Few smartphone games have reached the heights of fame (and infamy) to such a degree as Flappy Bird.  This polarizing game has shown up on everyone’s radar for the past few weeks, from it’s meteoric rise in popularity to it’s sudden and unexpected end.  

In the game, the player controls a small, unassuming bird and attempts to maneuver it through a series of breaks in vertical pipes by tapping the screen rapidly to ascend.  Part of the games appeal is the incredible difficulty level of this simple task.  The score is directly based on how many pipes the player can pass, and any number higher than 20 is a badge of honor which users waste no time showing off.  

When designer Dong Nguyen removed the game from both the Android and Apple app stores, it was rumored that the simple game (which was free to download) was pulling about $50,000 a day in ad revenue.  That is a huge amount of money, especially considering that the game was marketed almost solely by word of mouth.  Although many people may tell themselves that the flashing banners and persistent pop-ups are easily ignored, clearly there is a significant amount of people that do click these ads.  

So, just when you start thinking of in-app ads as a waste of time that no one bothers clicking, just remember that a bare-bones game with practically no official marketing was making more in a day than most people do in a year.