Advertising on Android

[AndyP]

A few questions about advertising on Android

Has anyone had any success in including the AdMob sdk into an Android build? If so how?

or Apart from Inneractive does anyone use any other ad serving solution?

[KimD]

I have been told, within the past 24 hours, that:
- "We no longer partner with Inneractive"
- "At present, to add advertising to an Android app, the approach that works is to
use Appwrapper: http://www.vserv.com/technology/appwrapper/"

Personally, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the appWrapper option; although it will clearly need to be my backup plan. Could someone who understands the dark world of internet advertising explain to me why the following would NOT work:
1) I get an account for on website adverting with Adsense or one of their rivals
2) I create a website, featuring webpages with a single ad on each of them (and little else)
3) I use Livecode's mobileControlCreate and mobileControlSet commands to display a small (e.g. 320x50) browser window within my app - and within that browser window I display the ad content from the website that I've created.

I'm hopeful that I could get an ad to display within my app using this technique, but I don't understand enough about it to know whether Adsense (or their rivals) would recognize this as a page view and pay me for it.

Thanks in advance for any help

[LCNeil]

Hi Kim,

Using Adsense in the way you have mentioned violates Googles Adsense policies and would likely result in your app being removed from stores/ having your Adsense account suspended. More information on this can be found here-

https://support.google.com/adsense/answ ... 4?hl=en-GB

The use of AdSense for mobile in a mobile application is a violation of AdSense policies. A mobile application constitutes any downloadable application, even if a WebView is used to display the ad. Any AdSense for mobile ad units found in mobile applications will be disabled. If you’re looking for an advertising solution for your mobile application, please sign up for AdMob, Google’s leading mobile advertising display product.

With that being said, we are currently working on various widgets for LiveCode 8 and one that supports multiple ad platforms is currently in the pipeline.

Kind Regards,

Neil Roger
--
LiveCode Support Team ~ http://www.livecode.com
--

[KimD]

Thanks Neil

I had a feeling that there would be a "non-technical" reason why this would not work; because technically it seemed so easy that I wondered why everyone wasn't doing it

This leaves me with 3 options for my 95% complete Android app:
1) Go live without advertising, and wait for LC8
2) Go live with appWrapper (and probably replace when LC8 comes out). I'd need to test that URLWakeUp (a key feature in my app) still works when the appWrapper is on.
3) Try to find one of AdSense's rivals that doesn't have the same policies on using a mobile app to display webpage advertising.

Hmmm...

[AndyP]

Hi Kim,

I'm in the same boat! looking for a advertising partner with a almost competed app(s).

I'm waiting for a reply from a couple who have web based api's to serve ads and will let you know the results as I get them.

I also contacted Inneractive who respond until I mention LiveCode then no more emails... so I don't know what happened there?

I find it extremely frustrating that there is no solution to this from LiveCode as it's the most common way that Android developers secure revenue from their apps.

[KimD]

Hi Andy

Thanks - other than sorting out the monetisation aspects, I'm basically ready to start end-user testing for my puzzle app.

Please let me know how you go with the possible advertising partners. I sent emails to three possibles a few weeks ago, and got zero responses.

I'm confident that the good folks at Livecode understand that - in order for their product to be successful - they've got to ensure that their clients have the tools to develop successful products. They'll get the advertising on Android gap plugged soon.

Regards

[AndyP]

Hi Kim, yes I'm sure the advertising hole will be plugged, it's just a matter of time.
I've tried AppWrapper and can confirm that it works with LiveCode generated apk's but I have not as yet been able to get into the AppWrapper CP to configure the ad feeds.

Another of the ad companies has come back to me saying that I can use a webview in my app to display their ad feeds, which I'm in the process of testing.. I'll let you know how this goes.

[Rauterkus]

Wondering if the new LiveCode ad program will work with Android and the Community version of LiveCode?

Can one put ads and an income stream into an app if it is open source?

[deadparrotsoftware]

As a new Indy developer with LiveCode, we were astonished to find such a failing in the LiveCode platform for such an important feature.

We have developed a lot of Apps with standard Jave/Xcode and by far, the best money model has been non-obtrusive banner ads. We are moving to LiveCode because of the support for many platforms, yet were brought up short by the lack of in-App ad support. The solutions discussed here, and elsewhere, are fragmented (different solutions, or none, for different platforms) and poorly implemented.

To our view, this is NOT a casual shortcoming. Apps we were planning to port to LiveCode we will not be, because they generate revenue right now via banner ads. We had heard on other forums/discussions that "you can not build Apps that make money with advertising using LiveCode" but assumed that was an error or misinformation propagated by competitors. We were surprised to discover they were telling the truth.

Joe C.
Chief Engineer

[MaxV]

Is mobileAdCreate command not enough?

[FourthWorld]

Is mobileAdCreate command not enough?

The current ad framework is dependent on an ad vendor who's now in the process of closing shop. As Neil noted earlier, a new framework is in development that will support multiple vendors.

[deadparrotsoftware]

mobileAdCreate only seemed to work for Apple as well.

One hopes the new widget works both multiple vendors, but also both mobile platforms

Sid B.

[AndyP]

So after a lot of testing with different ad suppliers I have started using ads supplied by Smaato SPX.

They responded quickly to my questions re using a web-view in an Android app.. their response below.

Thank you for contacting us. From your description we assume that you would like to use webview within the app (so there would be htpp address) and the actual ad would be displayed on a page - in this case we would recommend you to simply use our Ad Tag integration. You could also use the API integration however you need to make sure that the beacon will be fired when the ad will be displayed, not before.

https://www.smaato.com/

To get this working in your app,

1. Add a mobile browser control to your app.

# create the browser
mobileControlCreate "browser"
put the result into gBrowserId
# set up the basic defaults
mobileControlSet gBrowserId, "visible", true
mobileControlSet gBrowserId, "rect", the rect of graphic "ButtonAreaCover" of card "Game" // change as required
mobileControlSet gBrowserId, "url", "your web page to display the ad"


2. Once you have an add-space set up with Smaato you will need to have a web page to load into your browser control as in the example below.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>SqAdds</title>

</head>

<body>

<div id="smaatoad" style="padding: 0px"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://soma-assets.smaato.net/js/smaato ... "></script>
<script>
function callBackForSmaato(status){
if(status == "SUCCESS"){
console.log('callBack is being called with status : ' + status);
} else if (status == "ERROR"){
console.log('callBack is being called with status : ' + status);
}
};
SomaJS.loadAd({
adDivId : "smaatoad",
publisherId: your id,
adSpaceId: your id,
dimension: "full_320x480",
age: 16
},callBackForSmaato);
</script>
</body>

</html>

Try them out and let us know how you get on.

[KimD]

Thanks a lot Andy. I hugely appreciate you taking the time to post how you got around the current LC + Android + Advertising issue.

FYI - I've taken the cowards option and decided to avoid advertising (for the moment at least). Instead I've implemented in-app purchases. It took me about 1.5 days to get these working the first time around, but now that I've got it working I think that I could implement it in another LC app in under an hour.

Regards

Kim

[istech]

Thanks Andy,

I will try this option out on one of my projects. This is a good work around as I hear no more support for iAds as Apple will be dropping it soon. So this solution will work on both platforms. So thanks again. Maybe a sticky if you ask me.