If I allow the player of my game to unlock a certain achievement (just suppose ; in actual practice it might be something relevant like earning in game currency or something) by installing an app that I am advertising in my game, is it against the google policy? Since (s)he can still play the game without completing the achievement should it be even considered forcing?
It will get you banned from any known ad network and probably might be seen also as against policy by Google. It’s not grey, it’s pitch black.
Check with the respective ad network. Some are okay with it, even building their whole business model on it (e.g. TapJoy), for others, it’s akin to stealing and they will insta-ban you (e.g. AdMob).
yes I second Skurry. Don’t even think of doing this with admob. You may try Tapjoy/GetJar or else some ad network which you don’t care if you lose account with them like inmobi, jumptap types. But for the sake of quality of app its not recommended.
So clearly google won’t allow it.But then how is TapJoy doing it? I thought lots of peaople are using that network,right? I haven’t used TapJoy but as much I have come to understand they offer things similar to what I mentioned.
They are two different types of ad networks.
TapJoy is an incentivized network - the user installs an application and gets something in return.
AdMob on the other hand is non-incentivized which means that the users who are clicking on the ad are genuinely interested in the ad (that’s the idea at least)
Because of this TapJoy and other incentivized install type of networks will generally give less money per click/install because the advertisers knows that the user is only after the reward. If developers would suddenly start offering incentives for clicking on advertisements from AdMob for example, then the price per click / install would go down quickly as advertisers does not want to pay for a click/install that a user only made to get a reward, which is why it’s disallowed in such networks.
If I wanted to do something like this I’d definitely check out Tapjoy or similar ad networks.
Doing this will result in an immediate ban and payments withheld.
The advertisers who are paying to push the banner/interstitial ads will complain to the marketing company (admob, leadbolt, etc) about sh*tty traffic, and they’ll launch an investigation. This is why companies like Admob pay you Net-30,60,90; it’s so they can look for any fraud, scrub it, or simply ban you to protect their interests. You may not know this, but larger advertisers will typically request a refund on their campaign spend because of fraudulent traffic, and guess where that money comes from? Out of the cut Admob&Yourself would have made during that period, so why would they want to keep you on as a publisher/developer? You just cost them money, and potentially tarnished their reputation with that particular advertiser.
I’ve been doing CPA and marketing for 10+ years now; these tricks have been played out many times before and are nothing new to the industry. You WILL get caught
Making good money with apps is sooooo easy, even without blackhat techniques, so why bother?
Is the app you want them to install another one of your own apps?