snctlnSoftware

Day 1 of ads…

Day 1 of ads on two of my most popular free games and all I can think is why did I not do this sooner?  Seriously the amount of money brought in today is only a fraction of what I make daily from app sales but will definitely be significant over time.  I should have done this months ago when I first heard of AdMob, integrating the ads was much simpler than I expected.  I was very pleased to learn 2 things during that process.

#1) The only permission that you HAVE to add to your application is android.permission.INTERNET, which is very common for all apps.  I was under the impressions from their initial sdk that they released that it required the receive MMS permission as well as the gps location permission.  The location permission can still be used for targeted ads, but I don’t feel it is necessary to add such requirements to simple games.

#2.) The ads don’t have to be static spaces on the screen.  I never really bothered to try their initial SDK so I wasn’t aware of this.  I just assumed that the ads were like banner ads on websites, that they would take up a static space on the screen.  I just recently started using an Android phone as my main phone and have seen apps that do this.   I was very pleased to learn that you can choose when to display ads, for me it is at the pause and “game over” screens.

I also was fully expecting user backlash, I was under the impression that the users of the Android Market despised ads and would down vote applications with ads and voice their opinions in comments, it has now bee 24 hours and I haven’t heard a single piece of negative feedback about the ads at all.

My only gripe is payout, I very much like the Google Checkout integration with the Android market, when someone buys an app I receive the money about 4 days after they purchased the app directly deposited into my checking account.  I get deposits 5 days a week and this has proven to be a very nice and very convenient system.  The AdMob payout structure is like this, at the end of the month your balance is noted, a the beginning of next month they process that balance, and within a week they will cut you a check and mail it to you or directly deposit it into your paypal account.  So in other words if you make $500 in January it will be processed at the beginning of March and you should expect to receive a check by mid March.  It is nice to know this up front, but after being spoiled by the convenience of the Android Market payout system it does seem a little long.

So yeah, it has only been one day, but I definitely feel like I should have implemented this months ago and I will be sure to implement ads on all of my “Lite” software that I release form here on out.