Is AppBrain Google compliant?

Hi all,

I was having a discussion with a fellow developer. He uses appbrain ads in his apps.

And it came to the point about the close button in full screen ads. Appbrain doesn’t have a close button (unless I missed it, please correct me).

What’s your take on this?

I say it is not compliant. My friend too thinks it isn’t.

He tried asking appbrain, and they said they are compliant (surprised anyone?). While we haven’t heard of anyone getting banned for appbrain, this is a worrisome thing.

Opinions please.

Cheers!
-Bill

They have ability to close before they show the interstitial, but you are right - they should also have a close button on the interstitial. I will have to remove them probably, but they make significant percentage of my revenue and are probably one of the least disturbing ads…

I’ve also send them info about it and will probably start removing AppBrain next week (maybe adding adMob interstitial instead but not at exit, but a short time before exit (probably when user gets back to main screen).

Hope you can make up the revenue with the other options Magnesus.

Guess my friend will be having a long night updating his apps…

Another option, if you’re making games, Chartboost seems pretty decent but with low fill rates in certain countries.

So when user decide to get some extra apps and approve before showing interestials - should be close button on given interestials as well?

that’s my understanding of Google’s new policy. All full screen ads must have a button to dismiss the ad.

I could be wrong if course :smiley:

Since when Appbrain got Interstitials? Its simply dialog box with “YES” and “NO” buttons. Why would u need to have additionally exit button for that? or am I missing something about appbrain and they’ve started running real Interstitials?

Hi Daler,

I’m referring to the wall that appears after you click Yes.

The wall is the real ad here. And that’s missing a close button.

Complicated. I dont really think that its against rules, because you give to them a chance already. But however, seems it would be nice to have it. Something about small petition from change.org would be nice. You could make one, and we could sign and send it to appbrain. Make somewhere 50-100 ppls.)

I’m surprised they haven’t addressed the issue already since AppBrain have always come off really clean and well managed.

What’s more is that you can apply for direct use of the interstitial. I can’t remember what the criteria is for approval, but they then allow you to simply call straight to the Interstitial.

Its also just dawned on me that we’ve never seen a rep from AppBrain here, so far as I can tell.

I don’t use them anymore, and I doubt they will listen to devs :stuck_out_tongue:

This is like adding a “more games” button on your game and showing a full screen ad without close button when user clicks it.

Just my opinion, and thought to highlight the risk here.

A1ka1inE , exactly , being a more established ad network, we would expect stricter compliance from them.

What about leadbolts appwall? Do you think they are compliant? Basically you press a “More Games” button, it launches your browser and ask you: Do you want a free app? Whether you tap Yes or No, it shows you an appwall with different apps. There is no close button but you can press Back on your device and come back to the game.

Definitely NOT compliant. Forget about close button, this one shows ads outside your app (launching a browser).

“Ad Walls and Interstitial Ads
Interstitial ads may only be displayed inside of the app they came with. Forcing the user to click on ads or submit personal information for advertising purposes in order to fully use an app is prohibited. A prominent and accessible target must be made available to users in any interstitial ad so they may dismiss the ad without penalty or inadvertent click-through.”

Yeah, i think it is violating 2 conditions of this statement… any recommendation for an appwall or interstitial to be launched when clicking a “Great Apps” button?

Hi BaksaiApps,

If leadbolt is giving you a URL, you can load in a webview inside your own app, and add a close button. That way you can even preload the ad in the webview, and hide it off screen.

When user clicks the more games button, bring the webview n close button to be visible.

Hope you get what I’m trying to explain.

Exactly this is the way how I use leadbolt interestials - WebView with my close button. This is compliant, yes?

Sounds fine to me… but we never know what Google thinks :wink:

This way your ad remains inside your app, and you have a close button.

Hot tip to potentially increase ctr:
add a count down timer, and show the count down, say 5 seconds, and only then enable the close button. do at own risk :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi, this is Mathijs from AppBrain.

I think there’s some confusion about the policy here. The policy doesn’t say there needs to be a close button on each and every ad. It says
“A prominent and accessible target must be made available to users in any interstitial ad so they may dismiss the ad without penalty or inadvertent click-through.”
At the bottom of Ads | Android Developers there’s a clear example where there is no close button, but just a “no thanks” button.

This is exactly what the AppBrain AppLift interstitial has as well: a Not Now button. In addition, the back button just closes the activity without any penalty.

In cases where the offerwall/appwall is used directly, this is meant to be used on user input, i.e, when a user clicks a “More apps” button. Then you get a new activity, which you asked for, which is full of apps. A back press brings you back again.
This is similar to clicking an admob banner. If you click an admob banner, you usually get a webpage in a browser, this doesn’t have a big “Close” button either, the user is expected to just back out when they’re done. In other words, the policy doesn’t mean that everything that’s an ad should have a big close button, in that case Admob and all other banner networks would not be compliant either. What it does mean is that the first screen that is popped up without the user asking for it needs to make it easy for the user to dismiss it, which is exactly what we do.

We use AppBrain AppLift in our own high profile “Swiss Codemonkeys” apps (a number of them have 10M+ downloads) and haven’t had any Google policy problems, nor has any of the other 10.000+ publisher apps had trouble because of our SDK. We are considering to add an option to include a close button on the offerwall for developers who are still not convinced that the ads are compliant.

Thanks for the answer. After re-reading the policy a few more times I think you are right.

Thanks for your answer Mathijs. Much appreciated.

But funny that you compare the wall against banners. There is no ruling by Google that banners need a way to close them. That part is specific to interstitials and walls.

And that sample you mentioned of “No thanks” button, that button is on the ad screen itself, not on a prompt screen.

A close button surely will be welcome.

I guess it all depends on developers how they decide on this. There are still apps with push ads in Google play, a matter of time (and luck?) till those get spotted by “them”. I just hope fellow devs don’t get into any trouble.

Cheers!

Also note the sample on developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/policies/ads.html

The last screen sample can be dismissed with a back button press too. Yet it is marked as forcing user action because there is no close option in the ad.