How do you know which ad network is working hardest for you? It’s an important question. You’re spending money on ad campaigns on multiple networks – which ones are driving the most downloads? Which are driving the cheapest way for … More
Developer Blog
How To Track Your App Campaigns
How To Track Your App Campaigns
How do you know which ad network is working hardest for you? It’s an important question. You’re spending money on ad campaigns on multiple networks – which ones are driving the most downloads? Which are driving the cheapest way for you to acquire customers?
We’ve come up with a cross-platform and cross-network way for you to track how well your advertising campaigns are performing. Here is a single dashboard which lets you view reports, track how many people are downloading and installing your apps.
We track across multiple touchpoints – web, app, you name it. If you can advertise on it, we can track it.
Oh, and as we’ve mentioned before – there’s no requirement for UDID. We use a range of techniques including browser cookies, ODIN 1, and Market Referrer. We support multiple technologies to make sure that if one of the schemes gets deprecated, your reports keep working.
Total cost to you? Zero! Zilch! Nada! Nothing! It’s 100% free for you to track advertising campaigns. We want you to concentrate on running effective campaigns, and leave the messy business of tracking to us.
Sign up to InMobi Ad Tracker today!
How do you know which ad network is working hardest for you? It’s an important question. You’re spending money on ad campaigns on multiple networks – which ones are driving the most downloads? Which are driving the cheapest way for … More
InMobi @ Apps For The High Street
I’ve just come back from a fantastic weekend hackathon – Apps For The High Street. 15 teams competing to produce useful apps for a range of London businesses. InMobi were there handing out jelly beans, $75 in free add spend, … More
InMobi @ Apps For The High Street
I’ve just come back from a fantastic weekend hackathon – Apps For The High Street. 15 teams competing to produce useful apps for a range of London businesses.
InMobi were there handing out jelly beans, $75 in free add spend, 10% bonuses from ad earnings, and – of course – our famous beer-bottle opening iPhone cases.
We saw some incredible presentations – apps which help small businesses manage loyalty cards, apps to remind you to buy cakes when it’s your friends’ birthdays, and even an app to call you when special offers are added to your favourite deals websites.
But the winners of the InMobi prize for best use of our API were these guys….
They came up with a brilliant idea – a method for estate agents to auto-generate mobile banner ads for new properties. This means that an estate agent can quickly and easily create adverts containing property details the minute they’ve been added to the site!
An innovative idea – and worthy winners!
Congratulations to all the teams involved. If you want to get started with our SDK, pop over to the InMobi Developer Wiki.
I’ve just come back from a fantastic weekend hackathon – Apps For The High Street. 15 teams competing to produce useful apps for a range of London businesses. InMobi were there handing out jelly beans, $75 in free add spend, … More
New SDK for Android & iOS
It’s here! Get started straight away – download the iOS SDK and download the Android SDK. As we mentioned previously, iOS app developers don’t have to worry about the UDID related app rejection that Apple recently put into motion. InMobi … More
New SDK for Android & iOS
It’s here!
Get started straight away – download the iOS SDK and download the Android SDK.
As we mentioned previously, iOS app developers don’t have to worry about the UDID related app rejection that Apple recently put into motion. InMobi Ad SDK 350 does away with UDID and uses ODIN1 instead. Transmitted only once encrypted, no one can spy on it. You can read more about the companies other than InMobi employing ODIN1 as an alternative to UDID.
Features
We’ve got a load of new features for you. The main highlight of this release is support for inline video ads. We firmly believe that this feature will lead to higher eCPMs as we think users will interact more with video ads as this format tends to be more engaging.
The new release is MRAID 1.0 compliant. MRAID’s goal is to make life easier for creators of Rich-Media ads by enabling easy understanding and correct rendering of ads written using the MRAID API.
So, what are you waiting for? Improve monetization for your apps now – download the iOS SDK and download the Android SDK.
If you need any help, check the Wiki, write to helpdesk@inmobi.com, or you can always turn to your Partner Manager.
Here’s to making kick-arse apps with even higher monetization!
It’s here! Get started straight away – download the iOS SDK and download the Android SDK. As we mentioned previously, iOS app developers don’t have to worry about the UDID related app rejection that Apple recently put into motion. InMobi … More
Hackday at #foolsAPI
InMobi at the #foolsAPI hackday More
Hackday at #foolsAPI
We had a great time at the #foolsAPI at The Hub. Huge thanks to our friends at Apigee, Vodafone, Pearson, and SoundCloud for showing off their APIs and helping people create some really innovative products.
I spent the day giving out beer-bottle-opening-iPhone cases, talking about our HTML5 SDK, eating cupcakes, and judging apps for the grand prize.
There were loads of great entries – and many bizarre ones – but the InMobi prize of $250 went to What A Plan for their brilliant London event guide.
If you’ve got a hackday coming up – and want InMobi to be there – drop us an email
InMobi at the #foolsAPI hackday More
OMG! UDID WAT?
UDID is on its way out – InMobi is using ODIN1 More
OMG! UDID WAT?
There’s been a whole lot of Sturm und Drang around apps which uses the iPhone’s UDID to track users. We’re getting reports of Apple banning apps which access UDID – although there’s nothing official yet.
Frankly, it’s well overdue. Users want their privacy respected, app developers want to know if their advertising campaigns have been successful, and ad networks (like InMobi) want to make sure we’re sending relevant adverts to users.
UDID was the easiest way for people to do all of that – but it wasn’t very respectful of privacy. So it’s going – and good riddance to it.
The new InMobi SDK 3.5 does away with UDID. It’s in beta now, and should be available for you to download in early April. If you have any pending updates or new submissions, hang on for a bit and integrate with InMobi Ads SDK 3.5 as soon as it becomes available. Look for it in the publisher section of your InMobi account – we’ll also announce it on this blog. And Twitter. And via email. And on the Developer Wiki. Trust me, you’ll hear about it!
So, what’s replacing UDID? Primarily, we’re looking at ODIN1 which completely avoids UDID. In addition, ODIN1 is only ever transmitted once it has been encrypted, so no one can spy on it.
With upcoming releases of the SDK, we’re going to be looking at better ways to protect users’ privacy. We want to make sure that apps aren’t leaking private information, and that customers can trust us.
Got any questions? Stick them in the comments box.
UDID is on its way out – InMobi is using ODIN1 More
What’s The Truth About Battery Usage of Mobile Advertising?
How to make your app more energy efficient. More
What’s The Truth About Battery Usage of Mobile Advertising?
There have been a lot of extraordinary claims recently that mobile ads could use up to to 75% of your phone’s battery. Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So – let’s take a look at the original Microsoft research paper.
The first thing to note is that the paper doesn’t claim that ads are responsible for 75% of battery drain. In one case, the researchers only looked at the first 33 seconds of usage when playing a chess game.
Naturally, at start up, an app will open communications to download an ad. Once the ad has been received, the app shouldn’t poll for another ad for some time.
However the time it takes to play a game of chess (the computer usually beats me in 10 minutes) a few ad calls are dwarfed by the energy consumption of the screen, the speakers, and the haptic feedback.
If your game or app requires network connectivity to function, or the user already has an active data session, there is only minor incremental power usage when retrieving an ad.
Also of interest is that the research was based on the HTC Magic and Passion. These are the two oldest Android phones – they went on sale in 2009. Since then the Android operating system has become a lot more efficient. Hardware changes in modern phones also achieve big battery savings.
That said – it is important that developers make sure their code is as efficient as possible, and that includes their ad calling.
Here are our top tips for making your ad calls as battery friendly as possible:
- Don’t call an ad more times than you need to. Typically no more often than once per minute.
- GPS is very battery intensive – if you want to use location based advertising, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION is usually sufficient.
- Stagger your ad calls to coincide with other network accesses your app requires – such as update checks.
- Make sure you profile your app’s performance. Get rid of as many bottle necks as possible.
- As the paper mentions, as a developer you must release your wakelocks properly.
- Finally, upgrade any libraries and SDKs you are using to the latest versions.
We have a great engineering team at InMobi. We’re planning on releasing the next version of our Android SDK and iOS SDK soon. We’ll be taking a look at what we’ve created to see if there are any more energy efficiencies to be made.
How to make your app more energy efficient. More
InMobi Developers at Mobile World Congress
InMobi at Mobile World Congress More
InMobi Developers at Mobile World Congress
We had an awesome time at the Mobile World Congress last week. We gave out loads of goodies – including our ever popular Beer Bottle Opening iPhone Case.
If you’ve got an event that you want the InMobi Developer team to come to – let us know!
InMobi at Mobile World Congress More
CELL·SDK – Great Competition for Developers
We’re teaming up with CELL·SDK to give developers some great prizes. CELL·SDK allows you to use C# to create applications on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. It’s a fast and easy way to create cross platform apps. CELL·SDK has a … More
CELL·SDK – Great Competition for Developers
We’re teaming up with CELL·SDK to give developers some great prizes.
CELL·SDK allows you to use C# to create applications on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. It’s a fast and easy way to create cross platform apps. CELL·SDK has a huge range of features which we think Developers will love.
So, if you want to be in with the chance to win a CELL·SDK Starter License, an iPad 2, a Nokia Lumia 800, and $250 in InMobi Ads Vouchers – enter the competition now.
We’re teaming up with CELL·SDK to give developers some great prizes. CELL·SDK allows you to use C# to create applications on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. It’s a fast and easy way to create cross platform apps. CELL·SDK has a … More
Casual game devs – make money with Pocket Change
InMobi has teamed up with Pocket Change, an interesting new start up from the Bay Area. They have an SDK that allows developers to monetize their mobile games one quarter at a time, as if it was a coin operated … More
Casual game devs – make money with Pocket Change
InMobi has teamed up with Pocket Change, an interesting new start up from the Bay Area. They have an SDK that allows developers to monetize their mobile games one quarter at a time, as if it was a coin operated arcade machine.
We realize that ads work well for many apps, but there are some developers who are interested in other ways to make money. So how does Pocket Change help you make money? It allows you to monetize each turn. For those of you following along at home, you can check out either Pocket Change’s sample iOS app, Recess, or one of their developer’s Android apps, Boost 2.
The user has a collection of tokens that you can work into your game play. The tokens are just $0.99 for 30 so the user isn’t hesitant to start spending and keep playing. There’s even a nice built-in social hook to Facebook that encourages your users to invite friends to play the game, giving them a few tokens as a reward.
In company’s demo app, Recess, each time you want to shoot your rubber ball at the school-yard bully, it costs a token. And when all the tokens run out, the user is prompted to purchase some more. There’s no credit card needed, it simply goes through the platform’s in-app purchasing API.
The best part (besides making some extra money, of course) – you decide when and how those tokens are sold and collected; Pocket Change doesn’t interfere with your ability to structure your game and user experience.
So if you’re interested in checking out another monetization methods for your casual games, go ahead and take a look at Pocket Change SDK.
InMobi has teamed up with Pocket Change, an interesting new start up from the Bay Area. They have an SDK that allows developers to monetize their mobile games one quarter at a time, as if it was a coin operated … More
Make Money with PhoneGap & InMobi
PhoneGap makes app creation easy. You can code in your standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and don’t forget some awesome device API hooks) instead of Objective-C or Java and build apps quickly. This is not just for building out prototypes … More
Make Money with PhoneGap & InMobi
PhoneGap makes app creation easy. You can code in your standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and don’t forget some awesome device API hooks) instead of Objective-C or Java and build apps quickly.
This is not just for building out prototypes or hackathon apps, there are a few really popular apps that utilize PhoneGap to manage their codebase across multiple devices. There are many advantages to the native approach, and many to the PhoneGap approach. But one thing is for sure, PhoneGap lets you get up and running very quickly.
And its even easier to get some revenue flowing in with InMobi ads. Here’s a quick tutorial about how to get ads displayed in your PhoneGap app, and the whole process from project set-up to seeing ads takes less than 7 minutes.
Ready? Set? Make Money. How much money? Figure that out here with our Economic Toolkit
PhoneGap makes app creation easy. You can code in your standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and don’t forget some awesome device API hooks) instead of Objective-C or Java and build apps quickly. This is not just for building out prototypes … More
