ANE Ads4AIR v1.0.1 + Android Sample app

One week after my first ANE release comes my first update !

While writing a sample AIR app, I noticed some bugs mainly related to the ANE's context.
Following doc and tutorials, I made a wonderful error : using a static context

On Ads4AIR case, using a static context is an error because if you ask for interstitial ad THEN a banned ad,  the banner ad request won't work...because it's stil initialized with interstitial context.

I fixed a lot of others memory leak and was able to code some workaround on Adfonic's limits.
Now it's time to work on the Blackberry !

Be free to
- download the new version (v1.0.1)
- make some tests on your Android device
- check the source of the sample AIR app

My first ANE Ads4AIR : Ads from Admob, Adfonic, Inmobi and some others...

Today I release my first AIR Native Extension.
While only for Android for now, the next release should include BlackBerry support.

What is Ads4AIR ?
This group of ANE offers you alternative to Admob.
Some ANE already exist which give you access to Admob ads on Android and iPhone, my goal was to let you choose.
First, because Admob doesn't support Blackberry.
Second, because choice is the key and Google isn't the only one.
It also allows you to use the ads network you want anytime you want : when your user is from india, when admob returns no ads, when your user is on wifi....It's up to you !

Which are the ads networks supported ?
Adfonic
Adiquity
Admob
Inmobi
Inneractive
Madvertise
Smaato
I tried to support banner and interstitial for the most of them.
Unfortunatly, some SDK are buggy or work only on native Android app.
If you need another one, just ask me !

What's the licence ?
I tried another way to earn money : success sharing.
In fact, it's really simple : if you earn money with Ads4AIR, I'll earn too.
10% of the ads shown are from my own Adfonic account.
Since I understand developers could be afraid to not control every ad shown, it's still possible to register.
And since I'm a nice guy, YOU define the price.
Contact me for my paypal account, transfert the fund and I'll send you a serial id.

Where could I find it ?
On http://www.willna.com/extensions/
More ANE will come if this one is a success so...hurry up, use it and give me your feedback !

Monetize 'cheap' apps

Interesting post on InMobi's blog

It tries to explain you how much you could win in releasing ads based apps vs paid apps.
Of course, you shouldn't forget it for CHEAP apps only !

The side note of this post is that you have 2 ways to monetize your apps : ads or update your sell price ;)

Another even more interesting thing of this post is the linked Excel sheet : it allows you to quickly find if you will earn more advertising your app.

I made a test myself:
* for apps will a small number of downloads, the answer is defintly "NO"
* for 1M+ downloads, the answer is "YES"
Like for money, the more download you have, the more download you'll get !

Poor fill rate for Asia, sadly

While working on AIR's UserAgent bug, I noticed a LOT of Korean are actually playing my games...

It's a good news and I'm happy I recently was able to sign an agreement with a korean market to distribute Penguinoid.

The bad news is I'm currrently not winning a penny from Korea : the several ads network I use don't support Korea or very poorly ( 1 or 2% fill rate, even with a working user agent )

He! Advertisers! What are you doing ?! I could tell you korean are using Android a lot RIGHT NOW!
And it seems Taiwan is coming too....

How to (not) win money with AIR for mobile

Last week, I analized the ads fill rate for my games on several market.
I was very surprised to find a poor 8% max for my Android games while almost 25% for the WillNa website and Poulpytris Flash Lite.

So I tried to find the difference, using my own ads request log....and found it:
This is the UserAgent I receive from some guys on Poulpytris
 mozilla/5.0 (android; u; en-us) applewebkit/531.9 (khtml, like gecko) adobeair/2.7
When you look first, nothing strange...but then I looked at my log about WillNa.com and found this one
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Well, it seems there is a lot of differences, no ?
For whatever reason, AIR use its own UserAgent.
It wouldn't be a problem if it didn't use a partial UserAgent!
In AIR default UserAgent, no android version, no device ID.
These 2 points are a MAJOR problem when you monetize your app throught ads : Ads network use these info to give you the ads ! No info, no ads or a basic one times to times.

Hopefully, there is a solution : you can override the defaut UserAgent with URLRequestDefaults.userAgent = newUA;
Now, we need to find a solution to detect the AndroidOS version and device ID.
And again, AIR failed to help us to make money : there is NO way to get these values using AS3 !

After some googleing, I find someone who made a fantastic discovery : these values are available on an .ini file !
Using his NativeDeviceInfo class, I updated my apps everywhere, hoping users will update them quickly.

It's been a week and about half of them update it.
For them, I saw a BIG increase of the ads fill rate which confirm the problem's origin : user agent !

A big thanks to Sidney for his class so !
and another buggy feature for AIR to report, helas ...

Can't use Amazon to generate money on mobile ?!

I'm finishing an application for Android.
Since it's about the Wii, I thought it could be valuable to include affiliate links to Amazon to generate some money.

Unfortunatly, to avoid in legal issue, I (re)read yesterday Amazon's Associates Program Participation Requirements and noticed this point

7. You will not, without our express prior written approval, use any Content or Special Link, or otherwise link to the Amazon Site, on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box (e.g., digital video recorders, cable or satellite boxes, streaming video players, blu-ray players, or dvd players) or Internet-enabled television (e.g., GoogleTV, Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera Cast, or Vizio Internet Apps).

or, cleaned,

7. You will not [...] use any Content or Special Link [...] on [..] any [...] application designed [...] for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box [...] or Internet-enabled television[...].

It's just...awesome!
so I have to delete my Amazon lib from my app and find another way (ads again...) to get some money...

My games were stolen !

I today discovered a new kind of piracy...

1 month ago I published my (android) games on GetJar.
I planned to publish them on Android Market later (because of the fees).
It's just now impossible :
someone (Jasminstory or his clone integrixx) published my games (which he downloaded from GetJar) on the market, using the same name, the same screenshots, the same icons and even the same UIDs !

Yes, Jasminstory was able to publish air.com.willna.poulpytris from his own...
So, in the future, publish your game ANYWHERE you want to publish them at the SAME time...else someone could do it for you...

You could say "what's the matter? he paid the fees and publish it for you"...but
1/ he was SELLING my free games
2/ he was discovered and so I can't publish my games now, even if they were removed from the market
3/ the air.com.willna.xxx are now with a low profile on the market, few chances to be on the "Top" or "Try them" list now ....

I hope Google will help to solve this issue but it's now clear I won't earn a cent with these games...
so bad...
Nokia bullshit (more on this soon) and now that...
It's not my year, it seems...

Who want to sponsor a mobile game ?

Like I said, we submitted a game to Flash Game License contest.
We're happy to say it's one of the 150 winners !

I choose Flash Game License because I (still) don't know the sponsor-way to make some money. As far as I know, the main site to start on sponsoring is Flash Game License so...
Sponsoring is common for Web games but not for mobiles games (I never found a company to sponsor flash lite games!). I hope there will be there a new way to make profit.

So, we now have a game ready to be sponsored* !
This game will be available on the coming soon Adobe site dedicated to Flash mobile games so it's here your chance to get maximum exposure !

Penguinoid is a fun cute game, just what a player looks for on mobile.

And, moreover, we hope we'll be able to publish it soon on the Android Market thanks to AIR2 for Android!

*link only available to register sponsor

Contests to move Flash web game to mobile

I think you already knew, but there are actually 3 contests supported by Adobe.

It seems Adobe is ready to spend some money to answer to Steve Jobs :

"There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world"

"Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers"

I was pretty busy fighting with Flex4 and LCDS these months, so I'm more than happy to spend some times on Mobile games!

2 things to keep in mind :
1- It's for Flash Player 10.1 and, right now, there isn't a lot of devices updated to Android Froyo yet (apart Google Nexus One) so it will be hard to test on real device. On Kongregate, you could even increase your chance to win if you release an AIR version...using the private beta one available (read 'not public released yet'
I don't know why Adobe doesn't wait 2 or 3 months more to launch these contests...the egg or chicken dilemna ?
2- It's AS3 (at last!) and, right now, Flash builder 4 is the best tool to code on AS3...but, unfortunatly, the so waited "Flash Builder integration" in CS5 is very hard to use (it's more a hack than a feature!)

Adfonic ready to go again !

2 weeks ago I published Poulpytris' results.
I told I got some problems with Adfonic latency.

As usual, Adfonic's team was quick to contact me.
They had "5 times more traffic in the fourth quarter of 2009 than the third!"
Good news!
Unfortunatly, they had to install new servers to handle this...but no fast enought for some publishers...like me !

It's now fixed and the reply time is very fast...so fast that it is now the fastest of the 4 networks I'm using!

See you in July for the 6 months result analytics ;)

2009 mobile gamers data

Today's Gamers released free graphs on consumer data.
The interesting thing is they made special graph for mobile gamers.
Visit their website to find more data on your countries (USA & europe)

Opera bought an Ads network...too

Today, Opera announced they bought AdMarvel for at least 8M$

After Google with AdMob and Apple with Quattro Pro, it's the 3rd 'browser maker' which acquire a mobile ads network.

Now, think a little :
you BUY an Android's phone, an IPhone or any other phones (which support Opera) to see ads and so they earn money...
or, if you prefer, they SELL their products to EARN revenue from their ads...
you pay to help them earn more and more...funny now ?

It's like if Ford was selling a car which needs a special gazoline...made by Ford

Poulpytris results after 1 month

Poulpytris was released one month ago so, it's time for some analytics !

The main difference with Poulpy's Game is the ads feature : Poulpytis shows up to 4 ads on a 'sponsored by' screen at startup.

Poulpytris is hosted on Playyoo, GetJar, Voeveo, Mobango, Mobile9 & Phoload

In one month, because (?) hosted in more sites than Poulpy's Game, it definitly beat Poulpy's Game result

Downloads
Playyoo : 324 (web) & 88 (premium)
GetJar : 5796 (swf), 3954 (sis) & 1430 (cab)
Voeveo : ?
Mobango : 14488 (swf, sis & cab)
Mobile 9 : 11386 (sis 3rd), 18033 (sis 5th) & 7948 (cab)
Phoload : 22 (sis)

so, in 1 month, Poulpytris was downloaded 63469 times !!!
For info, GetJar was about to be a failure...until it became one of 'Best Puzzle game'
I assume it's because of the old GetJar rank or I'm again recommanded by GetJar ?
GetJar changed a lot of things these last 4 months, for good and bad...but I'll post about this later.


Phone models
Playyoo : ?
GetJar : 5130 (10% of download!), 3110, E71 & still the 6300...N95 & 5800XM close the top 10
Voeveo : ? (N95 ?)
Mobango : ?
Mobile 9 : mainly 5th ed (5800XM)
Phoload : mainly 5800XM

So classics on Asia and Touch/smartphones on Europe ?


Country
Playyoo : Italy ;)
GetJar : Indonesia & India are 40% of download !
others : Indonesia, India, US, UK ?


WillNa connections
1000 from PC
3600 from mobile
so 7.5% convertion rate, better than the 2% of Poulpy's Game
+ the daily users count is near 30 (0 before!)


Ads
About 12000 ads request and about 40% impressions
Revenue on Admob : 14$
Revenue on InMobi : 9$
Revenue on ZestAds : 1$
Revenue on WebMobLink : N/A => still waiting activation of my website (!)
Revenue on AdFonic : N/A => we'll try next month if their servers won some speed
EDIT: fixed, see this post

Of course, this is the result for Poulpytris, we can't assume it will be the same for any others app/games


Results
12K ads from 60K downloads... it seems only 1/5 of the people go throught the 'Allow internet connection' screen...
and, shame on me, I forgot to activate unique visitors analysis so it's perhaps worst !


The VERY important thing to note is how many download you got from 'community' sites.
At first, I said "WOW!, GetJar is nothing compared to them" !
But, looking at ads impressions, I saw GetJar users are more allright with adware than community's users.
Community users are looking for totally free games/apps : an ads and they close the game/app!
and don't even think about selling them the full ads free version !

For this reason, the download rate from mobile9 is impressive but I doubt we won a lot of money with that.
It's very interesting because it means more downloads is not equal to more money.
If you have 100K downloads but 1K ads request, it's no use : you could win more with 20K download and 2K ads request !

So key is ...the target!
but I don't have a clue on this point since, apart for GetJar, others sites don't report by countries :(

The only way I see to make a deeper analysis of this point is to release a version for each host and to look at the results.
I'm pretty sure we'll see something like
Mobile9 => 30K download for 1K ads request
GetJar => 15K download for 4K ads request
For Mobango, I don't know...very interesting host anyway, I'll submit my others (past/future) games on it, for sure!

Poulpytris available on GetJar

At last, after so many months trying to handle in app advertising, Poulpytris is freely available on GetJar

Poulpytris handles several ads networks
- Admob
- ZestAds
- InMobi
- Webmoblink
- AdFonic (disabled right now because their server is so sloooow)

See you in one month for the first report (on Poulpytris success and each ads network)

Thanks again to Alessandro for the ultimate tip which allowed me to finish this project

Admob now support Palm's WebOs

I forgot to talk about the new SDK released by Admob.

I know some of you are interested in Palm so you'll be happy to learn WebOs is now Admob enabled.
So, Admon has now a SDK for
- Mobile Web (and so Flash Lite!)
- IPhone
- Android
- WebOS

They just need to add Blackberries !
Right now, I only saw Mojiva with a BBerry SDK...and RIM themself

Developer’s Guide to In‐Application Advertising

Last week, while making some final research on InApp advertising, I found a very interesting guide from Skyhook Wireless : Developer’s Guide to In‐Application Advertising

Althought it is based on mainly Iphone, its comparaison of Paid vs Free and its description of the mobile ads world are still a must read

Poulpy's Game : 9 months analysis

In March'09 I released Poulpy's Game on GetJar.
1 month later, I made a quick analysis of the download.

Just before I release my new one Poulpytris, I thought it was time to make another analysis, with more data on these 9 last month and 15K downloads!
Following current move on Flash Lite world, I wanted to make an analysis of the version download : raw SWF vs SIS packaged vs CAB packaged

Here come the stats


This the evolution of the number of downloads
Apart the big drop after 2 months, you can notice the 'poor' result of the SIS version
More on the SWF and CAB version below



This is the exact percent of each version for each month
Here you can see how the CAB version became more and more important against the raw SWF
After a slow start, the CAB version is near the 50% of the total download each month!

I made this analysis to find if the CAB version was really needed.
You can see it is! This information made me think again about Adobe goal on Flash mobile.

Adobe will stop in 11 months to support the Adobe Mobile Packager, the actually (?) only solution to distribute in CAB format.
From what I understood, Adobe is working on Flash Lite 4 IN A BROWSER, not standalone.
The so waiting solution to distribute is the announced AIR for mobile (and I really hope it won't be as bugged as the first version of AIR for desktop)
But do you REALLY think EVERY phones will support AIR for mobile in 2010 ?
I talk about phones not smartphones, since market like India doesn't use smartphones a lot (see AdMob stats)
We're still dealing with phones based on FL2 while FL3 is arround for 1 year now.
We'll have to wait how many years to see AIR as a global solution ?
More than one year, for sure ! So between the end of AMP and the full AIR deployment, we'll be without solution. It's awful.

I'm just feeling like I lost my time...that Flash on mobile isn't ready enought...
or, at least, that it will change its face on the coming years.

InApp advertising : silly me!

For some months now I'm trying to use InApp advertising.
I just discovered that "In app" doesn't mean "everything must be done in app"
Silly me! I was fighting with AdMob, Adfonic... ads engines & security models from within Flash Lite when the solution was simply to make a static web page on my site to call...

When Alessandro explained me how he handles AdMob ads I almost died : sooooo easy !

It seems Kirk was looking for the same solution himself (or mailed Alessandro like I did) since he wrote 2 day later a great tutorial on this point

I'll just add to use , for easier parsing,
$admob_params['OPTIONAL']['f'] = "html_no_js";
and, to force for text ads,
$admob_params['OPTIONAL']['y'] = "text";

you should also take a look to AdMob analytics, to know your users!

Google acquires AdMob

Today, Admob officially announced Google acquired them for 750 millions $ (sic!)

Now, Google (almost) rules the Web ads and the Mobile ads...(plus mobile stats!!!)
I really don't like it...
I mean, which Web site haven't a Google ads ? only free-ads web site!
Soon, you'll see these horrible text ads everywhere on mobile....
Internet is becoming a pure ads board...an ugly ads board

It remembered me of how much I was sad when MochiAds added Google ads on their ads engine ... now it's AdMob turns....

Don't know if we'll earn much, but I think I could say goodbye to Paypal payment...
No, I don't want a Google account! Google already had a lot of personal infos on me, they won't gain my bank account number!

It seems I'll have to found another advertiser network....
Not a big deal, I was about to change since AdMob didn't seem to like the idea of a crossdomain.xml on their website...
So, I plan to move to Adfonic (hope they'll succed and won't disappear like a lot of their competitors) but if you had a better option (required : paypal payment and crossdomain.xml), drop a comment !

Mobile Advertising Solution : Adfonic

Like I said some days ago, I'm currently looking for the best ads solution to use in VGTrailers, my Flash Lite developer challenge entry.

I contacted 6 companies and got 4 replies.
I already reviewed Smaato & Admob, here comes Adfonic

Adfonic is a new challenger (less than 6 months?) but I read the compagny is managed by former employees of a now defunct adverstising company, so they know what they are talking about!

If you didn't read my AdMob review, I suggest you to do it now because Adfonic is very similar to AdMob.
For our goal, the important thing to know is that you'll also need to use the 2 requests trick.
But, good news, they are open to any request to improve their API.
And I can personnaly confirm this point since, soon after I posted a request on their forum, they added urlencode format: no need to parse XML, just use a classic LoadVars!

Another good point : you can select which ads you want to see in your app/site.
And when I said select, I mean select EACH one, not select categories.

So what ? Well, between Adfonic (the little) and AdMob (the big), I really don't know :
AdMob has some interesting features
Adfonic is not a 'major company' yet
Adfonic supports LoadVars
AdMob lets you add your own ads
Adfonic lets you select your ads
...

I will use AdMob on a release and Adfonic on another one so I'll see which one is the best.

See you soon for my last review.