Re:Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
by XCSme on Thursday March 14, 2019 @06:14PM
(#19394387)
I think the whales term goes only for spenders, not for dedicated players. There is so much time in a day, that you can not get a lot more from ads from a dedicated player than a regular one, but IAPs are usually infinite.
Re:Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
by jeffchien on Thursday March 14, 2019 @09:13PM
(#19395560)
I think you're both correct. I've seen a spectrum of "whales" that include:
(1) very "casual" players who don't spend that much time, and just want to roll, or to use money as a substitute for game time;
(2) very dedicated players who want to be at the top of some ranking.
Re:Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
by the_gipsy on Thursday March 14, 2019 @06:50PM
(#19394685)
Whales have nothing to do with ads.
Re:Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
by novaleaf on Friday March 15, 2019 @08:41AM
(#19399110)
kids are ad whales.
from my own observations (2 pre-teen kids) they are infinently patient in sitting through ad after in order to keep playing.
I used to freely install any highly rated free-to-play educational game. Now I only install paid stuff, as those don't have these pathological ads.
Most of these companies make all of their money from "whales," people who play around the clock and spend a significant amount of money per month on in-app purchases and/or subscriptions.
They have optimized their experience for finding and landing whales, and at the end of the day, you are probably an irritant to them, walking around complaining about the game while contributing so little to the developer's revenues.
This, by the way, is why I don't play very many mobile games.