Where should you advertise a new iPhone Game app?

The typical ad networks are n no particular order are Google/AdMob, Millennial, Jumptap and InMobi.  You'll probably need to use some combination of the three depending on what your targeting and the performance you are looking for.  Getting up on the top lists requires effort.  There are marketing companies you can work with whose goals are to get ads up there on the top lists.  They work on the advertisements, write ups and user reviews for you along with getting you into app shows.  I have no experience with them and thus, can't recommend one. If you want to talk to someone with more experience than I do with this at Jumptap, I can pass your info along.

Can't speak as to ASO or App Review sites, but mobile ad networks may be the way to go if you have a good understanding of the LTV of your users. I'd say best place to start would be Facebook (phenomenal targeting), before checking out other networks. After you've done some optimization around retention & better understanding the LTV of your users from paid channels, you can either increase your spend on FB or try out other sources. Here's a list of CPI mobile networks if you'd just like an idea: - Applovin - Chartboost - RevMob - Appia - MobileCore (IronSource) - Go2Movi - Motive Interactive For a more comprehensive list you can view http://thalamus.co and filter by 'mobile' & 'CPI'. We'll have CPI & install data by country as well as minimums in the next few months.

The first places to consider for advertising are the review sites.  They're free and the reviews are up forever which means lots of SEO goodness. Here's a list to start with: http://www.altiapp.com/2011/08/ultimate-list-of-free-iphone-app-review-sites/ At an AdMob developer conference I went to in 2009, the use case they presented implied that a campaign in the neighborhood of $15k-25k could get you an appearance on the 'top app' lists.

Whether you're an established, well-funded game company or an indie developer, you will generally utilize similar ad products and networks to publicize your app. There are generally two campaigns that mobile game developers aim for: 1. Burst campaigns to drive their app to the top of the charts. These types of campaigns generally deliver a lot of low value users at once, so that the App Store ranks your game higher and allows potential new users to discover your game organically. 2. Campaigns to acquire high LTV users. In order to specifically target potential users that have a high likelihood of investing in your game's in-app purchases over the long-run, the ad network will have to have sophisticated targeting and tracking abilities, as well as experience targeting such high LTV users. Different ad networks specialize in both of the two campaign types. At Aarki (http://aarki.com), we specialize in high LTV user delivery; we wrote about the topic in this blog post! http://blog.aarki.com/2013/03/07/succeeding-as-an-app-developer-series-ii-user-growth-quantity-vs-quality/