Monopoly GO! A game that was(n’t) created for ads

• Scopely’s Monopoly GO! Recently surpassed three billion in revenue since its launch and won last night’s Mobile Game of the Year award
• However the game could be earning around another 2 million USD in ad revenue every month

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Scopley’s hit mobile game Monopoly GO! is a great success story for the studio, as the game continues to capture audiences and strengthen its relationship with Hasbro, the owner of the Monopoly IP. 

However, is it perhaps missing a few tricks? Are there additional opportunities for growth and revenue?

In this article, GameBiz Consulting’s head of ad monetisation, Božo Janković, shares how Scopely could easily integrate ads into the game and what impact it could have on its long-term revenue. 

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Scopely hit the jackpot with their release of a free-to-play mobile game called Monopoly GO! in late April 2023. According to AppMagic, even though the game was fully out on the stores for about eight out of twelve months, it finished 13th on the top downloads charts while on top grossing, it finished the year at nine.

To date, the game has generated about 145M downloads and 1.4B USD in revenue, all of it coming from in-app purchases. Monopoly GO! has reached three billion USD in revenue since launch, according to the results of Hasbro, the Monopoly IP owner.

In June 2024, it was sixth for top-grossing, with 91 million USD in revenue and around 4.8 million downloads.

The game attracted an overwhelming amount of attention, not only from gamers but also from gaming experts, who discussed its game design, economy, and user acquisition strategies.

However, not much has been said about the game’s ad monetisation potential. No ads are displayed in the game at the moment. However, after playing the game for quite a while now, we believe Monopoly GO! is in a perfect position to start showing ads and to make a fortune while doing it.

In this article, we will analyse Monopoly GO! from the perspective of a huge missed opportunity we believe ads represent for this game. Playing the game, we couldn’t shake off the feeling that this game is perfect for all sorts of ads to be implemented and that they could fit easily and naturally in the game.

Let’s see how.

Simplistic gameplay

Initially, seeing how simple the whole gameplay is was quite surprising.

1. You roll the dice – this can be made automatic pretty much from the get-go (plus, you can start spending more rolls per each move by activating the multiplier).

2. Your token moves automatically on the board, jumping from field to field.

3. If you jump on a field that gives you some rewards or has a special meaning, that happens automatically too.

4. If you jump on a “train station” field (4 out of 40 fields), you automatically go to a bank heist or shut down mission (robbing other players).

In general, there is much less interaction and effort compared to, for example, the old PC versions we played. Of course, certain elements add some complexity and depth to the game, such as:

1. Decorative moment of building various cities by spending money.

2. Collectables – various albums that can be completed by collecting stickers throughout the gameplay.

3. Interacting with friends.

4. General LiveOps.

As for the economy, there are two main currencies, both of them available for purchase for real-world money:

1. Rolls (moving on the board costs rolls) – Six packages available ranging from 1.99 USD to 99.99 USD (for 30 to 3,200 rolls, with extra rolls offered for the first purchase). Rolls are also generously given to players for various actions in the game, such as completing the construction of the city or simply by time passing.

2. Money (building cities or getting out of jail costs money) – Again, six packages available offered at exactly the same price points as Rolls (for 1.95 million to 208 million). Again, there are many ways to earn money while playing the game.

3. Of course, various deals, packs, discounted offers, etc., were available throughout the game, offering better value and pressuring players to make a purchase.

How would rewarded video ads fit into the game?

The answer is: More easily than into many games that already use rewarded video ads. There are so many opportunities to show rewarded video ads that it is hard to choose just a few. A couple of important reminders here. If implemented correctly, rewarded video ads:

• Will not increase churn/reduce retention because, as an opt-in format, the player will see the ads only if and when they choose to do so. We’ve seen more than one case where quite the opposite was true – adding rewarded video ads increased retention by a small but measurable degree.

• Will not cannibalise in-app purchase revenue. It’s important to keep rewards significant and interesting for players, but still on a reasonable level. Combining reasonable rewards with the right daily caps can ensure that rewarded video ads provide a meaningful additional revenue stream for the game publisher.

To give you an idea of why adding a few rewarded video placements (and impressions per user) is extremely unlikely to generate any economic problems, we’ve taken a log of three different sessions that we had on three different days in the game. Just pay attention to how many times we had different events in the game.

All of the situations above are potential ways to integrate rewarded video ads seamlessly into the gameplay.

For example:

1. When the player finishes their bank heist or shut down mission, they can be offered the option to double their reward by watching an ad (any other reasonable multiplier would do).

2. The game is quite generous in surfacing the colour wheel that enables players to spin the wheel and get various rewards (rolls, money, album packs). Offering an additional free spin in exchange for watching an ad would be an easy and obvious choice.

3. If the player doesn’t manage to get out of jail for free, instead of paying the bail, the player could be offered an option to get out by watching an ad.

Additionally, something that would be super-easy to integrate and would be appealing to users:

1. Increase daily treats by watching an ad.

2. Get more rolls by watching ads.

3. Get more money by watching ads.

If you have a hard time imagining rewarded video ads in Monopoly, GO! We’ve got you covered. Here are some mockups we created just for demonstration purposes based on actual screenshots from the game.

And if you’re thinking, nah, ads would make the game lose its premium look and feel, and nobody wants to watch ads in this kind of game, well, we’ve got you covered again. We analysed some comments from Google Play Store page of the game and found a couple of interesting patterns:

• Many players are already complaining about “ads.” However, they don’t mean ads from other advertisers but from Scopely itself. Players are primarily complaining that there are too many offers popping up, nudging users towards making an in-app purchase. Despite this, we don’t see them quitting IAPs, do we?

• Some players are actively asking Scopely to add rewarded video ads, for example, to get free rolls.

Take a look for yourself.

How about other types of ads?

Oh, yes!

Interstitial ads

This game is simply made for interstitial ads. Specifically, when you end up on the train station field, the game will play the animation until it opens the mini-game screen. You can take a look here. The animation lasts for just about 5 seconds. If we recall the table above and do some maths, we spent approximately 1.5 minutes, 3.5 minutes and almost 4 minutes watching this animation repeatedly (up to 44 times, to be exact!)

When you put things like this, seeing something different than this animation could be refreshing. This does not even include the exit animation, which takes 2-3 seconds to return to the main gameplay screen.

This would be an especially convenient place to put an interstitial ad because the ad can be skipped exactly after five seconds, especially if you serve ads only from the less aggressive ad networks in the market. It would also be good to stick with the best practices in order to minimise or avoid altogether user frustration and negative retention impact:

• Show interstitial ads only to non-paying users.

• Any payment removes interstitial ads.

• Wait enough time before declaring the player as non-paying.

• Keep the time between two ads and the maximum number of ads during the day reasonable.

Our poor video editing skills can hopefully give you an idea of how this could look like. Take a look here.

In-game/Native/Immersive ads

The game features many real-world elements, both on the main Board screen and on the City screen. This makes it perfect for integrating in-game ads, also known as native or immersive ads.

It’s not very hard to imagine a billboard, bus stop, zeppelin or another location where this small, static and preferably non-clickable ad could fit in. Previously, I wouldn’t even bother mentioning this type of ad. However, Google got into the field a number of months ago, so the main concern, which was previously unsuccessfully handled by companies specialising in this ad format (the lack of demand), is now finally out of the window.

Google is currently keeping this format in closed beta, available only for selected, high-scale publishers, but you’ve guessed it – Scopely could easily get into the program, only if they wanted to.

How much money are we talking about here?

According to AppMagic, 40% of downloads come from the United States, while the remaining 60% come from other countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, India, Germany, Italy, Philippines, etc. This seems like a very convenient mix for two reasons:

1. A large chunk of players comes from the market with very high eCPM (per thousand ads, it’s common to see between $20 and $40 earnings), which would make the ads integration extremely lucrative for Scopely.

2. If they want to be extra careful and exclude tier 1 markets from receiving ads, they still have half of their player base that they could target with ads.

Since we don’t have any insights into the number of Daily Active Users (DAU) for the game, and we’d prefer not to guess it, we will do a simple calculation for 1 million DAU and from there, it’s easy to adjust to their actual DAU, which is, with 91 million USD made just last month, definitely much higher than that.

• With 3-4 rewarded video ad placements, we pessimistically assume a 50% engagement rate and 6 impressions/engaged users. We assume 40% of users come from the US, 20% from tier 2 markets, and 40% from tier 3 markets. Let’s assume eCPMs are $30, $15, and $4, respectively. Put this into a calculator, and 1.5 million USD in rewarded video ad revenue is left on the table for every 1 million DAU they have. Every. Single. Month.

• When it comes to interstitial ads, in order to be on the safe side, let’s say we want to wait one month before we treat a player as a non-payer. On top of that, we would exclude any payers, of course, and we could put a daily cap of only three ads per day (resulting in something like one ad per session). Let’s say that about 30% of DAU fits this criteria. We are looking at half a million USD in interstitial ad revenue for every 1 million DAU they have.

• With little market data, estimating revenue from in-game/native/immersive ads would be a wild guess, so we will skip the exercise altogether.

There is no good reason not to show ads in a game that’s made for ads

In summary, Monopoly GO! feels like a game in which ads can be implemented easily, natively, and naturally without breaking the game narrative, and players themselves want them (ok, maybe just rewarded video ads).

There are many possible implementation options, and Scopely certainly has the resources to do so, and there is nothing to lose. Even with a mediocre implementation (as the one discussed here), Scopely is losing about 2 million USD in ad revenue every month for every 1 million DAU they have. Hurts to even think about it.

                                                                        Edited by Paige Cook