Re: [android-developers] Advertising opt out

Let's be civil here. No one has proposed "annoying the hell out of your users". If you do, the users will uninstall you long before they make any sort of opt out decision.

I can agree with several people here.

Fran and William are right about the math. John's approach does not bring him more revenue, and likely reduces it by a small amount. CTR and eCPM are vanity metrics.

Nonetheless, John's approach is reasonable if it is worthwhile to give up a miniscule amount of revenue, in exchange for increased goodwill and decreased support costs. I've been known to give a few refunds that were entirely undeserved, just because I have better things to do than argue with customers.

But William's approach also makes sense. Let's not use words like blackmail and hostage.  You are offering something of value, ad free use of your app. In a free market, the user can accept the offer and pay, decide that the ads aren't really that bad and decline, or even decide to uninstall your app. No hostages, no blackmail. Certainly there are other offers you could make to your users, alone or in combination. Since there is a way to opt out of ads, albeit a paid one, reasonable people are less likely to complain. UNreasonable people, well, they might still do that . . .

I am not using ads for a revenue source in anything right now. Personally, I wouldn't take John's approach for the simple reason that I'd never get around to implementing it. I have several hundred things on a list that I could do to make things better for my customers: features, usability, content, etc. I think it fair to prioritize such requests above those things that would make life easier for the people who are unwilling to pay, neither through accepting ads nor making a purchase.  That puts it at the bottom of the list which means I will get to it approximately. . .  never.

I'm not in business to please everyone. Don't get me wrong - I want those who do purchase and use my products to have a great experience. But you could release an app with no monetization whatsoever and it would still get complaints. You can't expect those of us who want/need to earn revenue to be exempt.

Nathan

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