[Open Source] CrossPromo - Promote your own business in your game!

[ryanbournedev]

Hey everyone!

When you download a game onto your phone, one of the worst things to see is some horrendously low-quality advert presented at every possible opportunity. Not only does it make the game seem of a lower quality, they’re often low paying and aren’t worth showing… and can drive audiences away from your product to other games! And we don’t want that… do we?

Welcoming CrossPromo! The aim of CrossPromo is to remove the need for using third-party advertisements all of the time, replacing the lower-paying bad quality advertisements with high-quality native Cocos2d-x advertisements showing off aspects of your own brand or business. You can then eliminate the low quality adverts with eCPM floors, and use only the highest paying adverts alongside promotions of your own business!

Want to show off your other games? CrossPromo is made for that.

Want to promote your game’s or business’ social media accounts? CrossPromo can help with that.

Want to tell your players when there’s a special offer on regarding to one of your other games - such as a 50% off sale on the download price? CrossPromo can do that!

Here’s a preview, with a very quickly thrown together sample!

The screenshot above shows how the .json file can be used to present on screen a series of non-interactive and interactive objects. No code changes are required, just alter the json file and your changes will be reflected in your promotions!

For integration instructions, check out the GitHub repository here: GitHub - ryanbourneuk/CrossPromo: Advanced promotion of your own business, within your own cocos2d-x games!

I hope you all enjoy CrossPromo and find it useful! It took a great deal of work to make it function as it does, but it was entirely worth it! If anyone has any issues, let me know!

Thanks!

[ryanbournedev]

I’m not saying all games that have adverts are of a low quality.

My games are marketed to and audience of all ages, and despite having quite intense filtering of ads I continue to get some come through which are specially aimed at kids to get them to download ‘free’ games which then cost £10/week. Those ads are of a low quality and incredibly misleading, and I don’t want them in my games any more.

Some adverts that are shown are of a high quality - those are staying. My analytics shows that when the adverts have paid more (and are of better quality) session length is increased and engagement is up, and when the adverts pay less and look awful, session times are decreased as they hate the ads. The analytics simply do not lie - my players do not like bad quality adverts. My average reviews across all of my released games remains above 4.8* and engagement remains stupendously high, so it isn’t that the games are bad - it’s the adverts that put people off.

You’ve linked that definition of cross promotion, so let’s take that apart and work out what it means.

" Cross-promotion is a form of marketing promotion where customers of one product or service are targeted with promotion of a related product. A typical example is cross-media marketing of a brand, for example Oprah Winfrey’s promotion on her television show of her books, magazines and website. "

Oh my goodness, CrossPromo literally fits that description! Customers of one of my games are targeted with a promotion of a related product: one of my other games or social media sites! The shock! The horror! The name actually fits!!

I hope that helps to answer some of your queries, if you have any more please let me know!

(by the way, the Fmod wrapper will come when I see it as a priority, and right now there’s more important things in development!)