Battery munching ads

Thought this was interesting:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/free-android-apps-waste-75-per-cent-of-power-on-adverts-50007371/

I agree that ads eating batteries is a problem, but advocating turning off connections then introduces a whole new one - suddenly the desire to put out ad-supported work drops. It’s a problem I’ve given a bit of thought to, especially when you see people commenting on forums about always blocking their connection to avoid ads. This generally comes with a statement from the user where they think the ads are unwelcome and imposing on their pleasure, missing the point that this is quite often the means to support further development.

So how does everyone approach this normally? Only offer cut-down features for free versions? Implement static house-ads for the case where there is no connection? Send an army of flying monkeys out to track users and make sure they have a network connection?

I am indeed thinking about showing “house ads” when connection is gone and will introduce that in the future.

Maybe there comes a marketplace for offline-ads or there is already one? Would love to hear from it. Would only be possible with a fixed rate, so maybe it’s better to sell these ad-spaces for your own (like others do on their website)

The other thing you can do is offering online features in your game - so people get an extra when they stay online.

I know some people who turn off internet wehen playing games because of the battery - it is not the ads which uses battery it’s the wifi.

Maybe you can cut off game features when no ad gets displayed. That’s very simple to accomplish. You could also check the network state for your own because the needed permission for that is already used by admob for example

btw.: I would love if admob would support offline house ads in their sdk … it is quite hard to re-invent the whell

I placed “Purchase full version to remove ads” message in the area where ad banner should be displayed.
So when ads are not available for any reason (no connection or user installed some ad blocker) - this message is visible.

Doptrix: can you share us the code?

It’s very simple, everything is done in XML.
I place both TextView (“Purchase full version…”) and AdView inside a FrameLayout and set their gravity to “top|center_horizontal”.
So both views are in the same area of the screen. When ads are available, banner is shown over the TextView and TextView is not visible to user (it is simply blocked by the banner). When ads are not available, AdView has no content and user can see the TextView.