Google yesterday released an update to the Google Play Developer Program Policies. In particular, Google have stated that any advertising that is bundled together with an app will be considered part of the app for purposes of content review and compliance with the Developer Terms.
With this in mind, LeadBolt have completed a review of all LeadBolt systems and ad-serving capabilities to ensure that they are fully compliant and meet Google’s requirements. We believe we already meet most of the policy requirements and are working on improvements to ensure maximum compliance. Changes, where required, will be made on our backend so that complying with these policies will be as seamless as possible. We may however, request a small amount of additional information from certain publishers. If you fall into this category, we will communicate with you shortly to obtain this information.
We will also be releasing an updated SDK in the next week which will cover remaining requirements along with enhanced user features to ensure we continue to lead the industry in best practice advertising standards.
We are excited about this upcoming release which will contain additional functionality that is sure to provide and delivery even more leading edge features that you have come to expect from Leadbolt.
As always, we are hear to help. If you have any questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
My conclusion from messages of Airpush and Leadbolt is that definitely it is not the end of notification ads.
Anyway… ALL the user forums I saw yesterday were celebrating the “death of the little star in the notification bar”.
I think that in a few months, with the new Android version, people will take more control of notification bar and most of them will disable the ads. Comparing to the web, today we rarely see popups…
Greedy? Not at all… I remember on one of their I/O sessions when they were saying they’re putting a fee of sth around 5% on an in-app purchases:) Still, it’s their playground so we have to play by their rules, period.
Here’s my rant. I know negativism doesn’t help, but this is the end for me. I finally had a tangible horizon to earn a living programming for Android… and now this.
Even if LB/AP release SDKs that follow Google directives, in Jelly Bean people can easily prevent your app from sending notifications. IMO, notifications worked becouse Android people is cheap. So cheap they are that they don’t want to make the effort of reading the descriptions of apps or perfoming the opting out.
I’m frankly tired of this Android people who spend 600 bucks in a SGSII and 20 bucks every weekend to go to watch the newest hollywood shit (1h.20mins) and don’t want to pay 50 cents for a game that keeps them entertained for 10h-20h or even days. 50 cents that they’d throw out of their pockets to not carry the weight, but aren’t willing to give you.
Now, you have to accept their point of view even if you don’t understand it. They value your work at a much cheaper price than you do. It’s a fact. Google has got them used to get 90% of what they’d ever want at an apparent zero cost.
That’s why I’ve decided to quit Android and move on. Now my question is, where is the people that would value that extra 10%? Do they even exist? W8 look promising, but no one knows how that’ll work. I discard Apple because I’m tired of their schizophrenic policy regarding everything they control and their constant change of rules in the middle of the game. Now Google seems to have realized that people are sheep and wants to imitate Apple. Is there any hope for an independent programmer?
There’s some truth in what you’ve just said. Still I wouldn’t compare those two things - hollywood movies (shits) and independently developed games or an applications for Android platform. If you want to compare those two compare independently created movies with independently created games (low budget in both cases), or hollywood productions with Glu, Rovio etc products (with gozillions $$$) Take a look at titles such as Where’s my water, Cut the Rope and you’ll see that people tend to spend some amount of money on Android too.
Notification ads are fine with these license, we already see that only change is opt-out feature and one new line that shows which app generated add and its fair to show a user that info.
Real hit are getting developers who used tapjoy (and similar networks) because now they can not lock content anymore, except IAP, and if there is no IAP for their country then they have a problem.
Its unclear can you lock power-ups because they are optional?
even admob does not give you many options for filtering “unappropriate” ads … sure, ads “not for children” can be disabled by category … all other categories does not have any type of “rating” - so how should the developer care for content rating in the ads delivered?
Lokk at “Dating Ads” … what is their content rating for example - I have no real ideal about it. So, it may be not that much important, as long as there is no porn displayed in a childrens app or doing house-ads about your new strip poker game xD
You are looking negative at it. You’ll have to understand, that when you want to make a living fo development, you will develop all the time, no matter what you code and where you distribute. The big studios have multiple developers hired, which do coding all the time, marketers who spread the app and a huge userbase they can rely on - an indy dev just do not have that power.
Also do not underestimate the physilogical aspect behind throwing away a coin which feels useless and making a transaction of 50 ct on the bank account which is not useless - there is a huge difference in those two actions.
Yes, with all the new rules out there, we developers are really left out without much control. Let’s hope google is a little understanding on the ads delivered part.
I’ve previously read somewhere that sometimes ads get through which are not proper, and the ad networks can’t filter all of the ads.
Here’s my interpretation of the new Google policy –
No app walls for unlocking content or earning virtual currency. (Sorry, Tapjoy!) LeadBolt app wall seems ok. You must Google’s payment methods to enable app features. This is the one that is going to hurt me the most as I have done pretty well with Tapjoy.
Devs are responsible for ad content. Seems like unless an ad network makes a promise, you are crazy to use their content because Google will cancel your app and maybe your account. Clearly this is Google’s way of making you use AdMob. I think that for the next few months, I am simply not going to display ad banners. I don’t trust Google not to kill my apps if I use any network other than AdMob, and I won’t use AdMob as they don’t pay well enough to use up the screen space.
Push notification ads, app icons, etc. Seems like with some implementation changes, these are ok. Although a lot of users are going to prevent them from working, so these are going to be a lot less effective. I don’t use these so not an impact for me.
Don’t load your app descriptions with keywords, other app names, etc. No change here. Also don’t rate your apps, etc. Again, no change here.
Overall I am very pessimistic about how things are going to work out for us as we head into the holiday season. Google gives away a lot of free apps and content, and Android users are used to that. Now they are making it even harder for us to monetize our free apps. I don’t think users are going to start buying more apps or more in-app content right away. Maybe users will start to realize they have to start paying for apps and content. I hope so!
I don’t think it’s as gloom as you see it. If Google wanted to get rid of every adMob competition then it would just say that only Google ad services are allowed (like they did for in-app purchases). The current policies just make stricter rules on app developers that would result in stricter rules on ad providers.
About TapJoy and similar solutions - we’ll have to wait and see. I think earning virtual currency through TapJoy is still OK as long as you don’t try to lock users out of some parts of the game if they don’t use it. If there’s a way to accomplish the same (but harder) then it’s fine. If unlocking level X REQUIRES it then you should be careful.
It’s disturbing times for ad companies no doubt - many users will hold on and wait how things turn out. Everyone will be watching carefully news about apps being put down for violations of the new rules.
You may want to try Airpush-
Just spoke to my AM from Airpush and they are 100% in compliance with Google’s new policies as well as launching their new SDK 5.0 next week that apparently has new ad units. I am excited to see how effective they are. I am satisfied with Airpush’s results and my revs are def. higher than when I was with Leadbolt.
I can now have peace of mind that we are now in compliance and wont get banned.
I recently got this update from LeadBolt. In a nutshell, they have made some changes to the backend (with the same old SDK still), so LeadBolt is now compliant with the new policies.
Title: Important Updates Regarding the Google Play Developer Program Policies
Hi David,
As we communicated to you in our newsletter last week, Google has recently released an update to the Google Play Developer Program Policies regarding advertising. LeadBolt are pleased to announce that with the release of the small number of back-end updates necessitated by this policy update, our platform is now compliant with Google Play’s new policies regarding advertising and meets Google’s requirements for this update.
Please continue reading for detail on the changes we have made, and the changes you may be required to make in order to ensure your apps are compliant with the new policies.
The changes we have made include:
Close button – this will appear on all SDK ads (previously a selectable option)
Your application’s name is now included in App notification and App Icon ad types, alongside the existing opt out information previously included but now required.
Actions you may be required to make:
Application name - to ensure that advertising can be associated with your app as Google require, please log into your account, go to the applications tab and edit each of your applications, ensuring that the correct application name appears in the specified ‘Display Name’ field
Full screen SDK banner ads - as we will no longer be supporting this template for new ad slots, if you are using this template you will need to select either the Full Screen SDK Splash Screen App Overlay which has the close button or a different SDK banner size.
Full screen HTML banner ads – as a static HTML type we do not support a close option by default. If you are using this ad type as an interstitial, you will need to ensure that a CLOSE button is in place to enable users to dismiss ads easily and without penalty.
Additionally, we will also release an updated SDK very shortly containing many special features including enhanced ad usability options, ad serving optimizations and much more. We are very excited about the range of new options this SDK will deliver to our publishers and continue our goal of delivering the highest performing and greatest range of ad type options to our publishers. This will be featured in your account portal when it is released.
If you have any concerns about Google’s new policy or have any questions about your account, please do not hesitate to contact your account manager and they will assist you.
Regards,
The LeadBolt Team
So looks like LeadBolt will be ok with the new policy from now on.
I think airpush notification ads are compliant as they show opt-out and the app name.
However icon ads are not compliant. I started to disable that for my apps and change to another ad network which is compliant.
I think having the name of the application on the ad icon will be good for us, because the user won’t see the icon as a unknown app (maybe a threat). I guess this will give us a better revenue. What do you think ?
i’m also worried, airpush stated the SDK would be released within “a few days” then they said “within 2 weeks” and 2 weeks after that, they are saying “within 2 weeks” still.
i am half expecting google to suspend my applications/account at this point.