Vungle / Liftoff 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

Off by default

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 $10,510 estimate at 10,000 daily users (blended Android and iOS).

Rewarded video carries 87% 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 2.5.

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

$0.17

Ad revenue per install, first 90 days

$0.29

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

How Vungle / Liftoff fits this category

For Rewarded video, the Tier 1 eCPM in our Vungle / Liftoff table is $12.00, close to the middle of the eight mobile networks. For Interstitial, the Tier 1 eCPM in our Vungle / Liftoff table is $8.20, close to the middle of the eight mobile networks. Modelled fill is 80% for Vungle / Liftoff against an average of 83% across the mobile networks, which trims a little from every format.

Sign up on the publisher side of Liftoff, register each app and create placements for the formats you plan to use. Most developers add Vungle through their mediation platform rather than integrating it alone, which means copying the app ID and placement IDs into that dashboard and installing the matching adapter. Add the app-ads.txt line Liftoff provides, run test mode until ads load reliably, and complete the payment profile. The compare tool shows how it stacks up against other networks.

How Vungle / Liftoff ranks for this category

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

Vungle / Liftoff ranks 5 of 8 here, 37% 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 Vungle / Liftoff

Vungle, now part of Liftoff, is a video-led network whose demand leans towards performance advertisers paying for app installs. Our tables put its Tier 1 Android rewarded estimate at about $12.00 and interstitial at about $8.20, close to AdMob, with fill of around 80%.

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.