Stats discrepancy

Anyone notice a discrepancy between stats provided by ad companies and Play? I use Leadbolt, Airpush and Senddroid. All the ad companies report numbers of impressions delivered daily. But the number doesn’t exactly coincide with the number of active installs Play reports.

Why do you think?

Discuss. :smiley:

I assume you’re saying, as an example, that if you have an app which has 1000 active installs (and this seems to remain relatively constant) and you’ve set Airpush to 2 Pushes per day that you would expect to have 2000 ad requests. But, when you check your stats, it’s no where near 2000 ad requests for the day. There might be, 60-70% of that if you’re lucky…am I right? They’ll tell you that these people have opted out, but there is no way that there is a, on average, 30% opt out rate.

I think they do this so they can say that their fill rate is 90%+ or whatever they’re claiming at the current moment. I’ve noticed that once I got a certain number of installs at Airpush I hit a wall…even if I double my daily installs for days on end I still seem to only push the same number of pushes a day (+/- 5%). It’s like they’ve capped me, and I would assume they have “capped” some other publishers too. My revenue no longer grows on a daily basis like it used to when I was a new publisher…they got me “hooked” and now I’m stuck where they want me.

I can’t speak for Leadbolt/SendDroid, but this is what I have experienced at Airpush. It’s some bullshit.

Some people (on phones at least, not on tablets I think) turn off internet when playing games or rather have it turned off all the time and turn it on only when needed.

Definately. There was a time I was getting around 2000 new installs every day for a single app and the Leadbolt pushes only grew 5-10% of that amount. Some of my apps have an active user base of more than 25000 users but I only get around 2000-2500 pushes daily.

Also, they don’t cap some selected developers, basically those who have a forum/web page with a lot of visits. This way they get free promotion of their network because the selected developers are happy with them and spread the word.

I’m really thinking about stop using notification networks and try my own custom notifications which link to appbrain appwalls or something like that.

Yep, that’s the behaviour I’m noticing. It certainly seems that there is some sort of cap. Some transparency would be nice.

Why would they cap it though? They make money when you make money. Unless they just don’t have the inventory?

They cap it because their ad inventory (the number of people buying pushes/installs AKA the demand) cannot meet the available inventory (apps available to push AKA the supply). However, they still want to be able to show you good CPMs and fill rates…this is the only reason I can think of as to why they cap like they do. I suppose it gives everyone a little piece of the pie, but it also keeps a lot of developers from earning their full potential.

Yea, well then the fill rates should be calculated against the total active installs. For me it works out around 10-15%.
So when there’s no ad inventory, do people receive blank notifications or just nothing?

When there is no inventory (not enough people buying pushes) then the app will make a call back home to Airpush and say “Hey, do you have an ad for me?” (ad request) and the server will return with a “Hell naw” and therefore the potential impression (chance to serve an ad) is missed. This means low fill rate, the ad request could not be filles. However…there is something going on deeper here than a low fill rate…I think they they “cap” the number of ad REQUESTS that your apps get…meaning the apps are being told by the server to NOT ask for an ad or the reporting in the dashboard is not SHOWING the request. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense, but that is represented by the number of ads requested and impressions made on the dashboard. So I guess that means around 85% of active installs (assuming only 15% active user penetration) never request ads. As long as ads are delivered only to the devices that request them, it’s fine. It makes sense that ad networks fragment their inventory across all their devs and their apps, with probably some sort of cap in place. This way everyone gets a piece of the pie, and the ad network can boast a large number of devs. The sad bottom line is that the fill rates advertised, while true from one perspective, are grossly misleading the developers who think that their entire user bases will be serviced. Dirty tactic.

Anyway, anyone know if there’s a service to ACTUALLY ensure 100% fill rates for push ads?

PS. I’m sure the cap fluctuates based on how many conversions you are scoring for the company. Surely they get something for converting, no?