Following on from today's news that Fishlabs has launched Burning Tires Free in the US, its first free title supported by Apple's new iAd system, we caught up with its CEO Michael Schade to find out the studio's attitude to the new business model.

Despite the game only just going live, Schade said it was already generating a relatively high eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) compared to other mobile ad networks. 

"Of course the fillrate is fairly low right now but we expect to see this growing rapidly in the coming weeks," he explains.

"If a game has the right stickiness, with iAd we truly believe this could make free quality gaming work."

Testing the water

We also asked about the what appeared to be a strange anomaly that while the full version of Burning Tires costs $1.99, if you get the free iAd-supported game and then upgrade to the full version, it only costs you 99c.

"In these early days, we want to learn about the fillrate and the eCPM. Also using the lowest possible price point to get rid of iAd will show us how reluctant gamers are about having iAd in their games," Schade points out.