10 apps banned because of PingJam

We received some suspensions today on most of our apps - 10 using the PingJam network. All other apps not using PingJam are still available.

We are trying to contact Google about this, and we really hope the account stays safe, because otherwise we will have to file a law suit against PingJam. We are in contact with the CEO of PingJam, but we do not have the confidence that it will go well.

We had a bad feeling about this network and we were going to remove it on Monday and now this happens. We contacted Google and explained that we will remove the SDK as soon as possible, if we are allowed to, but no answer. Do you guys had any luck with that?
Any contacts you might have?

Edit: Just to get some things straight as the first “scumbags” developers started poring down on us…We have never used push notifications nor icons on Google Play, not before the new policy and not after. We never liked this sort of advertisement. We actually gave PingJam a try after they convinced us that they are compliant, they even put this information on their website. And they promise a Caller ID service which we always wanted to incorporate in some of our apps. The Caller ID ads are not even that bad as nobody watches the screen during calls.
But the revenue was not even that great and only 20% of our active users were matched as active on their backend dashboard. We were suspicious so we decided to remove the SDK, few days after starting with it, obviously Google was faster. We tried the network for a few days (some apps had it only for a day or so), we never saw an AD on our tests and were assured that only calls to businesses or test calls in the US will be affected (how many calls to businesses does a regular user on average do anyways?). However, we had some bad feelings towards the company as a whole (not the SDK ), so we were to drop support next week. We will have to wait and see how things go from now on, but we will definitely demand some sort of reimbursement for lost revenue even if the apps are restored. And if they are not, then we will have to take all the needed measures to defend our IP, we encourage you to do so as well.

i’m with you
5 of my apps that use pingjam got banned too 6 hours ago!

Hi, google won’t probably reply you. The best way to solve this - remove sdk - change com.example.example to something different (com.example.example1 si ok) - publish it again.

It sucks, because you will lose all the downloads, but it’s way how to get your app on the store again.

Is the account still on? We are trying to get somebody out there to see if we can have the apps updated so that we can resubmit without the PingJam SDK.

We had a really bad feeling about this network and were going to remove it first thing next week, but Google decided to remove them on a Friday!

That is not an option, we will try to get the apps resubmitted so that we can remove the SDK. We are trying our best. We got the CEO of PingJam and he said that he will look into it with their contacts at Google, but not sure if anything will come out of this so we work on 2 fronts.

Our main concern now is for the whole account!

Sorry to hear that you’ve been removed. I understand that our support is working with you to resolve this.
On our end - we’ve reached out to our contacts at Google and expect to hear back on Monday, when they return from the weekend - we will have some responses.
In the meantime - we have disabled our service so that no more caller-id’s or ads will be displayed until we get a better understanding of what’s happening. For the time being, we will continue paying as usual.

I want to stress that this is as surprising to us as it is to you. We’ve been repeatedly assured by our contacts at Google that what we are doing is fine and that as long as the user is fully aware that the app is providing caller-id service - then this counts as “in-app”.

We are here for you with anything that we can do.

Elnor
Co-founder, CEO

We’ve also been banned this morning, from an account which took us 2 years to build. We’ve had close to 10 million downloads across those apps, and now they are all suspended. We suspect Pingjam is a cause, because some apps which only had pingjam as out-of-app were also suspended. If pingjam is to blame, we need to rally up with other developers and make sure we get compensation.
We we’re doing close to 15,000 dollars per month after 2 years work, and pingjam was the lowest contributor of all the ad networks we were using. I expect a response super-urgent from pingjam about this, and how they will make sure that us developers get proper compensation. If they fail to do this, we will surely sue them and try to get our money back.

I urge other developers to check this forum the following days. If this is a matter of a certain ad network giving out erroneous information and basically lying to us, we NEED to make sure they pay.

Mr. PingJam didn’t you tell us that you had a discussion with Google and they confirmed that your SDK and solution is compliant. Now what happened no love from google?

All of my 9 apps with pingjam were BANNED also! Im so frustrated I have family to feed! That is my only source of income with the apps. Does anyone know the right email to answer google to appeal the cancellation? Did anyone sent email to google play and where is the link to send the appeal because when i click on the link they sent me with the cancellation email it says page not found and i can’t appeal to nothing! If you did and worked please let us know and how did u do PLEASEEEEEEE

Thank you guys!

Hi all. I’m Peter from Dagged’s solutions. My 3 apps was suspended today. I lost a lots of revenue not mentioned about image of the company!!!. If not compensated or apps restored we sue also. Maybe we should do it together.

None of you will get $1 from Ad Networks.

When ad networks after google change in policy started saying they are policy complaint, I was asking for Proof to show a Google response indicating they are complaint. Some of you Kept quiet, Some of you were abusive towards me because I questioned your ad networks.

Well now face the consequences. You willingly got into this mess by using the ad networks in question.

Take this as a life lesson and run a honest business from now on (Instead of spamming people).

No one is getting any “compensation”, no one will get their apps appealed and you can forget about suing anybody because you won’t.

You had 2 months to remove all this crap out of your apps but you were too greedy to understand the consequences.

I would advise removing all this garbage out of your apps and republishing under new names/accounts. Thats the only way to go here, rookies!

I will SUE with you. IM IN. My skype is iarussi30 please add me. And Im making a facebook page to get everyone that got damaged with this and lets get together and SUE this company This was my life and was gone in a second because their mistake.
IF you want to SUE the company please go to this facebook page lets get together everyone. Redirecting...

Hmm…

What’s in interesting about this is that Google themselves actually has ad code in the dialer app, but it’s not activated.

Anyways, I used to spam the old formats, but these new formats were obviously against the rules. They tip toed around the new rules… Besides easy apps (not really spam apps anymore if there’s a market for them and you just use banners and interstitials) are still worth doing, you just gotta do twice as many. Still good money.

Oh, and in all fairness, these companies weren’t technically against the rules. It’s sort of Google’s fault for telling us what not to do exactly, instead of simply saying NO OUT OF APP AD UNITS AT ALL.

But back to my original point in my last post, it was sort of obvious to tread lightly, because Google isn’t usually fair to devs.

Hey why don’t you sue Google while at it. Good luck!

Well, the policy is quite simple in case of out-of-app ads - nothing is allowed because any out-of-app ad is interfering with other apps. ANY. So the case on that is closed and was closed months ago. No out of app ads are allowed. People here weren’t believing those who told so, choosing to believe shady ad companies, but now they are getting banned.

The problem is with fringe cases - AppBrain exit ad for example which is not much disturbing but doesn’t have clear exit button after you enter it. And for example banners that open fullscreen page without close button instead of opening in the browser (I think most if not all mopub ads do that)… or all exit ads even those with close button. It seems no one was banned for them, but I worry, wouldn’t want to be the first one.

this is bad news indeed, i also feel the pain of the poor people that google destroyed their lives like they did to mine.
i think the pingjam guys are just as outrages as we are, it’s not their fault that google mofos decided to throw them to garbage.
ultimately it’s google’s purpose to destroy all ad networds in favor of their own admob thugs.
if google provided a single employee to validate ad networks ads we would all be ok, there are only a handfull of networks that can easlisy be validated by google. but no, google provides no support to either devs or ad networks, they only say read the policy and that’s it, everyone understands what they want. they will ban us whenever they want because they are the law, no one can stop them so they will just press the bann all apps and all associated accounts and destroy some dev’s life and then that employee will go home and enjoy the weekend without a second thought for us miserable devs that try to make a living in a world full of thugs. we should all sue google instead, they’re the one to blaim.

You have family to feed? Well, stop taking risks! I’d say that only 100% safe ads are IN-APP! By using !!!ANY!!! out-of-ap ads you are risking your app and your account.

I understand that you are frustrated, but you can’t “bet” everything on these kind of apps. Be reasonable!

This is an email received from Pingjam on 25 August 2013:

[i]Hi Pingjam developer,

I hope you are doing well.

I’d like to start off by saying that Pingjam’s SDK is fully compliant with the new Google policy from this last Friday.

On Friday, Google updated their developer terms and have made some sweeping changes with the ad formats that are permitted in the store. These changes shut the door on push ads, icon ads among other ad formats. I am writing to ensure you that Pingjam is fully compliant with the new terms. We do not use push ads or icon ads and our ads only appear within context of the caller ID service that your app is providing.

Regardless of whether you are working exclusively with us or have multiple SDKs installed in your apps I want to encourage you to update to our latest SDK (v’ 3.1.1) which is available to download at - Publisher Console . It is guaranteed to be fully Google compliant, provides better performance and will generally improve the performance of the user opt-in process.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or to any of our other team members for any additional details or any questions you may have.

Thanks,

Elnor Rozenrot
Co-Founder & CEO, Pingjam[/i]

They said they guarantee fully Google compliant!