Where We Stand with Android, Ad Networks, and Apps
One popular approach to making money off of Android applications is to run ads in them. That way you can distribute the app for free (powered by ad revenue), or offer a ad-free “premium” version to supplement the ad income.
As with everything in mobile, it’s never quite that easy.
The 800-kilo gorilla in the online ad space is Google’s AdSense. AdSense now has a beta mobile app-specific edition, aimed at Android and iPhone. Considering that advertising is one of the major arguments for why Google invested in Android in the first place, the new AdSense program is not exactly unexpected.
However, AdSense is starting to cultivate a reputation reminiscent of PayPal at its nadir. The “PayPal sucks” meme ran rampant for a few years, as account after account was frozen under questionable circumstances. Whatever algorithms PayPal was using to identify dubious accounts or transactions raised a fair number of false positives, and freezing entire accounts over individual transactions struck many as overkill. While things appear to have generally improved, there are still hangups, as I can attest to from personal experience.
AdSense’s own fraud-detection algorithms have generated many complaints, including one from a prominent Android community member. Trying to weed out miscreants is understandable, and AdSense’s scale requires automation for that. However, AdSense’s decision-making process, even when humans get involved, is as transparent as your average battleship hull, even for individual cases. Since false positives tend to be noisier than successful customers, AdSense’s reputation can take a substantial hit. Moreover, even if things were to improve today, it will take years for AdSense to get past the current complaints — only time will cause those to be considered “history” and perhaps not relevant to the then-current AdSense program.
Google’s acquisition of AdMob further muddies the waters. AdMob is rather popular. Clearly, some acquisitions of Google’s maintain some semblance of their own identity (e.g., YouTube). At the same time, many Google acquisitions result in deprecated original services (e.g., EtherPad) or never again are released in their original form (e.g., JotSpot). Here’s hoping that AdMob can continue to provide a quality ad network for Android apps and not wind up being totally absorbed by AdSense, at least for a while.
Of course, AdSense/AdMob is far from the only game in town. Firms like Greystripe and ZestAdz are racing to fill the gap, and other iPhone-specific ad networks (e.g., Medialets) may yet make the jump to Android. That’s good, because I do not think there are clear strategies that ensure mobile ads will work for advertisers, developers, and users alike, and more firms hopefully results in more experimentation.
Android developers would be wise to consider in-game ads as a way to make money off their apps. At the same time, do not kid yourself into thinking that advertising will require no thought and solve all your problems. As with everything in life, there are tradeoffs, and advertising trades off unpredictable individual user purchases for the unpredictable ad network future.
