I feel sorry for you guys who got their apps banned. That’s awful especially if you had the ads in good faith. One thing I don’t understand, why is Google so harsh on this given this is a recent change to their policy? Banning with almost chance to win an appeal. shouldn’t they mybe suspend temporarily and maybe give warning before full ban.
I guess they want to set example so every one use banners
I moved to use startapp, appnext and admob.
Luckily I didn’t put pingjam as i was sooo close to add it
Problem is that they don’t want to expand their admob sdk with any other ads and they’re not going to tolerate anything else than what they have… I really don’t like how they’re doing business lately
Wow, I was close to adding pingjam as well. Glad I dragged my feet.
We should start a thread speculating which networks might get the banhammer next so there’s time to get rid of them in advance.
Actually, it would be interesting to see which networks people would put in the “Safest” category or “Borderline” categories. Obviously AdMob would be in the safest. I’ve tried (and run from) several questionable ad networks.
You know us developers should somehow protest this. One of the people who got their apps should create a Facebook event and invite as many developers as possible to it. Then on a a specific day, all of us unpublish all of our apps for 24 hrs and then publish them back. That for sure will get Google attention to our dissatisfaction.
Although I have not got banned or anything but I will be willing to participate to support you fellow developers who got impacted.
guys, did you even read the yuriy thread ?, even in app ads got banned yesterday, from using smato, mobilecore, millenial media , this worrying, nothing is safe except admob, but i’m afraid even admob user might fall into this scary algorithm, cross finger
Google want to control all monetisation through the Android platform, which is understandable as they created it and they are giant corporation.
IAP HAS to go through Google’s system.
App Purchases HAVE to be made using Google’s system.
And at this point in time Google would love for everyone to only use Admob ads, or they might start banning developers randomly.
I personally don’t have a problem with Google insisting about App Purchases and IAP as it does make sense for things to run through them for a number of reasons.
Limiting developers to a finite few ad types and arguably a single network is just not realistic. I think they understand that to a degree as they haven’t outright banned all out-of-app ads etc.
I can’t see them pulling the leash right in and really pushing devs to exclusively use Admob, but I don’t think they’re ever going to let devs off lightly for opting for newer, more intrusive ad types. There’s always going to be a risk of banning and that’s why they wrote the new Policy the way they did.
I’m writing to explain what we are doing to investigate this situation.
First I’d like to assure you that the Pingjam SDK hasn’t behaved in any way that violates the policy. No changes have been made to the device without the user’s consent, and banned ad methods (icons, notifications etc) weren’t used by us in any case.
Our primary concern is that developers aren’t hurt, so although we are certain that our system is compliant, we’ve disabled the Caller ID service until further notice. As of yesterday none of our apps display caller ID or ads.
We are working tirelessly to reach out to Google developer relations to investigate the apps removal, but since this is the weekend our ability to create a meaningful conversation is limited. I assure you that if indeed we verify that Pingjam was the reason for this we will let you know. Our goal is to help fix the situation so that apps are restored with their install base and ratings.
In the meantime, as a precaution, I’d like to suggest to those of you that haven’t lost apps that you remove our SDK from your apps and republish.
Those of you that have lost apps - we are working very hard to try to understand and resolve this with you. Let’s share what we learn so that we can help the community get their apps back. Please share what you are doing in regards to communicating with Google. Hopefully we can identify a best practice that helps us all.
I removed PingJam SDK just a week ago (lucky call). However, I am worried that if PingJam was viewed by Google as incompliant, then so is StartApp and AppContext (which I am still using). Both SDKs push the new policy to the limit just the same way PingJam did. StartApp post-call dialog is no different than PingJam’s and AppContext asks users to pay outside Google’s IAP. You can argue that technically they are within the T&C, but so was PingJam.
I am now removing all ad SDKs. Not taking any chances. Will wait until the dust settles and see how it goes. Please share your experience and opinion. Specially if you were able to talk to Google dev relations.
I am using startapp interstitial only. That should be alright I guess.
Honestly have limited my self to interstitial and banners only after all these threads
StartApp’s PostCall Manager does look a lot like PingJam’s noncompliant Caller ID stuff. If Google ends up banning StartApp’s PostCall ad, it would be interesting to see what would happen to an app that only uses StartApp’s banner or interstitial ads and not their PostCall stuff.
That is, does Google do the ban broadly based on simply having an offending SDK in the manifest or is there a deeper check involved to check to see if the offending ad type is being used.(which is trickier to implement)
I just got over 150 apps suspended. The only network used was TapContext. However, just a week ago, I removed PingJam. The apps got suspended just about the same time I was unpublishing them after I posted my previous message. The account did not get terminated yet, but I my hopes are not up
Elnor, you are giving mixed signals to the developers affected. You are still “leaving” some doors open for PingJam. You don’t need to identify IF PingJam was the reason since only apps that have PingJam on our network were suspended, as for most developers writing here. There is no any other explanation so you do not need to waste resources on finding out IF, but rather WHY.
Actually at this point we are not concerned about the WHY, as we do not really care about the WHY, this is an issue you have to sort out. What we really care about is for the apps to get back online with the same stats and downloads so that we can remove the SDK until you have figured out the “WHY” bit.
But since you are asking for us to share with you how we are communicating with Google, we are beginning to loose hope in your ability to handle the situation properly. If you indeed have direct contacts to Google’s Android Team responsible, then there shouldn’t be a need for us to share our experience with you. The best situation is, once again, if we are allowed to remove the SDK from the suspended apps and resubmit. We have the APKs waiting to be resubmitted without your SDK.
