainin' to do about these numbers and categories, especially since the numbers currently look a little funky as of March 13.

Plays: This is the number of gameplays that each of your games generated over the period selected (defaulted as yesterday). Note that we had a bug for a while that was only tracking gameplays for registered users, which was fixed last night. These gameplays are therefore only for registered users on March 12. This number will likely rise for March 13 and beyond, since we now track guests as well.

Ad Impressions: This shows the number of ads that each game has displayed. Note that we deployed our ads last night at 11:00 p.m., so this number is likely very low, as it only accounts for one hour (it's probably lower than the gameplays as well, since those were tracked for the entire day, even if they only tracked registered users).

Gross earnings: This is the total ad revenue that each of your games has generated.

% share: 25% is the default share percentage, and another 10% can be earned by implementing our available APIs. Since we still don't have any APIs, though, all games currently on the site will default at 35%. You can earn another 15% (up to 50%) if your game is sponsored by Kongregate or if it's exclusive to us. Feel free to contact us if you're interested in having your game sponsored.

Net earnings: This is what you end up with for each game after the share percentage is factored in.

(UPDATE 03/14/07) Why gameplays and ad impressions don't match up: For the very first day, ad impressions were only from 11:00 p.m. to midnight for everyone, while gameplays were for the entire day for registered users. It's possible that the ad impressions were higher, but unlikely. However, the mismatch continued on the second day due to our policy of not showing an ad to someone for the very first time that person visits the site. We've decided to change this policy, however, due to both the potentially high mismatch from sites like Digg and from feedback from our users about ads over chat not being too intrusive.

Let me know if you have any questions.

- Greg