In the sophisticated ecosystem, a panel talk entitled 'Monetising gaming apps - maximise your revenue' is so broad to have the potential to be meaningless.

Nevertheless, at the gaming tracks of Apps World 2012, the panelists did their best to go beyond the obvious.

Of course, free-to-play remains the cornerstone that all such panels are chained to.

"I don't think freemium has changed the industry that much," pondered Paul Farley, MD of developer Tag Games, in a somewhat devil's advocate manner.

"It's still the same brands in the charts. We're seeing with our free-to-play games that the majority of revenues are made in the first 48 hours."

Oscar Clark, evangelist for US/Chinese social gaming network PapayaMobile, had different numbers.

"It takes 8-12 days for users to start spending money," he said. "We need to be better at using the data we have over the lifespan of a player."

Banner-bold

Of course, each company had its own particular axe to grind.

Ollie Clamp, director of publisher services, Millennial Media, was keen to push the value in-game advertising.

"A revenue pot should be attached to every user," he stated. "If someone's not buying IAP, you can service them advertising."

Clark was quick to interject, however, saying advertising only accounts for around 10 percent of free-to-play monetisation.

Skinning the cat

Consultant Will Luton reckoned ads - notably interstitials "could make sense in certain situations and certain games". He pointed to Zynga's Words with Friends as an example .

"But you need to be cautious with it, because it can change the likelihood your user will spend," he added.

Farley disagreed.

"I hate being sold something everytime I play the game," he said. "I've downloaded the game. I just want to play the game and enjoy the experience."

Chris Sweis, co-founder of JunoWallet - a service that enables users to convert game points to real world reward cards (iTunes, Starbucks, Amazon etc), looked towards more sophisticated retailing and eventual monetisation.

"Developers have to find a new way to engage with their userbase," he said.

"It's super important to keep delivering a great experience to your users to keep them. That's cheaper than acquiring new ones."