Spurious ads from ad networks that hog ad space

Are folks seeing fake or testing ads from the ad networks ?

I have seen that Greystripe is showing generic Greystripe ads (for my region where they may not have ads) - but in such a case they should say no ads are available when I do a fetch().

Instead they happily are delivering an “ad” which is not an ad that will generate revenue.

This by itself may not be problematic - but it is problematic because it prevents the developer from doing ad fill from a secondary ad network - since Greystripe recommends they be placed first in priority, they are essentially going to wind up “hogging” the ad space (even when they have no real ad to show).

I have seen this for Greystripe interstitial as well as banner ads.

This is problematic and may be happening with other ad networks as well.

Anyone seen this - which ad networks ?

I’ve never seen this, looks like a very serious bug for Greystripe. I used them a while ago and had decent CPM and bad fill rates and payout schedule. I recommend trying AppBrain’s AppLift product and better yet Airpush SmartWall product for much better returns in the same interstitial “real estate.” :stuck_out_tongue:

Ok, it turned out it was some issue with their new SDK - as their sample app was not working.

Trying out their new sample app now is working.

So issue is fixed for new SDK - not sure if it resolves old SDK users’ issues.

Yes, worried about low fill rate and you mention laggards in paying also ? The thing I liked about them was that they pay per impression (supposedly) - but then even that may not matter if the CPM is very low for those impressions.

I was thinking about supplementing Greystripe - but maybe a solution is to use another who has a higher fill rate.

The problem is that while showing an interstitial may work in middle of my app - showing an app offerwall may not work as well (as requires action by the user).

It is a voice changing app - where the interstitial ad tries to appear “intelligently” in a micro-idle period - like a screen saver - and I thought Greystripe suited that with their impression-based revenue model.

What type of stuff does the Airpush Smartwall put up ? Is it app offerwall + smart ads + video on occasion ?

For my requirement that the ad be non-interacting - i.e. all it reqiure be an impression - I was favoring video ads also - but unsure about how the fill rate for those is (plus the data bandwidth burden on the user). And again the fill rate issue for video ads - may mean one juggles many sources or just scrap that and go with Airpush Smartwall type - and let them show whatever mix of passive ad or require-a-click type ad …

I’ve incorporated AppBrain’s offerwall at end of app.

For Airpush I was waiting for their Smartwall-only SDK - but no news on that from them (i.e. devoid of notification ads etc.).

Leadbolt seems to have separated out their non-notification SDK into a separate .jar - and so I was looking at them. But there is almost no source code available - maybe the thing is to incorporate their “HTML” version - does one launch an intent to a browser or Webview with the HTML etc. … (!?).

In any case, Leadbolt seems to be doing zero effort on developer tools - and seems all the effort is on ads (ads all over youtube etc.) promoting themselves vs. Airpush (which is also heavily advertising for developers). They assign an account manager etc. but very little explanation or running source code offered by Leadbolt - in the form of a compilable sample app etc.

I am still willing to try Greystripe - but have serious reservations about their fill rate (is Airpush Smartwall fill rate high - but it WILL be high if they show app wall also - but I agree it may free developer from thinking about adding ad-switching logic if Airpush does that for you and essentially promises a near-100% fill rate).

Also Greystripe responds after 2 days to every e-mail - so they are probably short of staff or something …

But it was the first ad I incorporated into my ad-display-when-idle logic - and so would be good if they work well, pay well, have a high fill rate … (!?)

You have any insight into millennial media interstitials - they seem to have a similar SDK - so I was considering adding them as a second source after Greystripe.

But if Airpush would release their non-notification SDK - then that maybe better as you suggest.

By the way, when using the Airpush SDK 5.0 as available now - will that be seen as a virus by antivirus scanners - or require an EULA etc. ?

Thanks.

Ok, it seems there was a problem with the older Greystripe SDK - the SDK Demo for that version is not working.

INVALID_APPLICATION_IDENTIFIER

But the newer SDK - GSSDK_Android_2.0.2.zip - now has the SDK Demo working.

After incorporating the .jar for this newer SDK I was able to get test ads (full screen interstitials) from Greystripe again in the app.

However, for the signed version of the app, these were STILL not appearing - and logcat did not show any error either except that it was still fetching an ad:

Currently fetching an ad. Cannot request another ad at this time.

This suggested a problem with proguard and after adding these lines to proguard-project.txt (the new eclipse way of doing proguard.cfg):

-keep class com.greystripe.sdk.** { *; }

I had earlier wondered why Greystripe did not require these in proguard - however things seemed to work for signed apps without this earlier.

However with the newer eclipse (as I had switched to the newer eclipse) they have changed the proguard.cfg to this format - this could be an additional source of complication.

In any case, one now seems to need these lines in proguard for the Greystripe full screen interstitial ads to appear in the signed version of the app.

In any case, I would advise anyone using Greystripe in a published app to check out how it’s doing and if needed to push out an update using the info above.

tl:dr