It has interstitial ads and banner ads that refresh during the middle of gameplay. For most game developers this is an absolute non-starter and considered a terrible game experience. I absolutely would not call that a "refreshing" take on freemium game design.
Not to mention that it probably has horrific monetization and despite its high download titles it likely has poor revenues. Fine for a small development team, but terrible compared to industry norms.
He claims that the ads are making him $50,000 a day, which adds up to a few million dollars before the game dies. Totally fine for a solo dev in Vietnam. Sure the ads could be optimized, but given the game's simple pick-up-and-drop viral format, ads are definitely superior to making this kind of app paid or IAP instead.
Exactly. Fine for a solo game developer, but when compared to most top grossing titles which regularly eclipse $250K/day (and are also long-lasting, whereas I'd guess Flappy Bird falls off the radar within a month or two).
Ads never monetize close to the revenue that you can make from IAP - a typical ad installation will make between $0.005 and $0.01 per daily active user, whereas a decently monetizing free to play title can make between $0.03 and $0.20. Smaller userbase titles like card battlers can make upwards of $0.50.
Again, fine for one guy, but I wouldn't call this a raging success of a title and something that free-to-play game studios will use as a framework, by any means. If it takes 50 million installs to make $50K/day, that's a really bad thing.
Not to mention that it probably has horrific monetization and despite its high download titles it likely has poor revenues. Fine for a small development team, but terrible compared to industry norms.