Monetize Games with Ads
Host habit-building games
Daily puzzles like crosswords and sudoku are habit-building. Your games page will be one of the top 5 pages on your site with solvers returning daily.
Build brand-safe ad inventory
On average, puzzle solvers spend >10 minutes on your site. The opportunity to show them the right ads is immense.
Add pre-roll ads to games
Use our in-built ad features to load pre-roll video ads before games, or simply embed games on a page that’s set up with rotating display ads.
Add Games To Your Subscription Bundle
Provide subscriber-only games
Give your subscribers more reasons to subscribe by adding PuzzleMe games behind a paywall.
Decrease Churn Rate
Subscribers who engage early on with puzzles have a lower churn rate than those who don’t, according to this analysis by the Wall Street Journal.
Liz Manyes Aminzade
Puzzles Editor, The New Yorker
Generate Buzz with Promotional Games
Movie and product launches
Gamified Ads for Your Advertisers
PuzzleMe’s playable ads leverage the power of games to deliver brand messaging with drive conversions.
These playable display ads come in three different sizes for desktop, tablets and smartphones.
Netflix partnered with The Atlantic recently to use crossword-based playable ads that spread awareness regarding a new TV series.
This themed puzzle created by the Postmedia group in Canada demonstrates how puzzles can be part of launches and events. The puzzle is based on Christopher Nolan’s blockbluster movie Tenet and was released in Canada during the movie’s promotion. All the clues and answers are related to this movie and can be used as an engagement tool to create buzz amongst audiences.
This example illustrates how a puzzle can be themed for different types of events.
Click here to try the puzzle on the National Post’s website.
Integrate Games with Your Brand
Some of the world’s most formidable names in publishing have found ways to integrate PuzzleMe with their brands.
Customize the messaging
The New Yorker’s cartoons are a core part of the publisher’s brand. The magazine delights solvers with these cartoons when they finish a crossword.
Create games unique to your brand
The New York Post created a Wordle-style game with PuzzleMe, challenging readers to guess the catchy daily headlines the tabloid is famous for.
We're Trusted by the Best
Read More About Games and Publishing
How TAPinto Uses Games to Boost Local News Engagement
Nishant: This year we're looking forward to having a lot of these conversations with people in the media industry and talking about games and publishing. Particularly with you, I'd love to explore the local news angle. Could you start by giving us some background about TAPinto? Michael: Yeah, that sounds great. I started TAPinto 16 [...]
Scientific American Launches Games: A Conversation with Sarah Lewin Frasier
Scientific American recently launched SciAm Games, their brand new games offering with a variety of puzzles, including crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, Spellments, and more. Sarah Lewin Frasier is the Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. We spoke with her about SciAm's motivation behind launching games, long-term plans, and much more. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of [...]
What Can Games Do for The Boston Globe? A Conversation with Daniel King
A conversation with Daniel King
Frequently Asked Questions
Our preferred model is a flat per-gameplay charge (with a reasonable monthly minimum), so that you and we both benefit as usage grows. We can also support other pricing models depending on how you’re going to use the platform.
For pricing details please contact us: puzzlemaster@amuselabs.com
Some ways you could monetize your puzzles are through:
- Video pre-roll advertising: the drop-off due to video pre-roll is negligible in the case of crosswords. Since users are going to spend 10-20 minutes on the page, they don’t mind seeing a 15 second video clip. Also, crosswords are a habit — users know exactly what they are getting into, so they don’t get turned off by ads in front of some content of whose value they are unsure.
- Display advertising: You can easily have multiple ads on a page – perhaps a top leaderboard, a side-skyscraper and a bottom leaderboard as well. You can rotate the ads too to get a large number of impressions per play.
- Sponsorship: Crosswords and other puzzles appeal to a highly literate and affluent audience, which sponsors want to reach. A simple backdrop, or sponsored-by message can be displayed on the screen for their benefit.
- Subscriptions: Puzzles are amongst the biggest draws for getting users to subscribe. A $20 subscription/month is an easy sell to a customer who has a habit of solving crosswords and cumulatively spends several hours playing them every month.
Our team has extensive expertise in consulting publishers on monetizing their puzzle-products. Please contact us for more information.
Many of our users create or purchase their own crosswords for use on our platform, but we can supply English mini crosswords owned by Amuse Labs. For other languages or needs, we can work with publishers to identify appropriate sources. Crossword puzzles are sometimes country (and of course, language) specific, so you know the best type of puzzles for your audience. For example, even in English puzzles, American, British and Canadian styles can be subtly different.
If you already have a print puzzle, we can work with your syndicate or constructor to see if we can import the print puzzles into our platform. If the puzzles are already available in standard formats like .puz or .jpz or .xml, there is no problem at all. Sometimes we can write custom converters for other formats.
If you do not have a readily available source of content, we can work with you to identify appropriate constructors. We work with several professional puzzle constructors and syndicates, and can identify one who is appropriate for your needs.
With PuzzleMe creator, you can also create your own puzzles in minutes.
Note: If you run a video ad, it will come from your advertising system. PuzzleMe can integrate with any VAST compliant ads system (such as DFP video) very easily.
Yes – simply build a CMS page that is already behind the paywall. You can embed the puzzle in an iframe on this page. We can ensure that accesses to the iframe are allowed only from your walled site.
Give your readers a reason to stick around.
Add PuzzleMe games to your website or app.
