Is Coin Master Adding in Game Ads?
The Mobile Ad Monetization Newsletter #33
Few things in life are constant. Whether you’re Jimmy Buffett or Warren Buffett, no one can predict the stock market. But in mobile gaming, one rare constant stands out: since 2020, Moon Active’s Coin Master has generated at least $70 million per month in IAPs. With lifetime revenue surpassing $5.4 billion, it’s one of the most successful titles in mobile and social casino history. But is the game about to make its most controversial move yet? Is Coin Master about to implement in-game ads?
Coin Master Reddit forums have reported, over the last seven months, various ad placements that appear to still be in a testing phase and not yet rolled out to the entire user base. So far, the placements that have been noted are:
Potions in specific game events
Purple Tokens
Food for pets
This alone wouldn’t be newsworthy. But recently, the Pocket Tactics Coin Master free spins guide started mentioning that some players can now watch rewarded videos for extra spins. If true, it signals that Moon Active is testing ads directly in Coin Master’s core loop, which would be a major shift toward IAA monetization. So the big questions are: how much ad revenue could Coin Master generate each day, and why would Moon Active even want to add it now?
What’s the Revenue Opportunity?
In the past 30 days, Coin Master has averaged 3.4 to 3.6 million daily active users. Using conservative assumptions (excluding payers from ad exposure), projected eCPMs indicate Coin Master could generate between 180K and 220K per day from ads, depending on rollout strategy and format. Annualized, that translates to $65M to $80M in incremental revenue, roughly equivalent to adding an extra month of IAP revenue to the business.
Why add Rewarded Video?
If you look at Coin Master’s DAU and revenue trends, IAP revenue has held steady while DAU has begun to decline. This suggests the game is entering a new stage of its lifecycle, though Moon Active appears confident it can segment users and sustain IAP spending.
With even the best games rarely exceeding a 3-4 percent conversion rate, flat IAP revenue alongside falling DAU implies ARPDAU is climbing, with whales and mid-tier spenders carrying the load. That puts pressure on the studio to extract more value from the broader player base. Adding ads at this stage is a proven lifecycle strategy: diversify revenue, hedge against shrinking DAU, and capture value from the 95 percent of players who will never pay. Just look at Candy Crush, which is rumored to generate around $400 million a year from ads on top of its IAP revenue.
Candy Crush turned ads into a $400M a year business without compromising its core experience. With Coin Master now testing rewarded ads, the stage is set for a similar play. The only real question is whether Moon Active will embrace this fully and become the next giant to prove that ads can supercharge even the most successful IAP-first games.
👏Ad Monetization: Paid👏
Next week, for paying subscribers, I’ll be releasing a benchmark ad report on the largest Idle Games ad revenue and eCPM, IMP/DAU, and Ad Viewer rate benchmarks for the Idle Genre. All you need to do is become a paying subscriber to get access to this report.
💰Great Content 💰
Coin Sort by Lion Studios is one of the new wave puzzlers that blends merge and sort mechanics into a sticky gaming experience. The core loop is simple, where players shuffle and merge coins of different colors on a tight board, with difficulty ramping not through level design but through the coins dropping in harder-to-sort patterns.
Coin Sort is part of the new class of IAP first puzzlers aimed mainly at Tier 1 markets like the US, UK, and Canada. The game has grown to an estimated 360K DAU, with interstitial ads on a roughly 2-minute 40-second timer. But here is the trick: those interstitials are not about maximizing ad revenue, they are about nudging players to pay to remove them. Ads generate about 40K per day, only around 35 percent of total revenue, with the bulk of monetization coming from IAPs. Currently, the game is operating at a $40 million annual run rate. For the complete breakdown, check out the link above.
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