Admob Account suspended for no apparent reason

Just thought I’d put it out there in case anyone’s experienced/is experiencing the same thing. I just woke up an hour ago and to my hearts discontent I found my AdMob account suspended. I haven’t changed anything at all lately and am really dumbfounded as to why this has happened, I did not recieve any email whatsoever regarding the AdMob account. I always place my ads far away from buttons and always create my own graphics etc.

I have developed apps using LibGdx the past 1½ years full time and am currently living on my earnings from the apps. I have roughly 28 apps that I have developed myself (art and everything except music which is creative common attribution license). One of my apps called “My Virtual Pet Care” managed to go “viral” in Brazil, Portugal, Spain and some other spanish talking countries (currently 1.4 million downloads). This and the fact that I have several other apps with 100k+ downloads result have resultet in a very high income from my ads, about 500-600 dollars/day.

I really love creating apps and I thought I had truly struck gold. But I guess one can never really be sure, especially in the world of ads, I mean some random people on other side of the globe could just feel like spamming my ads just for fun (or something else). I suspect the reason behind my account suspensions is just that, either that some random people just went ham on my ads and wanted me gone or that an ad was placed too close to a button in one of my very first apps (don’t think so though, and if so those apps have been on the market for well over a year).

I’ll just start working on changing to other ad-networks I suppose, but I’ve lost roughly 24 000 dollars. I honestly don’t want to complain too much about it though because I am well aware how random and unjust Google Play is, I’ve seen a lot of people create better apps than I’ve developed with less than 500 downloads over a long period of time so I guess I should be glad I at least got some money from devoting 1½ years to developing Android apps.

Needless to say I’m very sad that this has happened and I hope this never happens to anyone else. And if anyone has experienced something similar and managed to get it resolved please let me know. I’ve sent an appeal to AdMob via some form but I have my doubts whether it’ll help or not.

For anyone interested here’s a link to my apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Nealo+Inc

My email: [email protected]

Well , I can see that your Google play account is already banned ,
I know exactly what you are talking about but I have something to say to you …

this is not the end pal , this is the beginning of a whole new Era for your android life , now you have your account suspended you are free to go “dirty”

Admob is pullshit , the same happened to me they suspended my account with 6k$ but the good news is that once you have gone through this you have nothing to loose and you need to go aggressive in your ads strategy ,

Your first step would be getting a new account and then start to be aggressive in your ad strategy , you can easily triple your income in no time

Here is my start app referral link , it has been very good to me
StartApp - Developer Register

and also you will find a new ad network in my signature

Sheers , and good luck

Haha jeesus christ you made my heart jump, I had for some reason forgot a dot at the end of my url. I’ve updated it to the correct link now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Nealo+Inc.

And ye, I’ve got some plans of my own to go really dirty, i’ll check out your link for sure. But for the time being I’m probably going to try my wings with airpush banner ads.

Cheers

Better just use other banner networks but with mediation (moPub or sth similar), they mostly have higher eCPM anyway.

By the way: you have hilarious comment on one of your games: "Can u pu boobs in? " :slight_smile:

Yeh I’ll look into all other ad-networks and possibly some mediation if fill-rates are poor. Magnesus have you had any experience with Airpush banner ads?

Oh , sorry about that ,
You are in a good shape then , Goodluck

Making up to $600/day you are very well able to afford an attorney. Just talk to one and he/she will let you know if you have a case and what to do.

10 years ago 2 ad companies decided not to pay me and my partner the 28,000 they owed us so we got an attorney and we got all our money in a couple of weeks by threatening to sue.

Admob is basically accusing you of fraud.

TALK TO AN ATTORNEY!

Yeh I feel like the whole business is a huge fraud. However I just recently started making this much money so I’m not sure if I can afford an attorney, I also live in Sweden which I suppose doesn’t make things easier if I’d go ahead with a lawsuit. Thanks for the input though, I’ll definitely consider suing them if they won’t reinstate my account.

Cheers

Hahaha what? Which game is that? :stuck_out_tongue: Also which adnetworks have you had the best experience with? I’m thinking of trying Airpush banner ads + possibly smartwall.

I’m looking at 1-2 of your games and I don’t see any reason why admob would ban you - were you giving some traffic to admob (though even that SHOULD NOT be a reason because I don’t recall seeing anywhere in admob stuff that developers need to make sure they use admob or give it certain portion of traffic).

Was it possibly one of the other ad networks you were using ?

Or the other culprits usually postulated to be the reason for such suspensions:

  • unreasonably high CTR - which maybe seen as fraudulent excess clicking

If nothing else if they ban an account - they can surely send a canned response at least ?

Or is it that this is their Google algorithm at work - and basically Skynet (Terminator) is here and running people’s lives ? - could be possible the algorithm does something stupid occasionally ?

But the mention here of reasonably successful developers facing this issue is odd - i.e. David in another thread:
http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/727-admob-account-disabled-4.html
mentioning same issue - and your as well.

The comment by one poster that “it hasn’t happened to them yet” - is NOT a valid response because it does not give credence to the statistical nature of Google algorithm’s behaviors - i.e. it could be that they goof up in 1% of cases - but when it happens it disrupts that developer’s workflow/revenue flow.

For this reason there should be a developer channel at Google which addresses this stuff - and developers just “leaving on the table” $24K is NOT something to be taken lightly !!

Perhaps what one poster (who was posing as an attorney) - was suggesting i.e. revenue recovery from the dubious networks - perhaps some of the same treatment needs to be applied to Google as well - will that poster take up an issue with Google for recovery of revenue of frozen account ?

I gave ALL my traffic to AdMob, I didn’t use any mediation whatsoever. I had 95% > fillrate on all ads and delivered over 1 million impressions/day with an avg ecpm of 0.53$. The only app that had high CTR was the metal detector (It had a banner at the bottom far away from everything and there weren’t even any buttons).

And apparentaly they don’t have to send you a response or anything, they can just disable your account and that’s that. Extremely frustrating.

Haha ye this feels like Skynet is taking over for sure.

Not sure what you’re refering to with that one poster who was posing as an attorney? He who suggested I should get in contact with an attorney and file a lawsuit?

Anyhow, sad day for a single indie-developer, namely myself and I :frowning:

I have played your game Free running dash for a couple of weeks…awesome game man…is it you alone? or are you working with your pals?because thats some great game for a single developer…:smiley:

$24k !!! oooh that hurt…all these force me to move more traffic away from admob…
then again this could be a whole new beginning for you…airpush banner is a good call… good luck…

Nealo,

You don’t have to file a lawsuit, there are many things an attorney can do for you. One thing is find out why you were banned.

Anyone can afford a simple consultation with an attorney. It will probably cost you less than $200. Just do a search for ‘internet attorney’.

He/she will give you advice on what your options are, and if admob has violated your rights.

Imagine if this was your full time job with a company and they fired you, refused to pay you and refused to tell you why. Would you simply say, ‘oh well’ and look for a new job? And let you bills go unpaid?

Thanks a lot man, ye I actually made all my games on my own, art and everything. I’ve developed apps basically 24/7 the last 1½ years :slight_smile:

And ye it hurts, A LOT. My mom got furious and said we should set up meeting with TV networks and stuff, but I’m pretty sure swedish TV networks aren’t interested, and if even if they were google wouldn’t care one bit.

Thanks for wishing me good luck, I hope airpush will work better. :slight_smile:

Ever since I started programming android apps I’ve been reading all kinds of stuff related to it, I’ve stumbled across many developers who have been banned for no reason etc so I guess I saw it coming one way or another. I’ll definitely take this upp with an attorney like you suggest, do you think I should do it right now or wait for a possible appeal?

Cheers

Good question. I suggest appealing and waiting for the response first.

It is possible that the ban was done programmatically. If so, then maybe if they get a human to look at this they might see that it was an error and reinstate the account. This happens a lot it seems.

However, I don’t know. US law may have a limitation on how long you have to seek recourse, I don’t know.

I personally would give them just a few days to respond, but that’s just my unqualified opinion.

The one with bubbles. :slight_smile:

Also which adnetworks have you had the best experience with? I’m thinking of trying Airpush banner ads + possibly smartwall.

Hard to tell, maybe mmedia (net65 though!), mopub, sth like that. I don’t trust Airpush myself, but it may be worth a test on one or two apps.

Hmm, I always hoped it would never come to this. Admob is huge and I’m sure I’ll need mediation like mad to get 100% fill rate. Also how come you’re moving away from admob? Did they disable your account also?

This might be useful when selecting which ad-networks to use: Ad networks - Android library statistics | AppBrain.com

I’ve been trying to implement airpush banner ads all day with LibGdx but I can’t get it to work, either something is wrong with the xml or airpush is just not sending me any ads (test mode enabled or not). What a great day!

Well, with $24K on the line, you can certainly afford a lawyer to work for a percentage or something - if nothing else just to follow up.

I would suspect now a crop of lawyers would have come up who would specialize in just this type of thing.

One of the posters here had posted about “recovery” from the more dubious ad networks - perhaps the same approach can be tried with Admob - anyone know who that guy was ?

EDIT: I wonder if it is about that time that Google Play developers form an association or something - to protect their interests. Would need to be an examination of whether when Google Play dominates a certain segment of industry (just like Windows became a “standard”) they start to acquire a “responsibility” - for example that market be fair.

Since some of these companies can have problems in Europe with legislators - it maybe worth your while (as an alternate and parallel path) to bring this to the attention of some legislator in the European Parliament or something who is active in anti-Google actions or something.

Maybe your mother is right - and such a secondary path could be followed.

However all this stuff is for the general benefit of others - you will most likely “get satisfaction” much earlier - with just asking Google what happened.

That is how Google probably deals with it - i.e. to keep quiet this type of activity - which has zero tension for Google, but creates a “hanging sword” situation for developers - so they operate in an atmosphere of uncertainty - from the threat of capricious activity on the part of Google.

I agree, something needs to change. This is not acceptable behaviour, It’s a good idea to form some kind of association I guess. Not sure how it would work though considering Google’s such a huge giant with nearly unlimited resources. Also asking google what happened doesn’t seem so trivial, some developers just got back automated messages saying absolutely nothing. Whatever google replies to my appeal there’s no way I’m using AdMob again. Too bad I can’t boycott Google all together, my Google Developer account will probably get banned for no reason in due time as well.

I’ll do my best in spreading my experience when I’ve completed changing ad-network stuff in all my apps. Hopefully I can save some people this appaling experience.