InMobi cheats me out of more than $2000

We all like to keep our eggs in different baskets, mostly because of reasons like this. If an ad network screws you over, you can lose A LOT. We agree to their ToS and basically we are at their discretion.

I have been in the Android development world for 3 years now and I have used Admob for the entire time, along with many other networks like StartApp, mobileCore, SendDroid, AppNext, airPush, MillennialMedia, AppWiz, AppBrain and AppBucks.
Every one of those networks paid me in full every time and I’ve never had any serious issues with any of them.

I was releasing a new app a few months ago (release date Feb 6) and wanted another banner provider than Admob just for the sake of more baskets for my eggs. inMobi seemed to be an established player and although they have net60 payment terms (a joke these days) I thought it would pay off with their industry establishment.

The app did great in its first 30 days, raking in about 150k downloads and stuck between 3k-8k a day thereafter, with high user retention and several minutes session length. inMobi filled around 80% of traffic with a decent eCPM of $0.55 overall for banners (no mediation was set up). I have StartApp, mobileCore and AppNext for interstitials and the “more apps” button. Those three networks did great and still do with the app and have paid me for this traffic via their payment terms already.

I obviously won’t link directly to the app as we all have enough competition as it is, but here’s some GPlay stats:



On April 15th I went to log in to my inMobi account to review performance etc, when I was greeted with the message “User is not active”. After contacting support about the error I was sent this e-mail:

"Dear Customer,

Greetings from Inmobi.

We regret to inform that your account has been blocked hence you have been seeing this message. This is due to the violation of InMobi guidelines and conditions.

Thanks,
Team Inmobi."

I then asked for more information several times via e-mail, and after a further 15 days I finally received this (I had noticed that the banners were no longer being requested by the app):

"As updated you earlier, we regret to inform you that your account with InMobi is blocked permanently.

Why is my account blocked?
To prevent any unusual or unauthorized activities, we have put stringent rules in place. After careful investigation and scrutiny by specialist, it is confirmed that your account is not adhering to InMobi’s terms of service. We are therefore blocking your account in our system. Please note that this cannot be undone.

InMobi refunds blocked publisher earnings to the affected advertisers.

If you’d like to know more about why InMobi blocks publishers;
Please refer to our TOS and content guidelines here :

Mobile Advertising | Monetization | Analytics | InMobi and
Mobile Advertising | Monetization | Analytics | InMobi

Regards,
Team InMobi."

Great. So they won’t tell me how I violated their ToS or Content Policy. Not even a basic context: something that Google actually gives you. But inMobi just blocked me with out so much as a hint, just as the first payment was about to be due. eCPM was similar to the same traffic sources from my other apps with Admob, along with CTR etc. The banners were not near the UI, there are no adult themes etc etc.

As they are net60 I never received any revenue, which they CLAIM is being refunded to the advertisers. I’m sure it is inMobi. Funny how 3 other networks have had no issues with this traffic.

All I can see this as is disgusting mal-practice and a network stealing my earned revenue.

So I’m sharing this awful experience with you all so that you may see that inMobi may be established, but they are by no means a reliable ad network or a network that you should necessarily do business with.

If you use inMobi and have done for longer than I did please voice your opinion about them too.

I have now re-directed the banner traffic and there is no issue. (Surprise, surprise).

Whoa man, this is sad. never gonna go with InMobi bullshit again. Safe with admob and startapp (lets hope)

It’s same situation, as lot of ppl have now with TapContext, it’s really sad, sorry for You :slight_smile:

From the network angle - we are facing, from time to time, developers that try to cheat/scam. As wrong as it is and as angry as we get from seeing these actions, we never did any aggressive action like that without informing the developer exactly and specifically what happened. You could claim that because they are big, they don’t have the time to talk to all of their developers, but that’s not really an excuse. I’m pretty sure most networks won’t behave like that as well. At least I hope so.

Also, knowing @A1ka1inE and workin with him, I’m pretty sure that he did nothing to deserve that kind of treatment. Sorry, dude.

I’ts a big shame. It’s hard enough to succeed as an ad network as it is.

Thanks @jonathan!

I asked them several times for explain the actual reason for account suspension, as I cannot see any form of mal-practice on my end. If they had given a legitimate reason of violation, maybe I wouldn’t have had to post all of this.
But they have shown total lack of respect, professionalism and a basic business-to business rapport.
I would not expect any network to behave like this, considering the legitimacy of my traffic.

They are either going bankrupt / conducting shady business / just don’t care about their developers. The biggest shame is that all I can do is share my experience.

The same situation is with Tapcontext… I lost more than 2k$… But what can we do? I suppose we only can try stable networks, but even this step will not secure us 100%…

P.S. I really wanted to try appnext, but their SDK is not suitable for me (meta-tags in manifest and some other things), but I think it can be good network and become huge in the future (mainly because of the great support). All the best!

This is so sad , It is becoming very challenging these days to find “Good” Ad Networks ,
even the big ones have their down sides
I am spending more time trying ad networks than actually developing new apps

I also opened a thread before, when inMobi started to redirect to playstore without users action. Probably they are in bankrupt, and want to earn money to keep the company (in other words, steal the money, to screw the developers and etc.)

what @Pharaoh wrote is true for me too, I also spent more time last 2 months trying different ad networks than developing new apps, sadly

I guess I was wrong with what I wrote here

try posting this thread url on their facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/inmobi .

OMG, it’s really unbelievable how some ad networks can act. Really sorry for your loss. However, I wonder how Net60 ad networks are still living and what’s with this shitty policy. The advertisers are surely paying the money upfront to them, I’ve never seen any place where you can buy traffic/installs and pay after. They’re just keeping and using the money for their owns until they decide to pay us or screw us and keep the money further.

I’m pretty sure most of the ad networks will adapt to all the changes and will provide weekly or bi-weekly payments soon or AdMob will just eat them alive. I understand that processing and sending weekly payments can be a pain for the ad networks, but this can give them a lot more developers to join and of course more business. It should be a mutual benefit for both ad network and the developers…just give us what we’ve earned ASAP and we will give you more business))

Although it’s funny to see how inMobi are posting every day on their Facebook page but it took them 15 days to reply to A1ka1inE. I’m ready to support with a Like and Share if you’re gonna post this on their Facebook page, let the world see it :slight_smile:

I have posted to their Facebook page and I would appreciate a like or share from anyone!
https://www.facebook.com/inmobi/posts/1497989250429951?stream_ref=10

@A1ka1inE - Sorry to hear that, get a feeling that I need to apologize for this kind of behavior!

I know you, your apps and the quality of traffic you bring. This is simply wrong.

Hope you’ll see x2 better results with other networks and forget this quickly.

@Javanshir - I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that you have the ability to control this. Please email [email protected] with this inquiry.

Best,
Ariel.

Thanks a lot @startapp !

And of course there is no need to apologize. This type of thing shines more light on the networks that operate correctly, such as yourself.

I never game any networks that have NET60 payouts a chance, probably never will anyway. Thats just way too long to wait. I get things shipped to my from China faster than that.

just got paid form tapcontext today not sure why you guys have issues with them.

tapearnings.jpg

Bottom line is stick with Airpush,revmob,admob,startapp,mobvista I keep trying new adnetworks as well only to just come back to startapp/airpush, so lesson learned stick with your main guns, don’t trade for anything, make sure these companies been around for a year or so before trying them. <—Most dot Com businesses fail within the first year.

That sucks. Inmobi has always payed me, but Admob banned me 2 years ago.

I had seen alkaline’s app when it got featured in Top new apps in Indian play store. Had seen Inmobi banners too. I was literally surprised at seeing inmobi banners. Their approval process for my apps was taking so much time that I decided not to go with them.
I am sticking with banner ads from admob for now. No other network provides banner ads the way admob does (fill rate and ecpm etc.)

I think alakaline should have put some kind of randomness in banners like showing 50% of time admob banners and rest 50% inmobi banners. Just a matter of adding if else statement in code using the Random class from Java.

Hey A1ka1inE

Very sorry to hear about this. I work for InMobi and I’d like to help you out. Can you give me your account number that you used for registrations? I’ll send it internally to the respective teams and see what happened. If indeed there’s a mistake on our end, then we can sort it out.

Please PM me your account ID

Thank you :slight_smile: