Advertising systems for Windows Phone 7 (2/3)

In Chapter 1 I told you about an introduction to advertising systems, what they are and what you want to know about them to integrate in your applications.

Today, I’ll tell you about the systems that I tried, very shortly because each one of them is a whole world and I could write a dozen of articles, so let’s start:

Just as a remember, I’ll tell you about each one the next points

• Control: What control do you need to search in the SDK
• Start point: When do it start to ask for advertisements, normally when attached or explicitly asking for adverts.
• Refresh: If there is a way of refreshing adverts (explicitly) I’ll tell you here, but I won’t tell you about the automatic refreshing of adverts (thing that can be found over the web page or control configuration).
• Events: If you need to control when an advert is displayed or if there is not an advert available to switch to another advertising system I will let you know what events do you need to subscribe to.
• Basic data: What is the basic information needed to provide to the control, so the advertising system can provide you with adverts.
• Impressions: Profesionally I used all of this advertising systems, so I have my own opinion about them and will let you know.

• Control: Control called AdControl can be found in Visual Microsoft Advertising SDK.
• Start point & Refresh: It start asking for ads as soon as you attach it to a container panel unless you mark property IsAutoRefreshEnabled to false, in wich case you will need to ask for ads with Refresh() method.
• Events: For more info about how was with advert ask you will lneed to check with events AdRefreshed and ErrorOcurred.
• Basic data: AddUnitID & ApplicationID
• Impressions: Is well known that Microsoft gave a high eCPM when started (I suppose that trying to convince every developer to use it), but after a few months their eCPM went below hell, so I won’t use it as your primary advertising system.

• Control: Control called BannerAd can be found in AdMob Beta SDK.
• Start point & Refresh: It start asking for ads as soon as you attach it to a container, and this cannot be controlled unless you use a tricky way, using a prevent refresing method called BeginUpdates() and EndUpdates() to end and start (yes, i wrote it well) respectively.
• Events: Through events AdReceived and AdFailed you will know when an ad is available or you will need to switch to another system.
• Basic data: A simple AddUnitID is provided to identify your application
• Impressions: Admob is very popular (maybe the most of all), because in Android and iOS is found as the best monetizing system because it gives you a lot of adverts and pays a lot for them, but when integrated on a WP7 app I found a huge impact on UI performance and doing a little research I found that a lot of people have the same issue as told here. I wouldn’t use it untill they fix this issue if you dont want to make your application unresponsive every time you ask for an ad.

• Control: Control called MMAdView can be found in MillenialMedia Windows Phone 7 SDK
• Start point & Refresh: MMAdView will be asking for adverts as soon as it is attached to its container unless you set property RefreshTimer to “-1”, you will can explicitly ask for a new advert with method CallForAd().
• Events: MMAdSuccess & MMAdFailure, also a GetAdCallBack method is interesting if wanted to control the ad download proccess.
• Basic data: AppID & Advert Type should be set if want to see adverts from Millenialmedia
• Impressions: It’s one of the most complete SDK’s, but it doesn’t worth a single dollar if they never give you an advert (even trying for more than 1 week).  Let’s wait if they take Windows Phone 7 more seriouosly, but instead of this, I’ve read about humiliating  ePCM  so I wont consider this as my first option in no case.

 

• Control: Control AdControl can be found with MobFox WP7 SDK
• Start point & Refresh: It start asking for new adverts as soon as it is attached to a container unless you set property AutoRotate to false, but you can request new adverts with method RequestNextAd()
• Events: NewAd & NoAd
• Basic data: Just like AdMob & AdDuplex a simple PublisherID is needed to identify your application.
• Impressions: I jst don’t like to explicitly activate an advert system on an application, as a professional I will need to try for the real fillrate to consider MobFox, but they need you to explicitly request activation of your application to serve you with ads, so just for this, I don’t like MobFox, but it’s true that it’s really easy to integrate and they provide you an amazing SDK, everything that could be expected is in their SDK.

• Control: Control AdControl can be found in downloadable AdDuplex SDK
• Start point & Refresh: AdDuplex start asking for ads as soon as it is attached to a container, and ther is no Refresh method provided, so you will need to attach and unattach it from  container to make an explicit ask.
• Events: AdLoaded & AdLoadingError
• Basic data: Just like AdMob, a simple AppID is needed to start receiving ads.
• Impressions: AdDuplex is some kind of strange ad provider because they do not pay you a dime (but it’s still usefull). What they give you is a 100% fill rate and promise you that for each 10 adverts you show, 8 adverts will be shown for your application in other applications. It’s an advert network, very advisable for everyone who seek for a free advertising campaign of your advert, so I strictly recommend you to use this when no adverts are shown from your main advertising provider. Quickly as hell, very well integrated and optimized for WP7 it really provide you with a 100% fill rate. This is my second personal option for advertising.

• Control: InneractiveAD
• Start point & Refresh: ——-
• Events: —–
• Basic data: AppID, AdType, Grid to display adverts, reload time
• Impressions: I feel confused about Inneractive, it’s not just the weirdest advertising provider SDK (I’ts the less common sense developed), it just don’t let you have control over advert provision. It seems to be developed thinking that they are the only advert system in an app, but if you want to use multiple advert systems, this is a headache

• Control: Control SmaatoAdViewer can be found on SOMAWP7.dll
• Start point & Refresh:  Smaato need you to explicitly start asking for adverts with method “StartAds()”, and stop with “StopAds()”, it will ask for adverts periodically depending on AdInterval property.
• Events: AdError &NewAdAvailable
• Basic data: You will need to set up PublisherID (as Pub property) and AdSpaceID (as Adspace property) to make this run.
• Impressions: Smaato is a great advert provider with great campaigns and a good fill rate, I will recommend it 🙂