Just got an email from play regarding policy update. This is interesting. Streamlined the ads policy, with guidance on interstitial ad behavior, and a new “System Interference” provision, which prohibits ads in system notifications or home screen icons, and requires user consent when an app changes How does this affect services like StartApp and air push?

Yeah I received the same email! LA

Stuffed. Just had a clarification email from the tapcontext network. No push notification ads or homescreen icon ads allowed from September 21st. Yikes! "As you may know, Google released an important update to its Google Play Developer Program Policies today. One of the major changes is that in 30 days (after September 21st, 2013), developers will no longer be permitted to run notification ads in apps distributed through the Google Play market."

>No push notification ads Yes, no push notification from the outside sources, only from within the app. So, you may send your users notifications on your own, it is only that third party ads through push are not allowed any more. That is why tapcontext say that you should show the interstitial ads first when the app loads and that you should also send notifications of type "here is a new feauture, please take a look" or "you probably did not know that my app can do this too". The goal is to motivate the user in an ethical way to run your app, which will then show your ad as soon as the app opens up. Which means that we shall have to make our own push notification queues for each app, turning our apps into an aweber of a sorts. So, if you want money from free apps on Android, the production of an app does not stop with creating the internal content of the app, you will have to write the autoresponder notification sequences too. Currently, you will have to send the push notifications manually, although with some PHP code it should be possible to create the sequence in advance. This also shows the difference between a site and an app. In a site, you have to lure the user to leave his or her email address, with an app, you automatically have the ability to send push notifications, no bait needed once they download the app. If you can lure the app user into giving you their email addresses, so much the better. In Buzztouch, this may seem easier than it is. You may show them the Email Us plugin first but it is a bit more complex than that. The user should be able to bypass giving you the email, and once the user enters the email address, you should not show the prompt any more.

Hi Dusko, Many thanks for this great share. Great to learn from an obviously savvy and seasoned marketer. I had been wondering about using Push Notifications and I was concerned about the Google Play Policy update and how it would affect their use. I love the idea of not having to build an email list! I can see that there are opportunities in getting people to reopen the app and look at a new offer placed within it. Just for clarification, are we safe using the push notifications system here on buzztouch? I imagine that we are because I imagine that the push notifications come from within the app, but I'd like to be certain.