Facebook's strategy has been to Grow First, include Ads Later. For mobile games, is there any evidence that ads hinder popularity, or that people are more likely to share games without ads? Or as mentioned by angarg12, is there evidence that introducing ads part-way through a game's life cycle affects how people feel toward your game?
Answer
A user keeps a game on his mobile phone on average 20 days. So for the most part, adding ads is not going to be noticed much after launch. However, it is going to affect your biggest fan the most, which is the segment you don't really want to piss off.
There are ways to mitigate the effect however. #1 is to only show ads to people who downloaded the game after version X, so old player won't see any ads. Also, do not show ads to players who purchased something (so no ads in premium games and no ads to a user who dropped $5 on virtual goods).
I have retroactively added ads into a popular game. The effect was some bad reviews, but for the most part people expect ads - as long as they are not over the top annoying. The rating didn't really drop when I added the ads. Maybe 0.1 points, but that's it.
Also you can let the users know that you need the money to make another game... lots of people are quite understanding of the plea of the indie developer.
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