Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than

00:00:08 ◼   ► 30 minutes, so let's get started. So this week we're going to talk a little bit about

00:00:12 ◼   ► iAd and ad-driven app revenue models because

00:00:16 ◼   ► there's some news this past week that iAd

00:00:20 ◼   ► was shutting down part of its offerings and

00:00:24 ◼   ► it's shutting down what's called the App Network. And a lot of people, it was a very confusing message and a lot

00:00:28 ◼   ► of people kind of thought this was shutting down all of iAd, and it's kind of confusing

00:00:32 ◼   ► as to what parts of iAd are left. And David, since you have a lot of experience with ad-funded

00:00:39 ◼   ► apps, and I think most developers who most people hear from in podcasts and stuff don't

00:00:46 ◼   ► have a lot of experience. Most developers in podcasts and who have blogs and stuff are

00:00:50 ◼   ► trying to sell paid apps, or at least free apps with paid and app purchases. And I don't

00:00:55 ◼   ► hear a lot of discussion from people who have much or any experience, especially significant

00:01:00 ◼   ► experience with ad-driven revenue models and apps. And you do. So I'd love to hear a

00:01:08 ◼   ► lot from you on this, with your experiences and your thoughts around what's going on

00:01:14 ◼   ► with ads, what kind of led to this point, what the reality is of ad-funded app development

00:01:21 ◼   ► today and then what this announcement really means and what it might mean for you.

00:01:25 ◼   ► So I definitely wanted to dive into a little bit of first of like the background of where

00:01:30 ◼   ► I'm coming from with ads. And so like whenever I think about revenue for an application,

00:01:34 ◼   ► the first thing obviously is like you think about, "Well, how am I going to make money?"

00:01:38 ◼   ► And you can really make money in three main ways. Like you can have an ongoing payment

00:01:43 ◼   ► from somebody, you know, something like a subscription. You can get a one-time payment

00:01:47 ◼   ► from your customer, which is the typical

00:01:50 ◼   ► sort of like paid up front model.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And then you'd have something where you get no payment

00:01:54 ◼   ► from your customer.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And so you're either then relying on advertising

00:01:58 ◼   ► where someone else is paying you for that customer

00:02:01 ◼   ► to use your application, or you have just no revenue at all,

00:02:04 ◼   ► in which case you're probably, you know,

00:02:05 ◼   ► you're going for some kind of market share play

00:02:08 ◼   ► or something where direct revenue isn't important to you.

00:02:12 ◼   ► And so why would you end up using advertising?

00:02:15 ◼   ► an application that's going to have a lot of people and the majority of which who don't

00:02:19 ◼   ► want to actually pay to use your application with money, which is a lot of applications,

00:02:24 ◼   ► especially in the iOS app store. And so I've used advertising in almost all of my app,

00:02:31 ◼   ► for almost the entire length of my history of being an app developer. One of my earliest

00:02:37 ◼   ► apps, I even originally built my own app network and was just trying to do direct sales for

00:02:41 ◼   ► it and that didn't really work in scale. And so I pretty quickly moved to I think back

00:02:45 ◼   ► then this was probably in 2009 ish. It was probably AdMob, I think was the big one back

00:02:52 ◼   ► then. Then at you know, I had was introduced in 2010. And so I jumped onto using that as

00:02:59 ◼   ► quickly as I could. And I had always did pretty well for me, you know, so apples, it was Apple's

00:03:04 ◼   ► platform, it was nice and integrated into the platform. And it did well, you know, I

00:03:09 ◼   ► got pretty good fill rates, which is the amount of time that I ask for an ad that I actually

00:03:13 ◼   ► get one back. For me, it was usually like three quarters to almost like 98%, I think,

00:03:18 ◼   ► often for fill rates. I had pretty quality ads, good revenue, and I was overall generally

00:03:23 ◼   ► pretty happy with it. Like, over time, the quality of iAd has certainly changed, but

00:03:29 ◼   ► I think it's probably more in some ways a reflection on how the store has changed since

00:03:35 ◼   ► like 2010, where now a lot of the ads are just for, you know, sort of like the Candy

00:03:41 ◼   ► Crush Game of War kind of games, where it's all about trying to drive downloads for apps

00:03:49 ◼   ► that are then used in-app purchase to get revenue from people. And so that's what

00:03:54 ◼   ► most of my ads are for, which means, you know, they're not, it's not great. They're

00:03:58 ◼   ► not awesome things. But at this point, like, apps or advertising probably makes somewhere

00:04:03 ◼   ► between 40 to 45 percent of the revenue I get, and it's definitely the biggest source

00:04:09 ◼   ► of revenue from my most important apps to me. And so that's kind of a weird place

00:04:14 ◼   ► to find myself now that I find that iAd is going to be shutting down or closing or doing

00:04:20 ◼   ► something dramatic in the next couple of, I think by June or so it'll be changing.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And I don't think we know exactly what it's going to look like after that, but it's

00:04:29 ◼   ► definitely going to be different.

00:04:30 ◼   ► >>Steve - So I know that you talk about the fill rate, and I've heard various things.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I've heard from people who aren't happy with iAds fill rate.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Is it getting worse over time?

00:04:40 ◼   ► >>Joe - It varies.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And so this is one of those funny things with advertising.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I've heard from some people who get, because it's all based, the ads that you get are always

00:04:48 ◼   ► going to be based on the demographics of the people who use your app, and how they use

00:04:53 ◼   ► it, and some kind of secret algorithm that is trying to pair people up.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And so for my apps, for audiobooks and Podometer++,

00:05:02 ◼   ► I've usually had pretty good fill rates.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I wouldn't say they've gone down over time.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Maybe some of the rates have gone down over time.

00:05:08 ◼   ► But those are even really hard to track

00:05:10 ◼   ► because they're so cyclical.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Every January 1, my advertising rates drop by at least a half

00:05:17 ◼   ► because everyone's advertising budgets were all spent up

00:05:22 ◼   ► until then, and no one buys ads the first couple

00:05:25 ◼   ► weeks of January.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And so things cycle dramatically.

00:05:28 ◼   ► But I would say iAd is, maybe it's gotten done down slightly.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I think overall in the advertising market,

00:05:35 ◼   ► I think in a lot of ways things are going down.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And the weird thing to do then is

00:05:39 ◼   ► start having to balance those.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Like, what kind of ads are you even talking about?

00:05:44 ◼   ► Most of my apps only do banner ads.

00:05:46 ◼   ► You can also do interstitials and more aggressive forms

00:05:50 ◼   ► of advertising that completely take over the application

00:05:52 ◼   ► until you watch a 30-second video or those types of things,

00:05:56 ◼   ► which obviously get better and better rates accordingly.

00:05:59 ◼   ► - Right, but of course annoy people more and more.

00:06:01 ◼   ► - Yes, yep.

00:06:03 ◼   ► - I mean, that's always a tricky balance with advertising

00:06:04 ◼   ► is like what works is being more intrusive

00:06:08 ◼   ► and more annoying.

00:06:09 ◼   ► And like you can, there are things that work

00:06:12 ◼   ► that aren't intrusive and annoying,

00:06:14 ◼   ► but there's always this constant tension,

00:06:15 ◼   ► this pressure to make a little bit more

00:06:18 ◼   ► or to combat some other kind of downturn

00:06:21 ◼   ► by just making things a little bit more annoying

00:06:23 ◼   ► or a little bit more creepy in data privacy issues

00:06:26 ◼   ► things like that. There's always these pressures, and a lot of times people have to cave to

00:06:30 ◼   ► those things in order to even survive, to have their businesses survive. It's a very

00:06:35 ◼   ► tricky balance. And in some areas, like in podcasting right now, we are lucky that podcast

00:06:41 ◼   ► advertising right now is still very high quality and that we're able to command great rates

00:06:45 ◼   ► and have ads that aren't too annoying because of the nature of the medium and the market

00:06:50 ◼   ► conditions right now. But apps, I think, are similar to the web in that it's very, very

00:06:55 ◼   ► hard to get great ad rates for in-app ads. I mean, have you found that to be the case?

00:07:02 ◼   ► >>

00:07:02 ◼   ► >>

00:07:08 ◼   ► There is money to be made there, but the volumes you need to make a living doing it is pretty

00:07:16 ◼   ► substantial.

00:07:17 ◼   ► This may be the better way to look at it, in much the same way as with the web or something,

00:07:20 ◼   ► where, like you say, with a podcast, the number of listeners you have to have before you can

00:07:24 ◼   ► have a non-substantial revenue coming from a podcast is dramatically less than the number

00:07:31 ◼   ► of users you need for an application to have any kind of real tangible revenue. You're

00:07:37 ◼   ► talking about probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of users a day of your application

00:07:44 ◼   ► before you're going to be getting into something that you could really make a run at, which

00:07:49 ◼   ► is -- and you have to keep doing it all the time. In some ways it's nice because advertising

00:07:54 ◼   ► is based on people using your application. And so in some ways it's nice -- I've always

00:07:59 ◼   ► said that I like that it aligns my people using the application with the revenue I get.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So if I engage people more, if I make people really like the app and come back to it time

00:08:08 ◼   ► and time again, my revenue goes up, which is nice. But it still always creates all these

00:08:15 ◼   ► weird tensions for like, "Well, what if there was another way that I could get people

00:08:18 ◼   ► back into the application? What if I sent them a push notification that said, 'Hey,

00:08:23 ◼   ► you haven't checked your steps in a while. Maybe you should.'"

00:08:26 ◼   ► "You've earned a new step bomb!"

00:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah, like, there's so many things that you start to get into that cross all kinds

00:08:32 ◼   ► of lines that, like, it's a really—it forces you to really be thoughtful in a way

00:08:39 ◼   ► that is a bit weird.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Sometimes I like just the paid app, the paid model, which is nice because it's simple.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Like, in some ways I can just be lazy about it and be like, "Well, they gave me money,

00:08:49 ◼   ► I gave them app."

00:08:50 ◼   ► Like, that's great.

00:08:51 ◼   ► That's nice and simple versus all having to really think about, like, "Does this

00:08:55 ◼   ► cross the line? Is this too aggressive? Is this too annoying? Is this going to work in

00:09:04 ◼   ► a way that is going to ruin my reputation? But it could make me more money, but really

00:09:09 ◼   ► make the app not so good to use? It's some really hard questions that things like advertising

00:09:14 ◼   ► force you to face up to.

00:09:17 ◼   ► >> Enoch: Well, and I think among the Apple enthusiast community, I think ads and apps

00:09:23 ◼   ► for taboo. You don't see people panic making apps with ads in them. The idea of the high-end

00:09:31 ◼   ► indie craft app scene, almost nobody in that scene uses ads in any apps that people have

00:09:38 ◼   ► actually heard of and use. Some people will have a secret app on the side. Like I've

00:09:43 ◼   ► heard David Barnard at App Cub, he always talks about he has this mirror app, and that's

00:09:49 ◼   ► he experiments with revenue model stuff and they have ads in that, that's fine. But you

00:09:54 ◼   ► don't see Tweetbot 5 free with ads or pay to unlock them. You hardly ever see ads in

00:10:02 ◼   ► that kind of high-end app development community. And I think ultimately, I think that's temporary.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I think we will get to a point where ads start moving in just because the other revenue models

00:10:13 ◼   ► are getting so much harder. You know, because as you said, that's a really good point that

00:10:17 ◼   ► It does make sense for apps that are used frequently.

00:10:23 ◼   ► If you have some kind of quick utility app that is hardly ever used, the kind of thing

00:10:28 ◼   ► you keep on your phone for occasional use, or maybe if you're traveling, something like

00:10:33 ◼   ► that, or maybe it's a special kind of unit converter that you only need four times a

00:10:38 ◼   ► year but you're really glad it's there.

00:10:40 ◼   ► In those kind of instances, ad-funded apps probably don't make a lot of sense, but if

00:10:44 ◼   ► If it's something like a news reader, where you're going into that every single day,

00:10:50 ◼   ► and spending meaningful time in it, then I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Is it possible for ads in frequently used apps in an environment where there's a lot

00:11:05 ◼   ► of pressure to keep the upfront price down, like the App Store, might ads make more money

00:11:10 ◼   ► for daily use apps than a paid upfront model could?

00:11:15 ◼   ► - I think probably.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, that's why I do,

00:11:19 ◼   ► like why I have ads in so many of my applications.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It's because that is a way to make more money,

00:11:25 ◼   ► probably, than I would from paid apps.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And for, I mean, it's a bit,

00:11:29 ◼   ► I haven't done too many of these now

00:11:30 ◼   ► because most of my apps, I just,

00:11:31 ◼   ► my default is that the app will be free

00:11:34 ◼   ► with some other form of revenue,

00:11:36 ◼   ► whether it's an in-app purchase or ads, or probably both.

00:11:39 ◼   ► But back in the day, I used to do the kind of, well, you'd have the like ad version

00:11:44 ◼   ► that was free and the paid version that was, you know, that you'd charge for.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And it was like, people could choose, like, do you want the ad free or the other one?

00:11:52 ◼   ► And there was a time when they sort of gave each other a run for their money, but I don't

00:11:56 ◼   ► know, probably for the least the last three or four years, it's been almost entirely

00:12:01 ◼   ► in the free.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Like, and I know this is my own behavior, like that's in some ways the expectation

00:12:06 ◼   ► apps in the App Store now is that they're going to be free to download, and there may

00:12:11 ◼   ► be some other things that are either advertising or an in-app purchase later, but if it's

00:12:16 ◼   ► not free, there's a massive wall, and it feels like the wall is getting bigger and

00:12:20 ◼   ► bigger now.

00:12:21 ◼   ► And so if your goal is to make a living from an app, there's a very good chance that

00:12:26 ◼   ► advertising will need to be something that you at least strongly consider, if not implement

00:12:31 ◼   ► and use in your application.

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00:14:18 ◼   ► Under the Radar and all of Relay FM.

00:14:20 ◼   ► So getting back to iAd, what was the announcement?

00:14:24 ◼   ► So the announcement said that they were showing

00:14:25 ◼   ► down the app network.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Can you go into what that was and what's left?

00:14:30 ◼   ► - This is all very ambiguous.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And as somebody who, like I said,

00:14:34 ◼   ► makes a very substantial amount of my revenue from IAD,

00:14:36 ◼   ► I've tried my best to understand this,

00:14:39 ◼   ► be it both from the official announcement they made

00:14:41 ◼   ► and the various bits of rumors or leaks or other things

00:14:45 ◼   ► that sort of--

00:14:46 ◼   ► like, before Apple actually made their official announcement,

00:14:48 ◼   ► there was a bunch of articles from all over the place,

00:14:50 ◼   ► people kind of talking about that Apple was going to be

00:14:53 ◼   ► scaling down their sales team, and they were going

00:14:55 ◼   ► to be changing things around.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So they specifically said that the IAD app network

00:15:00 ◼   ► be discontinued as of June 30th of this year. Although we are no longer accepting new ads

00:15:05 ◼   ► into the apps into the network, advertising campaigns will continue to run and be still

00:15:10 ◼   ► earning advertising revenue until June 30th. As best I understand, like the iAd app network

00:15:16 ◼   ► is one of, it's a term I was, I spent the last like couple of days trying to find a definition

00:15:22 ◼   ► for what that actually means, and I haven't found any. Like, it's, it's the exact, like,

00:15:27 ◼   ► Like it could be that the app network is the part of iAd right now that you use to...

00:15:34 ◼   ► If I wanted to promote my app, I could make an ad for Podometer++, I could put it into

00:15:38 ◼   ► iAd, and then other apps that are showing iAds would be then promoting it for me, and

00:15:45 ◼   ► I'd pay for that.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It could be that.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I think it's also possible that it's the whole way that which ads are being collected and

00:15:52 ◼   ► aggregated right now, both from that and then from the original thing.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Back in 2010, when IAD was first launched, it was supposed to be about big brands.

00:16:00 ◼   ► There was Steve Jobs up on the stage talking about how they were going to partner with

00:16:04 ◼   ► all these big brands to make these really emotional experiences and to raise and elevate

00:16:10 ◼   ► the thing.

00:16:11 ◼   ► That lasted like a month?

00:16:12 ◼   ► Well, it didn't last very long.

00:16:15 ◼   ► That's probably fair to say.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I remember there was a Nissan Leaf had one.

00:16:20 ◼   ► There were a couple of big brands that had them, but it just didn't seem—

00:16:22 ◼   ► I think it might have literally only been a couple.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And that never really went anywhere, and so I don't think it's that.

00:16:27 ◼   ► But it seems like the IAD as we know it now is going to be going away.

00:16:33 ◼   ► From other, not necessarily from Apple's direct announcements, but from some of the other

00:16:37 ◼   ► leaks, it sounds like there will continue to be an IAD framework in iOS.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I'm not completely sure on that.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Like it's possible in iOS 10 that it's just going to go away.

00:16:49 ◼   ► That would seem a little weird, but it's possible.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And it may be replaced by something more algorithmic or straightforward, or it's entirely possible

00:16:56 ◼   ► that Apple is just going to sort of back away from this whole thing.

00:17:00 ◼   ► I mean, I think the reality, though, is either way, whatever is going to happen, as of June

00:17:04 ◼   ► 30, the revenue models that are based, like my own, on, you know, substantially on IAD

00:17:09 ◼   ► are likely going to need to be prepared for a change.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Exactly what that looks like.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I'm still honestly working out for myself.

00:17:17 ◼   ► But whatever we're doing, whatever it is, it's likely not going to be as performant

00:17:21 ◼   ► in terms of revenue, or from a fill rate perspective, and all these things, as the major thing they're

00:17:26 ◼   ► doing now. Because it definitely doesn't sound like they're just like, "Oh, we're taking

00:17:30 ◼   ► what we have and going in a different direction." There's definitely like, "We're discontinuing

00:17:33 ◼   ► a large swath of this and going to be potentially replacing it with something, or maybe not

00:17:38 ◼   ► at all." But it's definitely a big, massive change if you use iAd coming in June, presumably

00:17:47 ◼   ► right after WWDC maybe, like,

00:17:49 ◼   ► will I have, they'll announce,

00:17:50 ◼   ► or during WWDC they'll announce what's gonna replace it

00:17:52 ◼   ► or what we need to do, which will be a little short notice,

00:17:55 ◼   ► but something's definitely coming.

00:17:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's interesting,

00:17:59 ◼   ► like, if you think back about, like,

00:18:00 ◼   ► why iAd was created in the first place,

00:18:03 ◼   ► it was to basically, like, Apple saw

00:18:05 ◼   ► that ad networks on mobile were becoming a thing,

00:18:08 ◼   ► ad-funded apps were likely to become, you know,

00:18:09 ◼   ► a big revenue stream, and there were all these

00:18:13 ◼   ► kind of creepy ad companies coming in

00:18:15 ◼   ► trying to make these kind of crappy ad embeds for apps. So I imagine the reason iAd exists

00:18:22 ◼   ► is because Apple—you know, Steve said it right on stage. He said in that announcement

00:18:25 ◼   ► that these things frankly suck and that we think we can do better. And Apple wanted—they

00:18:32 ◼   ► wanted control over this monetization method for themselves. But it didn't really play

00:18:36 ◼   ► out that way. What has played out is, turns out, Apple is not a very good ad company.

00:18:41 ◼   ► It just seems like it's not the kind of thing Apple is good at, especially with all

00:18:45 ◼   ► stances on privacy and everything else, it just seems like running a big ad network kind

00:18:50 ◼   ► of conflicts with what they do. But maybe it's the lesser of two evils because if they

00:18:57 ◼   ► don't run the ad network, then the third party ad networks are the only choice for developers

00:19:02 ◼   ► who have ad supported apps, rather than just being a backup choice. So I wonder, when I

00:19:11 ◼   ► When I first heard the app network was being shut down,

00:19:14 ◼   ► I thought they meant those little templates

00:19:16 ◼   ► developers could use to just make their,

00:19:18 ◼   ► rather than having the whole interactive experience,

00:19:20 ◼   ► it was like this template that you,

00:19:21 ◼   ► as any developer could sign up,

00:19:23 ◼   ► and you'd basically get like an image,

00:19:24 ◼   ► and if it was tapped, it would show

00:19:26 ◼   ► like a little app store slide up sheet.

00:19:28 ◼   ► So you wouldn't have to really do any custom programming.

00:19:30 ◼   ► There wouldn't be any custom interactivity.

00:19:32 ◼   ► It would just be a banner image for your app,

00:19:34 ◼   ► and people tap it, and it shows the app store page.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And I actually, did you ever pay for those?

00:19:39 ◼   ► Did you ever buy those before?

00:19:41 ◼   ► I've tried them.

00:19:42 ◼   ► They never worked for me.

00:19:43 ◼   ► I mean, I think they only work for an application that you are going-- if you are really going--

00:19:49 ◼   ► if the value of each customer to you is quite a lot, which I imagine if you're one of these

00:19:55 ◼   ► free-to-play-game kind of things, you can probably get to there, where if you're paying

00:19:58 ◼   ► a few dollars to acquire a new user, that's actually worthwhile to you overall, because

00:20:04 ◼   ► the average value of a customer is bigger than that.

00:20:07 ◼   ► But for me, it never made sense.

00:20:09 ◼   ► for my paid applications. There's my average, like the amount of money I typically would

00:20:13 ◼   ► get from somebody is just so low in comparison that it just never made sense.

00:20:18 ◼   ► >>Trevor

00:20:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that's too bad. So it could be that they're shutting that down because the economics

00:20:23 ◼   ► have just made it not that effective for most developers. Or it could be that the app network

00:20:28 ◼   ► might mean running all iAds in people's apps, in which case they would just--because

00:20:33 ◼   ► like the new Apple News app still uses iAd. And so maybe they're saying everything else

00:20:40 ◼   ► about iAd is being shut down except for the ones running in Apple's own apps. Or maybe

00:20:44 ◼   ► they're saying only those special little developer template ones are getting shut down. Who knows?

00:20:49 ◼   ► But assuming it's the former, that nobody will be able to use iAd in their apps anymore,

00:20:55 ◼   ► which would be the part that you're thinking would probably be the worst case scenario

00:20:59 ◼   ► here, where would you go, what would you do next? Are there third-party options that are

00:21:04 ◼   ► any good? Is there any kind of clear winner? What is the landscape like, as far as you

00:21:10 ◼   ► know?

00:21:11 ◼   ► So this is the part that makes me really sad with this news.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And I totally understand.

00:21:18 ◼   ► It's always been a bit of an odd thing for Apple

00:21:20 ◼   ► to be in the advertising business,

00:21:22 ◼   ► because so much of what they do is completely

00:21:24 ◼   ► orthogonal to that.

00:21:25 ◼   ► They're not-- in general, they're

00:21:27 ◼   ► all about having really strong privacy

00:21:29 ◼   ► and having all kinds of things like that that are all about,

00:21:32 ◼   ► we want to know what's least about you,

00:21:34 ◼   ► and we're going to give you a premium experience, which is

00:21:36 ◼   ► typically not the advertising model.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And so what I've always liked is that, hey, they

00:21:41 ◼   ► have this advertising network, and so I don't actually do any backfilling in any of my apps.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I don't do the thing where it's like, even though I don't get 100% fill, I'm okay with

00:21:54 ◼   ► that, because I'm like, "You know what? iAds are good," and I've never seen an iAd in my

00:21:57 ◼   ► application that made me feel really uncomfortable. I don't feel great about some of them, but

00:22:05 ◼   ► if you just open the floodgates to every ad ever, we all kind of know where that goes.

00:22:11 ◼   ► look at the web right now, the kind of ads that you start to see at the bottom of like,

00:22:15 ◼   ► "Hey, if you like this story, you may also like these other stories about horrible things."

00:22:19 ◼   ► Right. Or just total scams.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Yeah. It's terrible. And that's where, ultimately, I imagine a lot of advertising

00:22:26 ◼   ► will go in apps as well. And I like that. At least I felt like Apple with iAd was like

00:22:31 ◼   ► a firewall against that. And I could say, "Okay, maybe I'm making a bit less money

00:22:37 ◼   ► doing this, but I feel confident that what I'm going to end up with isn't terrible and

00:22:41 ◼   ► make me feel squirm and I'm going to get screenshots from people being like, "Look at the ad that

00:22:45 ◼   ► your app was showing me," and for some awful thing.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So where I'm going now is kind of a weird and open question.

00:22:52 ◼   ► There are so many ad networks that it's kind of crazy, and a lot of them have really complicated

00:23:01 ◼   ► or confusing names.

00:23:03 ◼   ► We have AdMob, AdColony, AdFalcon, AdRally, ModFox, TapIt, Vidobia, Vungle, TapJump.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Are these real?

00:23:13 ◼   ► These are actual ones that I was recently just like, I was quickly before we were preparing,

00:23:16 ◼   ► I was like pulling in these names and I'm like, "Those are some ad networks that exist

00:23:19 ◼   ► right now."

00:23:20 ◼   ► Sounds like parody names.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Yeah, but like that's what we have and there's dozens of them.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And I mean, I imagine the biggest ones like AdMob is probably one of the bigger ones because

00:23:28 ◼   ► it's run by Google, who is obviously like one of the biggest advertising companies in

00:23:32 ◼   ► in the world, if not the biggest.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple loves that.

00:23:36 ◼   ► I think you can do some things with Facebook.

00:23:38 ◼   ► There's a few others that are kind of big.

00:23:40 ◼   ► But what I'm going to be facing now

00:23:42 ◼   ► is this weird question of, well, do I just pick another one

00:23:45 ◼   ► and hope for the best?

00:23:47 ◼   ► Do I use kind of an aggregator, which

00:23:49 ◼   ► is a way a lot of people do this type of thing,

00:23:51 ◼   ► where you'll download this big, massive blob

00:23:55 ◼   ► of third-party code.

00:23:57 ◼   ► You'll shove it into your application.

00:23:58 ◼   ► And it includes all the SDKs for dozens of different advertising

00:24:03 ◼   ► networks.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And you'll sign up for all of them.

00:24:05 ◼   ► And you'll be bidding back and forth between them

00:24:08 ◼   ► so that whoever has the best ad for you right now, you'll show.

00:24:11 ◼   ► And you'll switch between them dynamically.

00:24:14 ◼   ► But the more you do that, the less control

00:24:16 ◼   ► you ultimately have on what you're showing in your app.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And also, the thing that always makes me nervous is now,

00:24:23 ◼   ► the more third-party code I have to put in my application,

00:24:26 ◼   ► That's really scary, both from customer privacy concerns and things.

00:24:31 ◼   ► They could be doing all kinds of things in my applications that I maybe wouldn't really

00:24:36 ◼   ► like.

00:24:37 ◼   ► It's like, for all I know, they're going to be popping up all kinds of permission requests

00:24:42 ◼   ► in my application that my customers assume are me asking for it, rather than them.

00:24:47 ◼   ► That's something that they could entirely do, because I'm running their code that

00:24:52 ◼   ► I probably can't see the source of.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, not to mention making network requests

00:24:56 ◼   ► or anything like that, or even just any kind of use

00:25:01 ◼   ► of private APIs, if they get in trouble for that,

00:25:03 ◼   ► then really you're getting in trouble for that.

00:25:05 ◼   ► It's a huge risk.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I love that IAD, at least,

00:25:08 ◼   ► it was a system framework.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It shipped in the OS.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I had to bundle nothing.

00:25:12 ◼   ► It was just, in the same way, it's just like me including

00:25:15 ◼   ► using HealthKit in my application or using AV Foundation.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Using IAD was just a thing.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And if I'm not gonna be able to do that,

00:25:23 ◼   ► at some point I'm going to have to include some code that I don't really want to include,

00:25:29 ◼   ► or I have to decide that, you know what, I'm just going to have to radically change my

00:25:33 ◼   ► business and move away from this. Because there's ultimately, like, there's going

00:25:38 ◼   ► to be some kind of a line that I have to find between, like, how comfortable am I with,

00:25:43 ◼   ► you know, whoever they are. And I'm sure if I talk to the salesman at these various

00:25:47 ◼   ► companies, I'm sure they'll all be, "Oh no, we take privacy very seriously, it's

00:25:50 ◼   ► It's very important to us.

00:25:51 ◼   ► But like, I felt comfortable when Apple did that, but there's very few companies that

00:25:57 ◼   ► I would feel comfortable about that.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And ultimately, I'll probably, like my gut says, I'll end up, at least initially, planning

00:26:04 ◼   ► to go to something like Google, if not—not because I think Google's a not creepy company,

00:26:09 ◼   ► but at least they're a big enough company that if they were doing something truly dubious,

00:26:15 ◼   ► like it would be well known and they would probably be held more accountable to it than

00:26:19 ◼   ► like some kind of fly-by-night VC-funded thing that just sort of appeared one day, and I

00:26:24 ◼   ► was like, "Oh, we have great rates and awesome ads. Maybe you do, but you don't have a lot

00:26:30 ◼   ► of history there in a way that I'm less worried." If Google's being really sketchy, at least

00:26:35 ◼   ► I met people who were going to know that and hold them accountable to that, at least somewhat.

00:26:42 ◼   ► But I don't know. It's really something that I'm kind of struggling with right now, is

00:26:46 ◼   ► exactly where I'm going to go, because if I had truly did just go away and just disappeared

00:26:51 ◼   ► from my app, it's like, there goes 40% of my business in terms of revenue just disappeared.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And so I need to work out how far down that road I feel comfortable with, with other people's

00:27:04 ◼   ► code, other people's showing things in my apps that really maybe I don't agree with

00:27:11 ◼   ► or like, but ultimately I have to ship a product that I feel comfortable with. So it's going

00:27:17 ◼   ► to be a really interesting next couple of months as I kind of filter through that.

00:27:21 ◼   ► All right, well, best of luck. I think your plan sounds about right. I think I agree that

00:27:25 ◼   ► going to one of the biggest companies that is most reputable, AdMob or Google, that makes

00:27:33 ◼   ► the most sense, I think. Because you're right, I think even though any ad company

00:27:37 ◼   ► is creepy to some degree, I think the giant ones like Google, they're probably the least

00:27:43 ◼   ► creepy among a bunch of very creepy companies. The smaller ones are way scarier to me. So

00:27:50 ◼   ► alright, well that's, I think that wraps it up for today. Best of luck with that, and

00:27:54 ◼   ► I hope, I'm sure we'll be talking about this more as you get new experience with these

00:27:59 ◼   ► things over time, and so I look forward to hearing more about it as this whole thing

00:28:04 ◼   ► unfolds. So thanks a lot to everybody for listening. Please recommend us

00:28:09 ◼   ► on Overcast and you can review us on iTunes if anybody still uses that and we

00:28:14 ◼   ► will talk to you next week. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you

00:28:16 ◼   ► next week. Bye.