Well, I get this message all the time using AdWhirl:
Unable to fill ad request. This is a common situation.
I think it's from the AdMob network. I also have a couple of other networks (registered yesterday) and I never seem to be getting any ad requests filled. In test mode it does work though. Now is this common and will it pick up?
Turns out it went away after a couple of days. I guess AbMob had to review the application first.
Not only is this normal when the app is new, but it is also more frequent depending on your geographic location. In Switzerland I had ads all the time. While I am here in Brazil now I face much more often the "no inventory" issue.
In any case you can't do much about it, other than to rollover to another fallback network if you use Adwhirl or a similar solution.
Related
So I just released my app to the app store last friday. Realized it's going to be extremely difficult to get paid sales (but a good amount were downloading my app for free), so I decided to go with the model of releasing a full free version of my app with ads, and a paid version without ads.
My app has to do with adding captions to photos, so in two of my main screens, the app takes up the full screen of the phone. So I'm going to use full screen ads that pop up each time a user makes a view controller navigation transition.
I'm pretty clueless about how to go about choosing the right ad network. Right now I've installed Greystripe SDK and am playing around with it and it seems fine, but my one concern is that (I believe) they only serve Europe and North America. As an experiment, I made my app free and only half of the 150 or so downloads were from Europe and North America.
Was wondering if anyone could share some knowledge or link me to any beginner tutorials on how to choose an ad network. I've done google searches and haven't had much come up (maybe I'm using the wrong terms).
What I've found in doing research on this, is that I'm shocked about how little information there is on this subject as compared to anything else in iPhone development. Not sure why this is, maybe because there aren't many developers using ads in their apps or maybe because the ones that do don't want to give away their secrets.
I think a good strategy for a newcomer for implementing ads is to start by using a mediation network. A mediation network is software that allows you to use multiple ad networks to serve ads to your app. So for instance, the mediation network will check to see if there is an ad to serve from Admob, and if there isn't it'll move onto the next network on your list. Doing this will give you high fill rates (i.e. making sure an ad is served the majority of the time when you call for an ad) and will also allow you to compare and contrast different networks. You can make adjustments in the mediation control panel without having to upload a new version of your app.
I also recommend starting out with some of the larger networks like Admob, iAds, Millennial, InMobi, etc. and then from there maybe branching out to other networks that do a good job in targeting specific things like video ads / interstitials, or certain countries.
So what I've done is gone with Admob Mediation for now, and am serving ads from Admob, Millennial, InMobi, and Adfonic.
Hope this helps.
Try iAds
how-to-add-iad-banner-in-iphoneipad-app
I've noticed something interesting in what seems to be the recommended way to show iads in some apps.
In the Apple NavigationBanner example ads are downloaded by the AppDelegate but (according to my reading) are only displayed when the user clicks something in the table and a TextViewController is put on screen.
I'm using this exact behaviour in my app but it occurs to me this could be bad, loading but never showing could cause payouts for ads that were never displayed. I wouldn't want to accidentally fall foul of the rules.
Am I right to be worried about this? Or are Apple perhaps using some unknown mechanism to track what ads have been put on screen instead of simply downloaded to calculate their impression count?
Thanks.
Apple is very careful to ensure that ads are only credited when displayed.
In one of our games, we had an issue with layout which would sometimes cause an object to be in front of the iAd (a very small one, in fact - you could still see the ad). In those cases, the iAd framework logged that we wouldn't receive an impression because the ad was obscured.
I am a member of a gliding club with 150 members, and we want to have our own iPhone app. Requiring a member login, the app would be usable only by members of the club, and it would be used by an estimated 20-30 people.
Is it even possible to disribute such an app to non-jailbroken iPhones? According to my research:
It wouldn't be accepted on the App Store due to "limited audience".
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
Ad hoc distribution would be fine for us except for the expiration time associated with apps distributed in the manner.
Are we at a dead end?
Thanks.
Edit: In case anyone is wondering why I didn't just ask Apple directly: I did, and their answer was, "We are unable to advise you with respect to the Apple Developer Program that best fits your needs."
I'm not 100% on your question.
But depending on your requirement, pretty much everything you need can be achieved as a web app, with the correct coding behind it i.e. CACHE MANIFEST you could make the app function similar to the a native app, available offline and can be saved to any iOS device through the browser.
Give me a shout if you need more information.
Hope it helps
Gary
You could always try to make the app a little more "global"? Perhaps offer some free stuff for Joe Bloggs to use, but tucked away you have your real motive... that way you can get it released legitimately.
I've seen some real disasters in the app store that shouldn't have made it, and I'm sure Apples screening isn't as intense as we might think. (example: that flash light application, when pressing a sequence of buttons it would enable free tethering).
Best of luck!
Yup. You seem to have all the options laid out pretty clearly, and there's no other way to do it. Except developing for android, and just distributing the application freely and without arbitrary restrictions.
Sorry.
Ad-hoc distribution would give you about 90 days expiration time, i think, whereas enterprise would give you a year. Though gaining enterprise status in the eyes of apple is easier said than done.
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
You don't have to be a company to apply for the enterprise account, you just need to be an organisation with a DUNS number.
I emailed my city bus service asking whether they would allow me to use their bus route data in an iPhone app with ads, and got no response. If I did create the app, and profited from the ads, would they be able to, or likely to, sue me or demand that I pull the app?
I know this isn't strictly programming-related but I don't know who to ask, and it isn't a big enough deal that I would go talk to a lawyer.
i would say that bus times and routes fall under public information and lye within the public domain in terms of intellectual property.
In the UK where i live, i would highly doubt you'd be sued for it. If you live in america, i don't know, people seem to want to sue each other for everything and anything.
So long as you don't mention company names, have any images of buses with logos on or anything like that, numbers, times and routes aren't information that can be copywrited i don't think?
Plagiarism (mildly on topic) seems to go completely unpoliced on the app store, for every good app there are 6 or 7 directly stealing ideas or ripping it off. I personally think you'd be safe with this, and if anything did come of it, you approached them asking for permission, they chose to ignore you.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/news/archives/2010/february/#corelocation
Can anyone tell me what is the exact description of an ad and just a hint for a user?
We are developing a library that shows small banners depending on user's location. E.g. we are passing a cafe - we have a banner about this cafe, we are passing a church - we have a banner about this church. The library is to be re-used in other apps.
So from one point of view we are advertising a cafe, but from another point of view we are giving the user an advice about places to eat around him. So what is the border between an ad and advice to a user?
I think the problem is that such an app tracks the location of the user and location specific ads will constantly remind the user that their physical location is being tracked.
This is an obvious privacy and security issue but I also think Apple wants to prevent users from experiencing that creepy feeling that comes from knowing somebody is tracking you against your will.
In order to feed the iPhone location based adds, you have to upload the location of the iPhone to a server, process the appropriate adds for the location and push them back. That means that an external 3rd party, that neither Apple nor the user can control, is constantly tracking the location of the phone while the app is active. Since an app can capture info identifying individual phones, that turns the app into spy program.
Even if you actually did all the processing inside the app on a single phone e.g. looking up an internal local database, the user would still most likely assume they were being tracked remotely.
There is no way Apple will risk the damage to the iPhone's brand that would come from news stories screaming, "iPhone App Secretly Tracks User's Locations Anywhere in the World!"
The library you have in mind is clearly verboten. You could might get way with it if had a mechanism for constantly asking the user if they wanted to load location specific ads.
(BEGIN RANT: As an aside, I would say this sounds like something the explicative-deleteds in marketing came up with. They think "Hey, we can push location targeted ads at users and force them see those ads when they use any of the apps with the library! Think how great that will be for advertisers!"
Marketing driven design is almost always a disaster. If they started the design with the idea, "Hey, I think I as a user would like to have the option of seeing ads relevant to my location with a mechanism I control and which protects my privacy and security," then they would come up with a much better library.
In the long run, you make money by giving end users more power and control over their work and lives. You don't make it by strapping them down and force feeding them what you want.
If you personally wouldn't want the functionality and no users have asked you for the functionality, then its probably a bad idea. END RANT)
Edit01:
Let me address this:
So from one point of view we are
advertising a cafe, but from another
point of view we are giving the user
an advice about places to eat around
him. So what is the border between an
ad and advice to a user?
I used to work at Apple in several capacities so I understand a bit how they think.
An ad is something pushed onto the user with any prior action of the user's part. The user doesn't request the ads, doesn't select the ads may not even want the ad but they just appear anyway.
Advice is something the user ask for explicitly. An app with a button that says "Show adds for businesses in your immediate vicinity" would fall under the heading of advice. Even an app whose stated function was to show adds for businesses in the vicinity would be fine. In both cases, the user request specific information. It is not pushed onto them. More importantly, the user can control if they send their location or not.
I got caught in the nutcracker back when Apple thought it was a good idea to have dialogs popping up telling people how to upgrade to Quicktime pro. It caused no ends of problems for end users especially those in institutions because it took control out of the hands of end users and administrators. I got to stand between irate customers and the genius that thought of the idea, which turned out to the actual genius Steve Jobs. Eventually, he saw the light and the desktop ad experiment was terminated.
Jobs and Apple learned their lesson. Don't force ads on end users. Especially don't tie ads to the functioning of the software (in this case, the location manager.)
The big thing in Apple's announcement is the part that says: "If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store."
Is the major function of your app to advertise to users -- regardless of the fact that they may ask for the ads or not? If the major function is to advertise to users based on their location or the greater portion of Location Services usage is for the purpose of advertising to the user then Apple will reject the app. Period.