Chartboost Earnings for Mid-core / Strategy Apps

Typical ad setup for this category

These are the modelling defaults for the category, used in every table on this page.

Sessions per user per day

3.0

Typical session length

16 minutes

Retention day 1 / 7 / 30

35% / 16% / 8%

Typical iOS share

45%

Rewarded video

4.5 per user / day

Interstitial

1 per user / day

Banner

Off by default

Native

Not offered

App open

Not offered

Mid-core players are prized by advertisers and by you

Strategy, RPG and squad-based games attract players who commit real time: long sessions, guilds, timed events and progression that stretches over months. Many of them spend, and the studios buying installs in this genre will pay heavily to reach people with that habit. That demand is why mid-core is priced at roughly 1.35 times the typical-app baseline in our estimates, near the top of the table. Quite often the impression you sell is an ad for a rival game, bought by a publisher hoping to win one of your spenders.

The catch is that in-app purchases usually dwarf ad income here, so advertising must never damage the experience paying players rely on. Rewarded video slots neatly into timer-based systems: watch to finish a building upgrade sooner, claim a second daily chest or retry a lost battle. Players see that as a fair exchange, and some will watch several a day. Forced interstitials are a much harder sell. Breaking into a battle or a base-management screen with a full-screen ad irritates exactly the people who keep the game alive, and banners rarely fit dense interfaces.

Seasonality is pronounced, because competing studios spend hardest on acquisition in the run-up to the holidays, so expect rewarded rates to firm through autumn and soften in January. Since ads are the secondary income, judge every placement by its effect on purchase conversion and day-30 retention as well as by what it earns itself. The mobile eCPM benchmarks show how format and region move the base figure before this category adjustment is applied.

Estimated monthly earnings by audience size

Monthly estimates for the typical setup above, balanced region split.

Where the money comes from

Split of the $8,688 estimate at 10,000 daily users (blended Android and iOS).

Rewarded video carries 86% of the total, so its placement and frequency matter most for this category.

Region makes the biggest difference

The same app at 10,000 daily users with three audience splits:

Moving from an emerging-market audience to a Tier 1 audience multiplies the estimate by about 2.4.

Revenue per install

Using the category’s typical retention curve, one install produces about 4.9 active days in its first 30 days and 8.4 in 90 days.

Ad revenue per install, first 30 days

$0.14

Ad revenue per install, first 90 days

$0.24

Compare these figures with your cost per install before buying users. They exclude in-app purchases.

How Chartboost fits this category

For Rewarded video, the Tier 1 eCPM in our Chartboost table is $10.00, about 17% below the middle of the eight mobile networks. For Interstitial, the Tier 1 eCPM in our Chartboost table is $7.20, about 11% below the middle of the eight mobile networks. Modelled fill is 78% for Chartboost against an average of 83% across the mobile networks, which trims a little from every format.

You create an account, add each app and receive an app ID and app signature for the SDK. Named ad locations identify each placement, and most developers connect Chartboost as an adapter inside their mediation platform rather than running it alone. Turn on test mode while you build, then publish the app-ads.txt entry Chartboost supplies before release. Payment and tax information is completed in the dashboard. Our guide to bidding vs waterfall explains where a network like this fits in a stack.

How Chartboost ranks for this category

All eight mobile networks, same category and audience (10,000 daily users, balanced).

Chartboost ranks 7 of 8 here, 66% behind AppLovin MAX.

Practical tips

• Limit rewarded timer skips per day so ads speed up progress without replacing it.
• Keep interstitials out of battles and base screens, and if you use them at all, show them only after a session-ending action.
• Show fewer or no forced ads to players who have paid, while leaving rewarded offers available to them.

About Chartboost

Chartboost is a game-focused network that grew up on interstitials and rewarded video, and it also runs its own mediation product. In our tables it covers rewarded, interstitial and banner, at about $10.00, $7.20 and $0.70 respectively in Tier 1 on Android.

All figures come from our benchmark tables: Android eCPMs by tier, category or niche multipliers, modelled fill and the iOS multiplier. They are estimates for planning, not quotes.