In game window ads update

Ok, I know it has been a long time since I've had any updates to talk about. I'm not all that far away from the large API update but I'll talk about that once it is finished.

Although today I actually have an update to talk about. Something that I feel is pretty exciting in our further adoption of our platform moving forward. So for a long time our ads have always worked the same. You click play on an ad supported game and are then redirected to a full screen ad and then taken back to the game which then allows you to play.

So I ended up reading a couple of gamers comments a few days ago that got me thinking. It's not something that people like. So I got thinking if there was a way I could improve this. Unfortunately due to the way everything is set up It meant having to do any changes to the live sites. So I posted out on twitter that I was going to disrupt the ad service for a bit. Although hopefully you will agree, it was worth it.

So now when you click play on an ad supported game, the ad is then displayed within the game window. Which has been skimmed down from it's previous look. No longer have we got a header across the top. Instead the skip ad button appears on the right hand side. When the ad is skipped the game is then loaded. This means there is no more redirects or refreshes. Everything takes place in the game window like a youtube advert. It makes a lot of difference and took some rewrites of the system but for the better. 

So now that everything is handled in the game window it now means that the adverts can not be abused at all. No earnings are recorded if the ad viewer hasn't come from play.idevgames.co.uk, which as they come from the ad window they will always be coming from the same source. Where as before, to be able to have people embed the games, the players source could be from all sorts of places. Also as the ad is now designed to work with the game window it won't complete the action if someone decided to try and share the ad url. Making the ad only monetized or usable from within the game window. Which is big for me, as I've had several attempts to try to manipulate earnings with cheap traffic etc. Which has always taken a long time to try and investigate if the earnings are legitimate or not, now I wont have to do this.

Also 90% of the ads we have run have been using our landing page creator on my-ga.me. Which I'm looking to rebuild in the future (likely as the ad creator instead now because of this change).

Also if you are someone who embeds games on their website. The good news is nothing changes for you. The games you have embedded should continue to work with this new change. No embed code changes are needed, which actually this update makes some of the embed code redundant. Although I won't be cutting this out of the embed code yet. I may further down the line but for now we can always fall back if any issues arise.

So all in all. Having the ad shown in the game window should improve the user experience, hopefully drive more ad views and should give our advertisers better advertising that shouldn't be able to be manipulated. Overall a very positive change.

So give it a go and try to play an ad supported game, let me know what you think. Find a problem let me know on twitter @HTML5Arcade. I know this isn't a huge update that everyone is hoping for but the API is in the works and hopefully wont be too much longer. That being said I think this update could completely change the way people view our platform.

Thanks,

-iDev