Ad agency AirPush has announced a new approach to in-app advertising – whereby ads are pushed directly to users’ notification pane.
The idea is that having installed an AirPush enabled app, ads targeted to the user will appear in the notification pane – even when the app is not running. AirPush argues that this is better for both developers and end users.
End users, says Air Push, prefer the methodology as they can view the ads when convenient and not when they’re busy using an app. Developers apparently prefer it because, according to AirPush, it significantly increases user take-up and therefore revenue.
Take a look at this video from AirPush for a more visual explanation:
Let’s, for just a moment, give AirPush the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that this is a better approach to advertising, one that is more convinient for user and developer alike. There still remains one problem:
Users really don’t like it. Even if the arguments made by AirPush are accurate (though unlikely) the the simple fact that users are rebelling against apps using this type of technology already makes it a bad approach.
The developer of APNdroid, an app with almost 30,000 installs from the Android Market, has been burned by its attempt to use AirPush. As a result of including AirPush ads in APNdroid, Google recieved a large number of complaints that the app was malicious or malware, thus removing it from the market. In this instance the developer repented and removed AirPush from the app and Google subsequently reinstated it.
The big problem with this approach to advertising is simply that the adverts intrude into the user’s overall Android experience. It is one thing to have ads within the app itself, but quite another to actually get in the way while one is trying to view potentially important notifications.
It is right that developers should be able to make money and, given how hard that can be on Android, it is not surprising that some will turn to systems like this one. The bottom line, however, is that if a user does not want to install an app because of the advertising approach then there will not be any great benefit to the developer in the long run. Few or no users obviously equals low advertising take up.
The problem of monetising Android apps still needs to be solved, but AirPush is clearly not the solution. Not even close.
