Your Experience of Mobile Ad Fill With C2 + Cocoon

Hi All,

I've previously published my C2 games to Google Play using Cordova/PhoneGap and Eclipse, embedding the AdMob sdk to deliver ads.

As CocoonJs gives me a far better frame rate, I published my last game (Chimpy Joe Flea Face) with CocoonJS in early December, using their MoPub ad plugin to serve up the ads.

Going the Eclipse route, I'm getting at least 98.95% fill rate, but using MoPub through CocoonJS I have been averaging a fill rate of just over 60%. This is quite frustrating and means I'm missing opportunities to make revenues.

In MoPub I've activated AdMob, InMobi, MobFox and also the MoPub Marketplace itself, but still a terribly low fill rate.

What's your experience of MoPub ad fills with your CocoonJS apps, are you getting similar rates? I haven't switched on any filters or ad blocking, so it looks like 60% is as good as it gets. I'm considering going back to Cordova and Eclipse, but will need to investigate how to tweak the performance first. It's a shame, because I think the CocoonJS game performance is way ahead of the competition.

Cheers.

AndyWatson I just finished developing a game, and I am in the process of integrating MoPub right now.

There's not much info on how to do this though it's all scattered, and hidden across multiple websites. Do you have any tips, suggestions, or links?

I want a banner ad to show on the top of every layout kind of like your games. I don't know if I am doing it right but what I did so far was got a premium CocoonJS account, created a MoPub account, and in my game I did this:

On start of layout--> Preload banner ad

CocoonJS is in CocoonJS--> Show banner ad top center

Does that look right?

I was then going to go set up a AdMob account, and activate it in MoPub.

Would that do it?

Wink Yup, you're on track there, it's very similar to how I did it. I don't think I trigger the preload though. On start of layout I just run 'show banner ad'. Other than that it's identical.

Ok, thanks AndyWatson. I triggered the preload because I seen some posts were ads were taking a long time to appear.

I'm also looking forward to hearing other users experiences with there ad fill tip's, and tricks.

I didn't bother preloading as I'm calling the ad as soon as the game launches.

Wink - you'll also need to add the relevant JSON code in the extensions tab of cocoon.

...looking forward to hearing anyone else's experiences of MoPub ad fills...

Wink - you'll also need to add the relevant JSON code in the extensions tab of cocoon.

Yep, thanks for the reminder. Well after a successful compile with CocoonJS I installed the debug apk on a Galaxy S3 to test it, and everything seems to be working well except when I click on the MoPub demo ad nothing happens.

Is this suppose to happen?

Also I noticed over the last 16 hours or so in my MoPub account that I am getting a 100% fill rate.

Do you think this is because I haven't set up a AdMob account yet, and activated it in MoPub?

Another thing I have to fix is my banner ad appears right on top of my game over my HUD's score, and part of the play area. I could probably move some things, and rebuild in Cocoon.

But how did you get the banner ad's to appear outside of your games playing area like on your Ninja Fart Hero, and Santa's Reindeer Roundup games?

Awesome games by the way <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Wink Glad to hear it's all up and running!

When you run a demo ad it will fill every time, as it doesn't have to make any external calls. I didn't run a demo ad, I just went ahead and released.

Heh, heh, thanks for your comment about Ninja Fart Hero and Santa's Reindeer Roundup. I published those using Cordova and Eclipse, not Cocoon, so I could get around the code and place the ad in a separate window area.

Chimpy Joe Flea Face is the one that I wrapped in Cocoon, and the ad sits over some of the screen area. I had to design my background with some blank space at the footer to house the ad. The only problem is that when an ad doesn't fill it just leaves a black space.

I'm days away from launching a space shoot-em-up and for that game the ad is overlaid on the gameplay, but in an area that doesn't matter. That way, it doesn't look odd if the ad is missing.

Hope this helps and I look forward to checking out your game.

AndyWatson yes I remember when you released Ninja Fart Hero if I remember correctly that was the first Construct 2 game on the Google play store.

I think I might have found some info that might help with fill rates basically you set the CPM value for each of your networks, and MoPub tries the network with the highest CPM first. This might affect our fill rates since MoPub Marketplaces Minimum Acceptable CPM default is set at 0.25.

I got this info from the second post on this thread:

http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/885-how-does-mopub-works.html

Anyway, I appreciate all the help you have given me in this thread. Thanks to you I now have my firs Android game on the Google Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.littleapplabs.fallingfruitfrenzy.

The ads are appearing some times but when you click on them nothing happens. All I did was add my AdMob account to MoPub, paused the demo ad, and the MoPub Marketplace automatically was activated then. I'm at my wits end. Iv never been this stressed. I just spent the last 36 hours searching, and reading the internet for a solution with no luck. I am really starting to hate MoPub.

I must be doing something wrong. Any ideas?

Cool game, have just had a few plays. I think u were one of the first to play ninja fart hero weren't u?

I've no idea why your ads won't click thru. Maybe create another mopub banner, don't set it to test and attach that one to your ff app. Worth a shot.

Yup, i tried the cpm value thing a few weeks ago, not much changed. Have now tried your preload suggestion, i think it makes a difference...

Thanks, a lot of optimization went into it so I could keep angles, and rotation. And yes I just happened to be online when you released ninja fart hero, and it said 0 downloads so I bought myself a copy.

I tried another mopub banner but got the same result. But the good news is I figured out the problem. I used a lot of layers for that game by giving each sprite group there own layer I was able to increase my FPS from 35 to 37 all the way up to 60 to 62. So I thought maybe a layer somehow ended up on top of the mopub banners. What I did to fix this was change:

CocoonJS is in CocoonJS--> Show banner ad top center

to

On start of layout--> Show banner ad top center

Then rebuilt it in CocoonJS, signed it, Zipalign it, and reloaded it to the Google play store, and now the ads work great <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle">

By the way I just seen your new game release Galactic Fruit Wars. Awesome job! Great graphics, and the game play is very smooth.

Wink kickass news that you sorted the ad calls! Interesting that your layering technique had such a massive effect on fps - good tip.

Wink I'm super curious about your FPS gaining technique for cocoonjs. Would you mind sharing or elaborating? Thanks!

AndyWatson Glad you got this issue worked out! Are you able to set the title to [SOLVED]? I'm not quite there yet with cocoonjs but I know I'll be looking for this thread soon ;)

Wink I'm super curious about your FPS gaining technique for cocoonjs. Would you mind sharing or elaborating? Thanks!

Well actually I use a combination of many different techniques but for the technique I used in my last post on this thread I kind of found it by accident. What I was doing was creating groups for my sprites, and after that I thought it would be better to organize each group of sprites on there own layer to create a faster work flow for adding, and editing things. So I made a bunch of new layers and moved the sprites to there corresponding layers, tested my game, and I couldn't believe the gain in FPS. But now that I think about it Ashly might have enabled the screencanvas rendering mode in the CocoonJS object when I made these changes so that might have helped the giant gain in FPS a little bit. But still not that much.

Just so everyone knows though I got the 60 to 62 FPS on a Nexus 7, and a Samsung Galaxy S3. These are high performance machines. When I tested it on my 2 year old original Samsung Galaxy S running 2.3.4 My FPS increase only went from 12 to 14 FPS (practically unplayable) to 20 to 22 FPS (just playable). So FPS really depend on the type of devise yet.

If the CocoonJS cloud compiler ever lets us set our minimum supported OS I am only going to support 4.0 and up. I know this is giving up on a big share of the market right now but by this time next year even new low end devises will have the same performance as the Gallexy S3 does now. That and I wont have to do such heavy optimization on my games anymore.

Ashley wrote some good advice here:

The Great HTML5 Mobile Gaming Performance Comparison

And here are the official Performance tips:

Performance Tips

Basically the biggest FPS killers Iv found are:

1. Sprite font or anything that rewrites itself over and over.

2. Using the System Every tick event. Instead use the System EveryX seconds, and enter 1. This will give you a dramatic increase in FPS, and it works just as well.

3.Setting angles, and rotation. If your game requires these set rotation in the animation editor instead of using actions and events, and set angles in the Object Type properties window instead of using events, and actions when ever possible. For some reason I got a 5 FPS increase by doing it this way.

4. Large, and or to many sprites will kill your FPS

5. The physics behavior is a performance killer period. Try faking physics instead with the bullet behavior, or the platform behavior.

6. Semi transparent sprites, and use of a fader will also lower your FPS.

Making mobile games is almost more of an art form than an exact science. Every game is different, and you can't have it all quiet yet but it's getting there. It's just a lot of trial and error, and a whole lot of testing but that is what being a developer is all about.

AndyWatson

I have almost the identical scenario to you. My first game was done with eclipse, phonegap and the admob plugin. Life is good there. Fill rate is good and the payout is nice.

My next 2 games I went with Concoon/mopub and I had a very similar problem to you. Low fill rates, ect. Basically what I did was turn off the Marketplace for those apps. I personally don't think the marketplace is worth it.

So for my Droid apps, I only have the admob network running and it's around 88.8 percent fill for the last 14 days.

My iOS apps I just have iAds working. Those fill rates are around 78% for the last 14 days.

I am really hoping phonegap implements some kind of direct canvas because I love having the build control of using eclipse and xcode for my final builds.