From love to hate, one push

 “Do you know where these notifications come from?” Asked Natasha, turning around, holding out her desire? I glanced at the notification tray, where I saw a completely unfamiliar icon and text for approximately the following content: “Best games online! Free download ”, after which the text went beyond the allotted 480 px and hid the further essence of the proposal.

 - Hmm, I haven’t seen anything like it, come here, let's see what it is. - then it seemed to me that this was a notification from some application that I could easily identify in the list of running programs, finding unknown and suspicious software, but it wasn’t there. A click on the notification caused a browser to open with a transition to a typical java garbage dump of games. There was nothing to watch there, and since the notification was gone, I didn’t see any sense picking on the phone further.

 - I don’t know, it seems that now I can’t help anything, let's try digging the next time the notification appears again. - they left it on that, only yesterday in the tray I discovered this, and it was already a matter of principle to figure out who is so impudent that he allows himself not to advertise, but to spam.


An unfamiliar notification icon caused a butthert in the brain, which, all the way to home, was trying to figure out which of the tested and reliable applications (but only the ones I thought before this case live in my DHD) could so brazenly express itself?
Don’t go to Jobs, it’s clear that this is the work of a free application, whose author is so idiot that he decided to monetize in this way, but whose dirty hands are this?

In my case, I was offered to visit a dating site:
 - ForeverAlone? Join NOW! - called for the textual content of the notification.
The list of running programs and services consisted only of reliable or purchased applications, so I was driven into Google.
First threw a cry on Twitter, no one responded. The problem is rare, I thought, which makes it even more interesting.
The letters already filled in the search engine line - advertisement in notification bar android . Bingo, the very first link to androidforums reveals all the secrets, mixed with  angry English-language curses in the direction of this technology.

And the technology of such "unobtrusive" advertising is called "AirPush" .
The enemy has been identified, it remains to understand which developer of which application I installed had such a bright idea? And here again, reading a long thread on reddit came to the rescue, where one friend shared a link to the application in the market with the simple name AirPush Detector .
The application does exactly what is required of it - displays a list of programs installed on your phone that use AirPush to monetize. Install, run ... Profit.

I was expecting there to be some kind of dull left application installed unconscious, but no. KinoDroid, which has a 4+ rate in the market, with thousands of installations and positive reviews, decided to earn even more on its free version. Well, I respect the work of developers and buy the software that I really use, KinoDroid launched a couple of times, I didn’t think about the paid version, and there was no sense in deleting it, but exactly until the moment when its monetization scheme did not go beyond the reasonable range.
Agree, when you see the ad unit at the bottom of the application, you understand who put it there, you understand why and see it only when you use the application.
When you don’t understand who, don’t understand how your tray starts to terrorize - this is disgusting and disrespectful to the user. I consider it absolutely right to put 1 star in the rate application, which I did, and what I would never do, watching the usual ad unit at the bottom of the screen of the launched free application.

As for the application, which spammed into the tray heroine of the introduction to the topic, ironically, it turned out to be the My Mood application, with one of the developers of which she is personally familiar. Even more interesting is the fact that recently the developers of this application wrote a topic on Habrin which they analyzed application monetization schemes and even compared the godless AirPush to comparison. According to them, they refused this method, while just a week ago, Natasha showed me the first case of advertising getting into the tray.

Summarizing, I would like to wish application developers to be more careful in choosing monetization tools. There is nothing more expensive than loyal users, and AirPush is more of a tool for their mass shooting. You should not pursue superprofits, it is short-term and will bury your application rather than make it successful.