Admob Account suspended for no apparent reason

Nealo, some things to consider:

  1. What if you sign up with another ad company and make another 24k, but are not paid because they accuse you of doing the same thing you did with admob? This is why you must know why you were banned.

  2. Why did admob wait till the account reached 24k? They could have very well banned you at $500 and you could have gone elsewhere to earn a living a long time ago. The fact that it reached so high is fishy.

  3. You and admob entered into a contract where you agreed to send them clicks and they agreed pay you for them so long as you abide by their TOS. If you did abide, then you fulfilled your terms and they must pay you what they owe and you have a very good case against them.

i think i am going to look into what it would take to start an association for android app developers. Could be very useful for situations like these if there is a group that has thousands of members putting pressure on google.

edit: looks like i am late to the party. there is one.

Mobile app developers to get their own professional organization | Application Development - InfoWorld

http://appdevelopersalliance.org/

  1. What if you sign up with another ad company and make another 24k, but are not paid because they accuse you of doing the same thing you did with admob? This is why you must know why you were banned.

I didn’t do anything, I hadn’t changed anything with my ads for months. I’m pretty sure some random people just spam clicked my ads or something of the sort.

  1. Why did admob wait till the account reached 24k? They could have very well banned you at $500 and you could have gone elsewhere to earn a living a long time ago. The fact that it reached so high is fishy.

I agree, it’s very fishy and complete garbage.

  1. You and admob entered into a contract where you agreed to send them clicks and they agreed pay you for them so long as you abide by their TOS. If you did abide, then you fulfilled your terms and they must pay you what they owe and you have a very good case against them.

When/if I get a response from google I’ll know what to do, i’ll give them a week to get back before I get an attorney. Thanks for your help.

Thanks a lot I’ll check it out right away!

Actually, this is not possible. All ad agencies have the ability to ignore multiple clicks by the same ip so that would be meaningless to them. Plus, that’s beyond your control and not your fault.

Hopefully this has been a big misunderstanding and your account will be reinstated.

Hi Nealo

I got same situation here, my admob account was disabled yesterday without any notification email.
Admob have serving ads for my android games for about a year without any problem , my friend who use Admob also got the same problem yesterday.
So I think maybe something is not right here

btw do you already try to contact Admob staff to resolve this problem ?
since we can’t use the appeal form because they don’t send us notification email that contains an ID needed in the appeal form

hope this we got the best solutions here

Really? :open_mouth: Well that’s “good” news I suppose. I’m sorry for your loss otherwise, I guess we’re in the same boat. Haven’t heard anyone else getting banned but one can always hope.

Yeh I’ve sent an appeal, but like you I couldn’t get the ID they require. However I used an ID that one of my apps used to request ads :S

yes I think there still many other people got banned yesterday without any notification email,
I’ve try send an email to [email protected] but i don’t think they will read it I just try :smiley:
I’ll try to send an appeal using one of my apps used to request too , I’ll update if I got any answer

I’ll do the same :slight_smile: Also going to send an email to that support adress, doubt it’ll get read though xD

Edit: I also tweeted and wrote a message to their facebook page (Google Mobile Ads)

Admob just doesn’t ban accounts simply. Everytime I saw a message in forums about someone getting banned from admob there was a reason.
Since you and your friend both got banned, prolly there is something you both are doing that are out of ordinary/allowed ?

Those are great words, but words spoken without communication to developer (i.e. Google considers the developers are beneath a reply) are the issue here.

Simply communicating to the developer would be good - and it’s not like what the developer is saying is out of the ordinary - we ALL know that admob and google are unapproachable (at least they are less approachable than many of the ad networks - so WHY is that ? Why can’t Google outsource the support to developers to a third party - if their on-the-payroll employees find it too beneath them to deal with developers ?).

I would LOVE to know the reason behind the suspension of my AdMob account. All apps I’ve created have content I’ve created on my own, there are only well developed apps with intuitive interfaces and non-intrusive ads (only used admob’s ads, and in many games I hide the ads during gameplay). And to make matters even worse, I haven’t done anything affecting the ads for about a month. And the only apps I suspect MIGHT have any ads close to buttons are my very very first apps and they’ve been on the market > 1 year. I always thought like yourself: “there’s always a reason”. But sometimes I think the bot that find and terminates accounts makes mistakes. After all it was programmed by humans, and humans are not perfect. I won’t give up until I’ve got a decent response from google, I’ll even phone their headquarters if I have to. This is just pathetic…

Basically Google business model is based on the entrepreneurial environment of Palo Alto (silicon valley) i.e. make something attractive - there will be players willing to take a risk.

Such is their treatment of the Google Play market as well - i.e. the developers are all types - corrupt and non-corrupt - they don’t want to promise anything ahead of time, but leave it up to the hype of huge profits to drive developer interest in the market (and well, mobile IS a huge and growing market).

On top of that - because they don’t want to spend the resources to police the market (and somewhat also mixed it up with open source etc. etc.) - they feel they want to keep it hands-off (AND cut down on human involvement - which is where the high margins will be).

But this all works as long as there is no penalty for randomly kicking off developers, taking their money because some algorithm decided to kick them off.

Google is relying on a system where developers will “learn” to adjust - or the learning will be both ways i.e. developers as well as their banning algorithms etc.

However, this completely ignores the developer effort required to make even a small app - this is because while it can be low-grade - in order to NOT be badmouthed by users, the developer has to put in some effort to avoid some of the issues (on top of this developer is burdened with device fragmentation which google COULD tackle by creating databases of issues - but they haven’t).

So in effect Google wants their play store to be populated with apps - to provide an ecosystem - but they are unwilling to support it.

If it was hands-off that would be one thing - but that is not so either - as Google wants to impose restrictions on payment processing solutions etc. - and makes a faux-effort to suggest they are looking out for the “user experience”.

Would that not be served by resolving some of the issues related to the developers ?

So to summarize, Google assumes developers have more to gain by participating in market than not - and so they will bend over backwards to do so (notice developers here talk about the possibility of leaving money at the table because they have been banned !). In which other business model would this happen (sure some maybe were violating rules and so they don’t bother pursuing the issue perhaps).

However, the “gratitude” that developers are expected to demonstrate is not sufficient reason for Google to violate normal business practice when dealing with developers.

What is happening is that basically Google HAS become a monopoly - they have helped create the market for sure - but now that the market has appeared, Google is one of very few players in control of the market (and in a position to set market rules and be in a position of arbitrator as well over which developer gets to participate in this market or not). And developers are expected to smile through the whole thing.

This itself is an early indicator that there is a monopolistic environment developing - where Google can act this way, and developers are in such a position that they even consider shutting up about the issue (not having any way to contact admob/Google of course doesn’t help either).

There may even be some business practice requirement - that if a deal is being made between Google and developer (terms of service or whatever) - there HAS to be a place where the other party should be reachable - and what type of “reachable” is reasonable. That is, is one supposed to visit Google headquarters to demand “satisfaction” or can there be/should there be more convenient ways ?

If the deal between Google and developer is one way - where Google can revoke at any time - and developer can leave the market any time - there needs to be some way to deal with the money that in the balance.

What would happen if a court rules that Google is incapable of policing the distribution of ad revenue from admob to developers ? Because they are not willing to devote the manpower to that issue (sure that is to reduce costs and understandable - but should the cost of that be the abject acceptance of any and all misdemeanors by the Google algorithms as “fate” by developers ?).
EDIT: What if a court was to rule that Google is not a reliable holder of the developer’s money - and that it should be kept in escrow lest the developer be unable to get response from Google ?

Why does this business relationship involve “randomness” - the brunt of which falls on the developer ? After all the agreement has not included the possibility of “random” decisions on the part of Google (when their algorithms fail) ?

Why don’t you post reference to your developer account so that it will be clear whether your account is banned for no reason or not by admob?

Sure thing, there are some links to all my apps at the first page as well in this thread, also in the post that started this thread. Here you go: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Nealo+Inc.

And just to make things clear, the graphics in my very first apps aren’t super duper top notch because well, I make all my graphics and programming myself and I’ve learned everything myself along these 1½ years.

If you can find any plausable reason I’d love to hear it so that I can avoid this in the future. And also as I’ve mentioned in my very first post it’s not entirely impossible that one of my very first apps does have an ad close to a button, but if so it’s been around for ~1.5 years, not that it’s an excuse but I would have loved to get a warning or something so I could have fixed it. I’ve always had good contact with my users and am very interested in creating games that are worthwhile (not happy with all my apps though, I should remove some of them)

You’ve forgotten the dot again at the end of the link. :slight_smile:

godamnit, the link always breaks itself :smiley:

edited the link.

Nealo,

Looking at your apps, to me it appears there is no reason to ban your account (at least not without warning). I suggest you do a proper blog post and raise your concerns through better channels (reddit /r/Android and Hacker news - news.ycombinator.com) to get attention.
You seem to be a good developer with good creativity than most of the scum (Spammers) I have seen in this forum.

There seems to be no way to cancel likes… Just to clarify: I like only the first part of billyh post. :wink:

I can’t speak for what kind of apps other developers on this forums produce, but at least I know magnesus is also a genuine app developer :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t have gotten mad if I had only made fart apps etc, but I have worked very hard for 1½ years creating apps, and I’m getting better and quicker at it every day so I’m not really super sad or anything. I’ve still learned a lot from this journey and will continue to develop good apps. It’s just very unfortunate that this has happened and I thank you for appreciating that I’m not one of those who just “spam junk apps”, believe me I’ve seen a lot of them as well. I reckon I have good chances with my appeal and if not I will keep trying to get a hold of someone that works at google.

From here on out though I’ll never trust only one ad-network, I’ll spread my risks and make sure I never get into this position again.

I’ll keep you guys informed about my progress with the appeal and any further contact with google. In case my appeal is denied I’ll do as you said and try to get attention through other channels.