Leadbolt

So I removed Leadbolt from my game. I was using their overlay ad as an interstitial after completing a game. But, I never earned anything and from the day I installed it I started hemorrhaging users. I had my concerns about their numbers too. At one point I had 8X the number of active users running a version with the video overlay than the 4 image ads. Yet the I always got more impressions from the image ads than the video overlay. Seemed suspicious, but in the end it came down to “was it working for me”. And it was not. Whenever I emailed them they seemed more keen on getting me to run notification ads instead, than actually addressing my concerns. Anyway, just my experience.

it looks like the “good old days” of leadbolt are gone… was fun back then…

Did you try using the interstial at the start of the game instead? I remember such a discussion on a different thread…

Sorry to hear it didn’t end up working for you. But definitely, go with whatever works best for your individual app. For a game like yours, I don’t think notification ads would be a great fit - too much out of context. Better off sticking with in-app advertising IMHO.

My reason for removing it wasn’t the low impressions, but that the moment I added it I started losing users. So putting it at the start wouldn’t have helped there. Perhaps if I can get a few thousand more active users ill put it back. But right now I’m not popular enough to make my game more annoying for the players.

You did the right decision, i suppose.

I always create empathy with my users. Would you like to see an interstitial ad which is irritating you when you are at the most important part of a game or reading something ?

Typical pay-per-click based banners are always great(thats my opinion)

Even 100 users click it accidently, it may bring you 5-10 dollars based on their geo-location.

It could be 150 ~ 300 dollars in a month, which is great for the beginning i guess.

I’m averaging 10 cents a day. :slight_smile: I only have about 500 active users. Admob ecpm sucks

Interstitials are very offensive in my opinion.

I think notification ads and icon ads are way better and give more money. They can also be ignored by the users if they don’t like them. I don’t know how come some people complain about them, but I use them a lot and only get an occasional 1 star rating, nothing to worry about in a mostly 5-stars application.

In my opinion a lot of people just like to jump on the band wagon so they can complain about ads. I always say that no form of advertisement will be received warm heartedly or welcomed by the users. Users do not like ads.

At the same time, if the app is free, then that is how the developer makes money. Long story short, the developer should have every right to add whatever ad unit they deem fit.

I’d suggest the developer make a mention of what ad units to expect in the app description so the user fully understands and expects what he/she is going to get. I do think there could be a small factor of this surprise ad unit in their notification section which they can’t track immediately that really gets users ticked off.

One reason could be that notification and icon adverts are giving the Android a bad reputation.
Read this article for example;

Do you really want those kind of articles about the Android OS?

Here’s a thread about it on the forum too:

Some very good arguments in that thread.

Now interstitials are OK because they’re in the application while with notification and icon ads you’re showing them outside of the application. You understand the difference?

But to be honest, this discussion is pretty pointless as you are sure that notification and icon ads are all good and next to nothing can change your mind while I think notification and icon ads are bad and nothing can probably change my mind.
Pretty much like an atheist vs. religious discussion, in the end it’s just pointless as the arguments just go round in circles and no one can really ‘win’.

Hi guys,
I think every kind of advertise could be a problem. The user don’t want anything else than the game/app for free.
The problem is that implements something completelly for free doesn’t really works in the long term.
Even open source projects always ask for a donation to support the project.
The discussion here is just how much can the advertise disturb the users and maybe prevent them from installing the game/app.

This is just my personal opinion but here my rate from 1 (not disturbing) to 10 (disturbing alot) about advertise types:

  1. Classic banner => Normally 1 but if the developer cheat putting it near to where the user can accidentally click can be 8.
  2. Interstitial => 3 is the are placed properly and at the right time. If not could be 8.
  3. Notification ads and icon ads => 10 I don’t know why Google give the possibility to do that to developers. What the difference between these ads and a trojan that change my default home page or open up automatically alot of web pages when I’m surfing?

Cheers,
Gabriele

If you wrote that you will exploit user private property, in this case a phone, that still does not give you a right to do that. Yes, in this case you can do that because Google allow it but be prepared for a lot bad reviews. Even if user agree with some of these spam permissions its questionable, is user really know what he/she sign up if we know that even developers often do not know what some permissions do?
I am very interested for these in-app audio ads how they perform on overall user experience?

I beg to disagree. If you read the description of my app and it clearly states that if you download it you’ll get a daily notification ad, it’s up to you to decide to install it or not.

And to the other guy who replied before you: notification ads have nothing to do with trojans. Would you think of TV advertisements as spam or spyware ? Come on!

The thing is we, as developers, deserve the right to get paid for our work, and if an user thinks it is ok to receive a daily notification ad instead of having an app full of banners, it’s not up to you to decide if notifications ads should be banned. Also, I’m pretty sure they will never be banned.

Best regards.

Hi Androider,
I can understand you point but I disagree.
Anyway just for fun I was imagine my TV switch on automatically every day to give me my daily dose of advertise :smiley:

Gabriele

Really?
You see no difference between TV advertisements and notification ads?
Please don’t make yourself look stupid…

If you want to compare android advertisements with TV adverts (which you can’t really do as they are two different things) then an interstitial fullscreen advertisement would be a better comparison. Let’s say channels = apps. Now fullscreen ads would be like the normal commercial breaks we see on TV today. With notification advertisements however it would be more like megasoft wrote; the TV switches on every day to tell you about a new amazing product. Or maybe it will give you a whole new channel to watch without you even asking them for it! How nice of them, right? :dodgy:

The only thing I consider wrong about notification ads as a user is not knowing that an app will bring those ads and (worse) not knowing which app is responsible for that. If the app is good enough, I think it is worthy keep receiving ads. And notification ads doesn’t bother at all… no vibration and no sound… Just a little star near to my battery indicator that I can simply ignore (or just click the clear button). My phone operator bothers me a lot more sending me ads by SMS every single day… and my SMS configurations are not discrete, as I receive other SMS that I must be aware at the time they arrive.

Google knows that MOST of Android users don’t pay for apps… Why is angry birds free on Android and paid on iphone? If in-app banners were my only revenue I would be an iphone developer a zillion years ago without any doubts.

The problem with notification ads for me (as a user) is that I don’t know what app does them and I can’t stop them - it should be fixed soon with new Google policy on them, am I right?
PS. I just noticed that I posted almost the same concernes as vitoralm - seems those problems are common. :smiley:

You can’t directly stop them at the Android OS level until version 4.1 (Jelly Bean), but you can opt out on both Leadbolt and Airpush.

With the new Google Policy it is mandatory to let the user know which application is sending you a notification ad. Is this the end of notification ads ? I don’t think so, because most people don’t care about receiving a single daily notification ad if they can get a good app in exchange.

And although Jelly Bean will let the user block the notification, the programmer will know that the notification has been blocked, which means the app can be disabled and a dialog shown to the user until he/she allows the notifications again. Fair game, that’s all.

There will be another indirect consequence of the new policy. Maybe as Androider said some users will tolerate the daily ads for free game/app. But many people have some apps installed and are not using it at all or using rarely. Now seeing them pollute their phones daily they will uninstall immediately. It can be as much as 3/4 of active users. And ratio of active users/all installs is a known factor to determine app’s ranking in Google Play. Sudden drop in active installs = sudden drop in ranking = sudden drop in revenue. I wouldn’t say notification ads are dead but I certainly think notification ads from inactive apps/games are going to go away pretty soon.

Hello Max,

Yes, that’s definately a possibility. But for apps like wallpapers (which are running all the time), notification ads are still a good option. In fact, I only use notification ads in wallpapers.