I think the networks that help developer-to-developer (or advertiser to developer “direct deals”) are:
appflood - as mentioned above
chartboost - they are focusing on “games” - but their system supposedly has direct deal system in place …
…
and then there are the tap-for-tap and ad swap companies - and in some of them the “commission” charged is 50% i.e. the company gets 1 ad while you have to show 2 ads etc.
I think the problem for a small developer is that they may not know how to get advertising for their banner space to be able to leverage the “direct deals” with chartboost etc.
And a marketplace could help - but a developer group as suggested here could be useful (without needing to do much more) - if it is simple enough to have each register on appflood or whatever - and then just refer to others.
What would be the benefit of such a no-payment ad scheme ? Superficial analysis suggests that you can only get as much ad exposure as you expect to receive from them.
Which means that if you have 3K DAU (daily active users) - HOW many of them do you expect to actually click on ads - maybe 100 ? Which means that while that maybe worth $100 to you if you had gone with Admob alone - when going with another fellow developer you would only be giving him 100 downloads.
EDIT: 100 downloads could be as high as $100 if it were AppBrain etc. - however 100 “clicks” on Admob may get you $10-15 maybe … ?
Which means if a similar campaign is reciprocated by him for you, you would get 100 downloads - which is miniscule compared to the 3K DAU you have (of which maybe 1.5K are new downloads per day).
This suggests such a scheme of ad-swaps may not really have much value for increasing app downloads (which is the reason most here are giving for this endeavor).
The real value of this may however be in raising awareness - for example all those CoinDozer ads - you may not download the app, but you know that it is some casino style app that is advertising heavily for android. But many here will not be happy with “awareness” alone - they want real download number doubling etc.
For this reason, other techniques where developer actually spends money - and the real “growth” in downloads comes from their elevation on Google Play rankings MAY be the way to do it - and is perhaps WHY this is what the big app houses seem to be doing i.e. to get an app to have large downloads - i.e. they try to “game” the Google Play rankings to get at the top - as the ranking increase may give them a nonlinear or exponential advantage.
This is what then makes pay per download also valuable - because the real value of this is to “spark” a ranking improvement - which will deliver nonlinear/exponential download number increases.
For a developer then the strategy seems to be:
- to get all their stuff lined up to improve app rankings (even spending money) - and then all the other shady tactics also as some have pointed out as in china - i.e. the buying for reviews and other stuff, ratings etc.
- profit from the above activity - by selling banner space/interstials - so that even 100 downloads of other apps wind up giving you $25 or $50 etc.
The REAL value of the kind of developer-grouping as suggested in this thread - MAY happen when there is a real synergy in the app or app-styles - and this is the contextual ad thing.
With 3K DAU - while admob may only result in 100 clicks that generate revenue - if the developer had the ability to choose the advertiser - they could optimize for which advertiser works best for their app (or the advertiser is cognizant and doing a similar screening of apps they want to advertise in).
However, in a way Google Play is already doing some of this - when users go looking for apps to try, Google Play suggests other apps for them to download (in a relatively smart way).