I know. I’ve read the chatter and the consensus is don’t do it. However, I would like to with this app I am almost finished with.
This app is a small trivia game app. I just finished building the first run of the questions database and came up with about 600 questions. There are 8 different trivia categories. Originally, I had the intention of having one of the categories for free, and if the user wants the other categories unlocked, they can make a purchase. I chose one category and then selected 75 questions out of this category to be free. The app asks a series of 5 questions where the user earns free spins with a correct answer and then goes to a game board. With only 75 free questions, the user can play 15 times before the questions repeat.
Maybe this is fine, but I kind of want the user to be able to have access to all of the questions and all 8 categories, and I think ads would be the better approach for this app. I’m not looking to make oodles of money on this app, but I also put a lot of time into it and wouldn’t mind some sort of return
The use of ads in iOS apps has gotten a bad rap, but I think there is a spot for them in some apps. I’ve also experienced in other apps I use (not Xojo apps) that have ads that will display yucky ads (you have a virus), but when looking at Google’s AdMob for example, it seems as though you can filter out what ads are shown, so this seems to take that piece out.
I don’t understand at all how ad integration works, but I know it is possible since I’ve seen others mention it. When checking out some of the ads companies, I see they say you download an SDK and incorporate that into the dev tool (not sure what the process is in AdMob since I did not get too far). Can we do this in Xojo? How do you do it? Are there other ad options available if we cannot incorporate SDKs?
I appreciate you all taking a read and hope you can sympathize and see that ads may have a place in some apps
Yes, I saw that post too, plus others. I would still argue that ads can be appropriate in some apps. I would much rather provide users with thousands of trivia questions where they can get much more use out of the app instead of going through all 75 free questions in a matter of several minutes all for just having a tiny ad display.
I have all of the functionality to do the “lite” free app and IAP premium app tested and ready to go now with only a few more tweaks. Just wanted to bump the ad integration topic since I do think there are apps where these can be warranted. I may just get the lite/premium app up on the store and see how things go. Who knows, maybe users will pay to unlock the extra categories and questions, and it will be enough for me to determine that continued work on the trivia db is worth the effort. Or this topic may get some love and attention and we will have a structured step-by-step way of incorporating ads, at which point I could change up the IAP structure (pay to remove ads)
I absolutely understand your stances @Jason_King and @Tim_Parnell with not wanting to dirty the App Store with ad-filled apps, but let me ask this. With keeping with the lite/premium model, do you feel my plan is ideal or do you think opening up more questions and categories would be better from a user perspective? It’s currently:
One category out of 8 total open with 75 questions (out of 600 total currently) that are free
These 75 questions will all be seen after 15 plays, then the list repeats
One purchase to open all categories and questions
Do you think this is adequate, or should there be more in the lite version?
To try to incentivize purchasing the complete version, you can offer a free in app purchase for a 15 day trial of premium and then have the user pay for premium mode or get kicked back to the lite version. That is a pretty common approach that might work for you. You should focus on delivering value if the user decides to upgrade, not nagging or limiting fun if they play the lite version since that will just drive users away.
Oh I like that idea. I hadn’t considered this before. And if I am reading this correctly, you’re saying to make the free X-day trial as an in-app purchase, which would make it easier to track that they’ve already “purchased” it. Way to prevent them from just using free for 15 days, deleting, reinstalling, and getting another 15 days for free. Am I understanding that logic correctly?