Ads for your Android app

Advertising advertising or how to make money on your application

I do not have much experience developing Android applications. But in this article I will share my experience in communicating with various advertising systems. For those that we used I will give various graphs.

Well, let's go.

A little about the application

To get into the course of affairs, I will give here a little information about the application. Here is a link to the application in the Web market. The application was, so to speak, the first experience in the market, so do not judge strictly. We did not carry out any advertising of the application, except that we posted several posts on thematic forums. In the future, they did not spend a dime on promoting the application.
A bit of statistics, which honestly surprised us a little. The application was released on March 27 this year. We did not expect a large number of downloads, who are actually interested in some kind of widget that just puts a smiley on the screen and signature. Download statistics for today looks something like this:
Total downloads: 129210 Installs
: 40687 (31%)

How to make money

In fact, about a month after the release of the first version, we were interested in the question of how to get at least some kind of income from our application. And just do it really.
Since we did not see the point of making a paid version, because there is nothing to pay for there. They began to think about advertising (yes, all sorts of tricks in the form of a button donate to us $ 1 work poorly - checked).
Advertising. Which advertising provider to choose? Where you can earn more money, and where users get bored.

Mobclix

Probably many have heard about this system. I’ll give an example of the graphs of our application:



In total, we earned 1000 rubles per month on ads from Mobclix . Which of course is not very much. And this despite the fact that the number of active users is constantly growing.
It is encouraging that Mobclix provides in the admin panel viewing statistics on application usage, user growth, and the number of openings for the application. And all this can be seen even by the hour.
Working with the Mobclix system as a whole is very easy. The SDK is easy to use (quick start will help), banners are connected in the admin panel, you can also select ad networks that will deliver ads (I apologize for the tautology), size and other parameters. With regards to the withdrawal of money, everything is not so simple. Although there is everyone’s favorite Direct Deposit, but you have to wait until the withdrawal for about a month, then the withdrawal occurs every two days. The amount is paid by the way in installments. Why? In fact, it is similar to the fact that Mobclix itself must receive money from other sources and only then pay the developer. Oh yes, and their web interface is just awful ...

Scaring users - Airpush

Well, since for some reason we were not sorry for the users, we decided to check other types of advertising. So to say, conduct a study. Many unloved Airpush caught my eye . The point is quite simple: advertising comes in the form of a notification on your phone. Honestly, if I had such an application, I would immediately delete it. But interest prevailed and we put this system in our application. And now to the numbers.

The numbers impressed us. CPM ~ 4 $. Our Fill Rate came out pretty high ~ 95%. But there is no such freebie. Free only cheese in a mousetrap. This ad scares away users very well. Therefore, before placing this ad, think carefully. For we got angry reviews in the market.
So now more about the withdrawal of funds. There is one caveat. Everything is the same as always - we select a direct transfer to a bank account. But the transfer is carried out only after a month. Those. on our example: earning in May 200 cu You will only receive them after June 30th.
By the way, there are a lot of settings for receiving ads by users. You can take a break between notifications, choose how many notifications per day the user will receive, and more.
The SDK is easy to install. It is worth noting that when using this advertising delivery system, the application acquires a bunch of unnecessary permissions (do not forget to add them to the manifest when connecting this system). This can serve as another impetus for the cautious user, so as not to install such an application. Although to be honest, none of my friends who own Androids pay attention to permissions.

Finally a few more

We didn’t work with AdMob, somehow it didn’t work out. Therefore, I can not say something specific. But judging by the reviews, the experience is ambiguous. I would advise you to try both Admob and Mobclix, and see what happens.
There are some more interesting solutions in the advertising market, for example this .

At the end

I would like to say that making money on Android applications is real. Advertising is capable of generating revenue. Having several fairly popular applications you can earn and not so little.

All success in the development! Thanks for attention. I will be glad to questions, comments.