Windows Phone - Monetizing your Apps

Hello

There several ways to generate money from your application

1. Use advertisement in your application
2. Price your application from 0.99$ to 499$
3. Provide a free trial and offer the user an option to upgrade to the full application for fee

The best approach in my view is the following : free app with advertisement + an option to remove advertisement for a fee. In this way you make money both directions and reach two markets : one that is not willing to pay and one that is willing to pay.

Use advertisement in your application

There are a lot of ad providers

• PubCenter (microsoft)

• Support about 20 countries (Israel not included)

• AdMob (google)

• Open

• Smaato 

• Open
•  Payment Bank\PayPal

• MobFox 

• Open

•  Payment Bank\PayPal

• AdDuplex 

• Open
• Promote your application 

• InnerActive (experimental) 

• Open

•  Payment Bank\PayPal

• Millenialmedia

• Open

•  Payment Bank\PayPal

Look here how to register at these ad providers


Basically some providers may be useful in U.S. but not in Europe.
It may be also useful to use few providers at a rotation to get better Fill rate.

Since every provider has it's own API it would be nice to have unified interface - this is exactly what is done by a codePlex project name "Unified Ad Control for Windows Phone" which supports all above providers.

Source sample
TestAd_NK.zip


This sample use AdControl with many ad providers.
The sample use two AdProviderStrategy types

• default - AdRotate.
• RemoteAdProviderStrategy

Note that after i have create the new Windows Phone Silverlight project i installed a "Unified Ad" package into it. This was done in two steps :

• Download Nuget here and install it (unless it is already installed).

• To install Windows Phone Unified Ad Control, run the following command in the Package Manager Console

PM> Install-Package wpunifiedad -Version 0.1.0

This will install all packages needed into your project.(You do not need do it for the attached zip)

SimpleAdRotate.xaml

Three Ad providers are used here :

• AdDuplex
• MobFox
• Smaato

Other providers : PubCenter,AdMob,MillenialMedia,InnerActive are remarked under AdProviders tag

But you MUST replace the Id strings circled to the Id you got when registered to these ads providers.

The default AdProviderStrategy is used here - AdRotate  .This means that providers are arranged in list and are accessed for ad. If they do not provide an ad then the next provider will be accessed.

RemoteAdProviderStrategy.xaml

Three Ad providers are used here :

• AdDuplex
• MobFox
• Smaato

Other providers : PubCenter,AdMob,MillenialMedia,InnerActive are remarked under AdProviders tag

But you MUST replace the Id strings circled to the Id you got when registered to these ads providers.

The RemoteAdProviderStrategy is used here. It has two important properties :

• LocalProviderSettingsUri
• RemoteProviderSettingsUri

The LocalProviderSettingsUri access Ads/AdSettings.xml. It is accessed in case the remote setting is not accessable

The RemoteProviderSettingsUri access  a remote Uri. This looks very powerfull because you can change this file even after the app is in the marketplace.

AdSettings.xml

Probability is the chance that a provider will be used.
In my case - English US the second AdCountryDescriptors will be used i.e. MobFox has the best chances to be picked as ad provider

Update the Ids you got in SimpleAdRotate.xaml, click the button "Simple Ad Rotate " to produce :

Note that ONLY one ad provider appears, this is because of the test mode which cause every ad provider to provide an ad thus no need to go to the other ad provider in the list. In actual application this should be OK.

Update the Ids you got in RemoteAdProviderStrategy.xaml, click the button "Remote Ad Provider Strategy"  to produce :

This is Smaato ad, click it and see what happens

Later you will see

This MobFox ad, click it and see what happens

And later

This  AdDuplex ad, click it and see what happens

Remarks :

• The order of ad appearance might be different

Price your application from 0.99$ to 499$
Done as part of the application submission

Provide a free trial and offer the user an option to upgrade to the full application for fee
As far as i know this option does not exist.
You can have the application without ads in the paid area and the same application with ads in the free area. This looks like we need two applications or at least one application with a define.


Nathan