In a recent update Rising Star added the ability for users to show pay-per-view text adverts on the game page. The feature is simple, straightforward to use and currently allows for really cheap advertisement. In this post I'll talk about the requirements to use the feature and explain how exactly you can create your own advert and start a campaign with it.
Requirements to show ads on Rising Star Game
As I said above showing ads in Rising Star is fairly simple. There's one major requirement, which is being level 50 ingame. This is mainly for security reasons and to prevent abuse by scammers. Reaching level 50 can take some time, but it's not hard or undoable at all. I see it as a part of the investment to be able to show really cheap ads - but more on the price later - also the game is fun, so the time to reach level 50 is not wasted ;).
Additionally to that you need to hold STARBITS ingame. They are earned by playing the game. You currently can't deposit them from Hive-Engine, but it will be possible in the future I believe.
So that's all about the requirements, now let's talk about setting them up.
Setting up an ad
Currently only text ads are available on the site. You can add a text (obviously) and link an URL. You set a "Per View Bid" - the number of STARBITS you want to spend on one view and the ad with the highest Per View Bid is displayed on the mission page everytime a player finishes a mission. This is an example for such an ad:
To set up an ad you go to the "Ads" tab under your username or here where you can find this form:
I think the labels already describe what you have to fill in in the text boxes, but I'll explain it anyway :).
The Ad Text is the blue text which has not linked your URL.
The Ad Link Text is the orange text which has linked your URL.
The Ad Link URL is the URL that is linked on the Ad Link Text (orange text).
The Per View Bid is the STARBITS price that you want to pay per view.
The Balance is the inital amount of STARBITS that you want to assign from your ingame balance to the ad. Once that is used up you can simply add more by clicking a button (or by starting a new ad with the same text).
As you can see the current highest bid is displayd next to the per view bid text box, this helps you to determine a good price. Currently the price is hovering around 5 STARBITS per view, because not many people are using the system and probably because external STARBITS are not allowed.
Once you created your ad it looks like this:
You can have multiple ads simultaneously, the one with a high enough balance and the highest bid will be shown. Here you can also find a button to add another 100 STARBITS to the balance.
Calculating the price per view
As I said earlier advertising on https://www.risingstargame.com/ is really cheap at the moment. The current highest bid is 5 STARBITS per view. So let us take a price of 6 STARBITS per view to calcualte the CPM in Hive and USD.
The current price for STARBITS on Hive-Engine is 0.00049 HIVE or $0.00008 per STARBITS. Take that times six and you have the HIVE/USD price for one view:
0,00294 HIVE/view or 0,00048 USD/view
This is 48 cents (or 2,94 HIVE) per 1000 views, which is relatively cheap when you compare it to other cryptocurrency advertising services (like Mellowads) and even cheaper compared to traditional ad services. You also have to keep in mind that you have a niche audience here (music, gaming and crypto or actually a mix of it).
I think I said everything about the system now. It just started recently and primarly as a sink for STARBITS, but I think it has a great future. It works really well now - just imagine all the possbilities it has, once some more coding time can be invested in it (banner ads, radio ads etc)
If you have any other question just leave a comment and I'll answer as soon as possible. You can also join the Rising Star Discord server where you can get fast help and talk to the developer Juxta.