Hey! This is the Daily Overpass my name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, I want
to talk about how you should be really careful about which Ad Networks you use
within your apps.
So, there was an article in the news earlier this week on Monday, I read it in
Sky News, but I'm sure it was all over the place saying, "Google pulls apps
showing pornographic adverse to children." And basically, Google, what it says is,
Google Play has pulled 60 apps from the App Store because it was showing - it was
using a -was it - a malicious code called 'Aadult Swine" which as well as displaying
inappropriate ads attempted to trick users into installing fake security apps
and register for expensive services. Now, to the civilian, to the person
who's not in the app industry, it might look like it was all done maliciously
with intent. And you know what, it may have been. I don't even know. But one of
the things that scares me about using ad networks is that I have very little
control over which ads are shown. This is one of the reasons why I stick with - I
stick with - the three that I use on, well, the only three that I use at the moment
are Google or AdMob, obviously, Facebook Audience Network
which does very little for me. I know it does a lot better for other people and
AppLovin. AppLovin did really good for a while, but then after a while, it's
just sort of - it just fizzled out and where I don't see anything. So, the
majority of my ad revenue right now comes from AdMob. And I get contacted all
the time by these new companies, I mean, I've gotten three calls in the last week
from a company that they're one of these aggregate services. So, what they say is,
"Rather than just using say AdMob or whatever ad network, what we'll do is
we'll bid them all together, so, we'll give you the best ads, the best prices to
give you the highest eCPM." All that kind of stuff. And I just - I politely
decline and he says, "It could be 30% increase..." right? As one of these things
that just - I don't like not having control over the ads that gets shown in
the app. This is unlike television. Like if you had a television show, you
would be able to prove the ads that go on because you go out and seek
sponsorship. If you're just starting out an app development, you're probably not
going out finding advertisers directly. Although you could do that, like
if you got enough steam, that's - that would be the next step. I mean, I was
at a Google conference a couple years ago and they talked about how at one
point, you know, when you really start to build up steam, you can move from
the ad network on to going out and seeking sponsorship.
Because you have that kind of clout. But I'm still with the ad networks and one
of the things that it's different from television is that, I have no control
over which ads are shown. I could just go into the settings for like Google Play
and say don't show gambling, don't show pornographic ads, all that
kind of stuff, but other than that ads get served. And one of my main reasons
for logic, and I hope this is a sound basis, is that because Google is
the one - it's on Google Play and it is using Google ads and they're gonna -
that we have one hand knows what the other hand is doing over there and
they're controlling that and everything's working well. But it's a
very scary possibility of getting apps removed. Now, these apps that were removed
there, I mean, they were probably really bad. This is one of the things about
Google Play and the App Store to an extent which have a lot of rubbish
out there. A lot of scammy apps, a lot of plagiarized stuff, a lot of stuff
that's just really, really bad. It's just there to deliver ads, it's just there
for the quick buck and everything like that. And that could be what these were.
I've gotten - I mentioned this before, I've gotten calls from companies
saying they can give me, you know, $30 eCPMs and I don't even have to serve ads.
They just need access to the microphone which is really creepy. Or they
just need access to the GPS, or they just need access to browser history, right? And
they all require some sort of like going into my security settings and
requesting all these different permissions. And I always say no.
For me, it's an easy one because my app is called Ear Spy. People are already,
you know, people who downloaded it are probably searching for spy stuff.
They think about people are spying on them all the time, that kind of stuff and
they're really sensitive, that kind of stuff. I don't really - I don't add any
more permissions. And every time somebody comes something like that to me,
and while it's very tempting especially when you're struggling to
hear somebody say, "You know, I can give you this higher eCPM. We
just use our SDK and everything like that." I don't like the idea of not
knowing what goes into the app. I don't like the idea of not having as much
control as I can. Oh, already with AdMob, you only have so much control.
Anyway, that's just something to look out. Just something I've been thinking
about today. And so, I mean, what do you think? Have you had it - oh yeah, and the
reason I think this is because I have had an app removed because they said
I had malware in. And this was back in the early days when I was just
using mediation. It was just every ad network, yeah, sure we'll just do all of
them.We'll just put all of them in there. And they removed two of my apps
that they were spy apps. One was called Alarm Spy, which is like a motion
sensor thing and one was called Eye Spy, so it was just like - just use the
camera. So you put it in another room and it wasn't. We didn't use the Internet, we
just used like a local IP address, like a web server in the app. So yeah, I
thought that as creepy as it could be, but the free versions of
those apps were removed and what they said was they had malware. And the paid
versions are still there, so people still purchased these things. I don't think
I've removed - I may have removed them since then cuz I didn't want to
update them. But they said they had malware in them and I appealed those
decisions saying, "no, I'm only using these SDKs but you know, the
AdMob was the only one that I really trusted and all these other ones, I didn't.
So, I'm always really skeptical about that. But let me know, have you used an ad
network where's gotten you in trouble in
the past? Have you ever had an app removed because of a certain ad
network you use? Or have you ever had an ad network, put ads in there that you did
not sanction or that maybe did? Because it's - for me, it's a very scary thing. This
is one of the reasons why I only stick to Google product- Google products,
Facebook products and AppLovin. And Applovin, I don't know, you know,
I need- I might dump them because you know, I really make like
nothing from them. So anyway, those are my thoughts today. Let me know what you, guys,
think. What kind of experiences you've had. And that's it for today. I'll talk to
you tomorrow.