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Backflip doing $500,000 a month in mobile advertising

From 15 million monthly active users

Backflip doing $500,000 a month in mobile advertising
Developers looking for lucrative ways to make money from freemium releases certainly aren't short of options right now.

The popularity of in app purchases appears to be climbing steadily – Flurry recently reporting that they now account for 80 percent of monthly revenue per user on iOS – while the latest stats released by Backflip Studios suggests advertising can also fill the coffers.

It's now generating around $500,000 per month from advertising, up from the $500,000 per month it was generating from a combination of ads and game sales back in early 2010. 

The latest numbers also confirm that its games - which include Paper Toss, Buganoids, Ninjump and Harbor Havoc 3D Free – are notching up between 600 to 800 million monthly ad impressions in the process.

No pain, lots of gain

"We are currently averaging between 1.7 million and 2.25 million daily active users, and 15 million monthly active users," CEO Julian Farrior told Mobile Entertainment.

"This is about to grow significantly with two more free products launching in Q4, and NinJump coming to Android in a month."

Play time

Backflip's growing numbers aren't just impressive from a company perspective though – they're also evidence that consumers continue to play free games long after their initial download.

As such, in game ads have a captive, long term audience, enabling Backflip both to make money and promote its own releases.

"This is using only about 60 percent of those impressions for thirdparty mobile ads. The rest are used for house ads to sell premium product and further extend the free impression network," Farrior explains. 

Best things in life

As noted by Farrior at GDC, the flexibility adopting a freemium model gives a developer's business is priceless.

Backflip took steps to rescue what was considered its most ambitious title – Harbor Havoc 3D – at the time by releasing a free version after disappointing sales of the original paid release.

In total, Backflip has now amassed sales of more than 47.5 million installs on iOS and 5.5 million on Android.

[source: Mobile Entertainment]

With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.