Out of all out-of-app units currently available, Mobario is easily the most intrusive. After their spammy introduction to the forum and the nature of their SDK (coupled with their instant move of blame to other networks) I feel strongly that if any network is in violation, it is them.
Regardless of who is to blame for this specific ban, how can anyone actually prove the cause?
I doubt many developers here are using just a single SDK in an app.
The only way to prove Google is banning for a specific Ad Network/Ad Network’s specific ad unit is if a developer can provide a link to a cached page of their app’s listing on Google Play which has been banned, where they were only using one Ad Network’s SDK. This would have to be supported with the violation and removal e-mail and maybe the app itself.
I highly doubt anyone could produce such a case…
The thing is, Google will ban whoever has a lot of complains. They won’t get an employee to play your game for hours to check if you app is compliant or not. They will just ban you if enough people complain.
So you could be breaking the rules for months, but if you dont get many complains, you will be fine. And also you could play by the rules and get a lot of complains, and Google would still ban you.
Given this, you could be banned for using ANY SDK, or even no SDK at all. It’s just that some SDKs, or the way some devs implement, are more intrusive, and then this will get more complains (or even a mass of complains due to being exposed on BadApps or something like it), increasing the chance of getting a ban.
I suspect this is the case as well. I’d assume the only step that even involves a Google rep is when the dev files for an appeal, everything leading up to that point is automated and depends entirely on % of reports from total users, the kind of low-human-involvement system that Google has always preferred.
I have decided to take ZERO chances since the policy change, because mobile development for Android is my main source of income these days and losing your account on GP is the kiss of death for app distribution. I made the decision early on to run ONLY pre-loaded admob interstitials (not on exit either) until we get this all figured out so there is no way that I should lose my apps. That being said, I have had AMAZING earnings results over the past month that total more than leadbolt, airpush and startapp combined like I was running before. I honestly believe now that Google knows when you run only their admob SDK, and they WILL reward you for it with a high RPM and I have the data to CLEARLY support the theory. On only one of my apps I added a “safe” network to share some interstitial traffic as a test, and my RPM magically fell through the floor THE NEXT DAY and stayed there. I’m getting < 0.50 ecpm from almost everybody else, and a $4 - $12 consistent average from admob over hundreds of thousands of impressions. Anybody else have any thoughts on this? It also may help that I’ve never been banned. I had one app suspended a year ago for using some old song from the 70’s as intro music that I didn’t think anybody cared about, but obviously they did…lol…On a side note, I don’t see how any dev that actually reads the new policy could possibly believe that a lock screen / home screen ad is compliant, no matter what the ad networks say. The simultaneous policy change and admob “re-vamping” was a carefully calculated power play by Google to clean up the market and bring devs over to admob at the same time. I just don’t think that people understand yet what Google is doing here…I’ll take something over nothing, any day of the week. Food for thought, guys…
Stunter I agree with you 1000% but I don’t believe anyone is safe unless you have only one or 2 apps like mind, if you have multiple apps or do anything outside the box (keywords or whatever) then you could get fucked at any moment, have a backup plan always. I am even nervous for mind with his boggle reference. All it takes is someone at legal with hasbro to decide he is using hasbro’s intellectual property to inflate downloads. What is google going to do of that happens? They will pull his app immediately. I have received two cease and desists, one was for a completely free (non-monetized) app and the other was for a keyword. The first cease a desist attorneys tried to essentially extort money and this was a clear cut fair use issue. You cant claim fair use when you monetize an app, be clear about this.
Those are very valid points, danixp. You just can’t be certain that you’re good to go right now. The policy change was a HUGE move and affects everyone from the small time copy/paste devs to multi-milion dollar established ad networks. The market is a sketchy ecosystem right now and until the dust settles there will be winners and losers on all sides. Now is the time to think about the long term and play the game as safely as possible instead of trying to get a quick flash in the pan, so to speak. It used to be the wild west on the android market, and you could basically get away with anything but those days are over for good. Google is catching a lot of heat over the health of the market compared to the apple itunes appstore, and this is their way of “fixing the glitch”. The smart devs that are willing to put in the hard work to release higher quality software will be rewarded when it’s all said and done here, and all of these app bans are also creating new opportunities for devs that are willing to abide by the rules if you think about it. It affects every niche.
Are you serious? Can´t believe such high values, i used admob briefly on the past but stop using them because of so many horror stories. And now it seems they don´t support paypal? By the way in what apps do you get these values? Games or Apps?
If you all believe that Google bans through an automated process, then how do they narrow down what part of the policy your app/game was in violation of.
They cannot and do no just notify you that they banned your app/game without giving you this information.
I do not believe that they base it on the selection the users make when they report the app/game as this cannot be directly translated into a specific part-policy violation.
I have spoken with the mods of the Bad Apps subreddit a few times and they confirmed to me that there are Google employees that do actually review reported apps. Now I’m not sure if they only review upon a certain criteria or whatever, but I cannot accept that the process is totally automated like many of you insist.
Well you got a point, but consider that sometimes they really specify the reason for the ban like the ban we read about TapContext where they linked the part of the policy, and most of times they just say “System Interference” without explaining what part of System Interference the user violated.
If you try to report an app from your phone you will see that some options don´t match the points explained on the Policy. For example if a user thinks the app is interfering with his phone because it is adding push ads, icon ads, widget on top of every app of the phone or other type of annoying ads, mostly likely the user will select “Harmful to device or data” and if a lot of users report using this option there you have your automated “System Interference” ban without specifying the reason
What about other type of bans like the TapContext? Here users could report the app using “Other Objection” and if Google gets a lot of this type of objections then a employee might step in.
Here’s just one example on an average day with a good amount of traffic. This is a game that’s top 100 in the “Top Free” category, but I have other apps that aren’t ranked at all and are performing even better but with less traffic. 100k+ rounds per day are played in this game with an interstitial shown every 5 rounds.There’s no reason to take the risk on another network for me personally, but your mileage may vary depending on what type of app it is and what kind of CTR you’re getting. I’m still doing 100k push/smartwall impressions per day on airpush for around only <$50 revenue. There’s just no comparison.
that rpm is insane, there is no way that can hold, my rpm is about $3, the key is your app has to have good retention, can’t be a garbage throw away app, your users need to like you enough to click on your ads, shitty apps see more like your banners cpm I would guess
Your’re exactly right, I believe retention is key as well. If you think about it from an advertisers standpoint, do you want to pay for ads that get shown a million times per session in a crappy app that people uninstall after 2 minutes or do you want them to be shown in an app with high user engagement? It makes perfect sense to me. Been running strong for 3 weeks with a good RPM, but I expect it to fall off eventually. When it does, I’ll bump it up to every 3 rounds instead and it is still FAR from excessive. Everybody wins. Also integrating leaderboards and achievements through google play game services has done wonders for retention already. It is just shy of 70% - 7 day retention rate which I’m sure has as much of an effect on RPM as CTR.
How often do you show your interstitials per user (per day, or session)?
I show multiple times: each DAU spends around 42min on my app every day, and I show one interstitial every 8min, so each DAU sees around 4-5 ads per day, and my eCPM is currently around $1.20 for interstitials (my audience is mostly US and EU).
A little less frequently than you, but not much. Each round of the game takes 3-5 minutes to complete and I show one interstitial every 5 rounds. Audience mostly US. I have an automotive category app that had a $32.67 RPM and 5.8% CTR yesterday for interstitials. It only does about 500 impressions per day at this point, but I’ve never seen numbers like that. It’s crazy, but I’m obviously not complaining…
I reduced the frequency of interstitial on my last update, from one every 8min to one every 12min. It’s still early to tell for sure, but it seems to have improved my revenue.
My CTR raised from 4.2% to 5.2%, and RPM from $1.30 to $2.20. But obviously the requests dropped also (by approx 1/3, from 6 ads per 48min to 4 ads per 48min), but since the RPM almost doubled the income seems to be greater overall. I will wait a few more days to make sure, and will update here if anything changes.
