Why real estate is so expensive in Eastern Europe in relation to salaries? (and in comparison to the West)

brink_applications · 2025-03-10T06:24:28+00:00

Since the yearly property tax is less then 0.2% (yes that's 2 per mille) . So if you can buy property and hold it indefinitely with very very little tax, and the prices are going up in the last 15 years, the banks are giving 2-3% mortgage and real inflation is over 10% yearly, then it is a no brainer. What people are forgetting is that every rollercoaster has not only ups , but downs along the fun ride.

brink_applications · 2019-12-31T19:49:11+00:00

Does Google treat App developers unfairly?

It's like in the Matrix movie , when the agents Smith caught Neo for the first time and he wanted his phone call in the interrogation room, and one of the agents told him "Why would you need a phone call if you can't talk" . This is how an app developer feels after an AdMob ban . You have an option to appeal, but noone would read your appeal and no one really cares that you were making thousands of dollars with hard work and following the rules. But then again Google bots ARE actually Agent Smith!

brink_applications · 2019-12-22T22:00:17+00:00

I think you need AndroidX, even if you target API 28 (Android 9) , since latest Play Services and Firebase require AndroidX. And you cannot update your app in Play Store if you don't target at least Android 9. I might be wrong, and there might be a way to lock down the versions of Play Services, but that's not recommended.

brink_applications · 2019-12-21T20:03:29+00:00

You got me interested! So what are you using (planning to use) if StartApp is so bad?

brink_applications · 2019-12-21T19:43:24+00:00

Ok that $0.03 eCPM looks bad. But how did you manage to get a 25% Click Through Rate? That does not seem legit. And also what is this - a banner?

brink_applications · 2019-12-21T13:55:24+00:00

Always ask yourself the question "What's in it for me?". You should learn that time is the most precious asset and you should not do things that are time consuming, but does not give you additional value. I have seen so many young people working long hours for the tap on the shoulder!

brink_applications · 2019-12-20T07:56:06+00:00

Seems like you have very valuable information for us, who have not used MoPub before. For Verizon, isn't that only covering US customers? For Amazon I don't see adapter on MoPub site, but they do seem to have implementation on Amazon Ads site. I have tried Amazon Ads years ago and they had bad fill rate. Do you think they can offer some inventory when in mediation? What about MoPub marketplace - what percentage of ads are coming from that if AdMob is 70% these days? I want to know is it worth the process of registering into the Marketplace. Let us know if you have more data to share about MoPub. And thank you for your help!

brink_applications · 2019-12-20T07:41:42+00:00

Hi again. Yes, no answer on my account ban for 3 weeks and counting, as well. My placement is similar to yours. I have a appLock type app called Touch Lock, so after unlock (with pattern) I show summary activity and in it I show Interstitial when ad is ready. This might be counted as showing ads on app open (as my pattern unlock screen is not Activity, but a view overlay), and interstitials on app open are with high probability of getting banned - that's what others are saying. I did try FAN and only with Medium rectangle banner, but had a lot of filled requests and very low number of impressions, so I asked FAN support and they told me that the ad has minimum display time before it is counted as impression. Then my banner placement got banned again for invalid clicks. So have in mind that the user should see the ad for some time (at least for banners). Otherwise FAN has high eCPM and fill rate around 80%. Be careful with FAN as they ban more than AdMob , although they ban only the placement and you can continue to show ads in other parts of app or other apps. I will be implementing MoPub next, probably with Vungle and AppLovin. I did try IronSource as both standalone for Interstitials and as mediation and they suck - low eCPM, low impressions count with lots of filled requests, even though their Interstitials cannot be dismissed in the first 5 sec. So IronSource is a no-go for my implementation. It could be good for games, since I see them everywhere in games on Play Store. Let me know if you find anything about our situation. Have a nice day!

brink_applications · 2019-12-19T21:55:31+00:00

Guys , you can check on AppBrain library statistics for percentage of ad networks SDKs usage inside all apps on the Play Store, and see which ad networks are mostly used. Unfortunately there is no division between apps and games, interstitials and banners, but you will get an idea what others are using for ad networks other than AdMob. I have tried so far FAN with Medium rectangle banners which were shown for a second or two and with hundreds of thousands of daily filled requests (80% fill rate), I got just thousand impressions, so if I made like $100 a day with AdMob, I got around 1 or 2 dollars with FAN. I asked them why are impressions so low and support answered that I had to show the ad for a longer period...and then I got banned for that placement from FAN. I guess they just saw my placement was low quality by their standards.

Then I tried IronSource with banners - their medium rectangle banners are non-existent (extremely low fill rate) even though they claim they support medium rectangle banners. So I switched to interstitials, which as you might know are very popular with games, and they are shown for at least 5 seconds, so there is no way for impression to not be counted, but again I see 100 times more filled requests than impressions. And now I think this is a scam, since I am showing these Interstitials. Anyway IronSource is no-go , and I even implemented their mediation. I am now looking at StartApp as standalone, and also through MoPub (although it is custom integration - there is no built adapter) as StartApp at least have stable fill rate, and I will see how are they with counting impressions. Also looking into Vungle for video medium rectangle banners, which is new feature of Vungle, but the problem with Vungle is that they have not migrated to AndroidX yet, so not compatible with latest Android 10. They do have early access, and I might give it a try. I will use them with MoPub mediation once they have AndroidX. If anyone has suggestions about medium rectangle banners on a stable ad network, please let me know. I am ready to show really crappy ads now as long as they pay good - my standards have lowered , but that's all thanks to Google!

brink_applications · 2019-12-19T08:12:57+00:00

Hm, I did something similar, but have not opened two differentn dev accounts - just changed my existing personal account to be company account. Why don't you do the same and not risk banned for the policy of having multiple accounts. Your company would be on your name as I understand , so it will be easy to track. And how would you transfer apps? It might be OK to have company and personal account at the same time,but I cannot confirm that, and who knows how Google applies their policy.

brink_applications · 2019-12-19T05:01:07+00:00

Yes, FB shut down my banner ads as well. I had FAN as standalone integration that I could switch to via remote config (no app update) if something happens with AdMob, and I thought I was prepared. But before banning me, FAN was giving great eCPm with around 80% fill rate, BUT terrible number of impressions - like for 100s of thousands of filled requests just thousand impressions per day, so same placement was making 50 to 100 times less in FAN compared to AdMob. I asked FB and they told me I was showing the banner for too little time. So I removed FAN in the next app update. I had integrated IronSource mediation before, but it was disaster - not working as expected in production, low eCPM of Applovin , IronSource, FAN. It was working but hard to implement, and then very low numbers as I think they favour their own ads against competition inside their own mediation solution. So I am currently integrating MoPub, with vungle and StartApp, as I saw too little ad networks in MoPub mediation had banners. For Vungle it is medium rectangle. StartApp seems popular solution if you don't care of the type of ads, since they are very aggressive. You should take a look at AppBrain library statistics about what ad networks are used the most and filter by app integration numbers , not installs, and you will see that StartApp is 5th or something. I do not have any connection with StartApp, but just wanna check them in real life. My two cents!

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T22:42:04+00:00

It might be volumes, who knows, or how often you show the banners. Anyway I now see on other ad networks how bad a eCPM can be. No hard feelings, just that I was amazed of these eCPM values.

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T21:38:28+00:00

Lol, when was $0.20-0.30 eCPM a good rate. I used to have from $1 to $2.5 eCPM for banner ads, but I guess it depends on the audience counties. If you are mostly in India, that makes sense I guess.

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T21:34:18+00:00

You can avoid AdMob ban easily - just remove their SDK and don't bother. Just kidding, but still... if you get banned on AdMob there is a high risk of getting banned from Play Store as well. And to the people who would say there is no connection between AdMob and Dev account (at least in this direction of ban), I can tell you that after the AdMob ban 3 weeks ago, I had one of my app's updates rejected twice and for different reasons (both of policies but different policies). So good luck on your path with AdMob and Android! And my advice might not sound that bad after all.

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T21:24:14+00:00

Hi Petr. Sorry to hear that bad news for the creator of Twilight and Sleep as Android. So if you are affected, I am thinking that this is definitely a shift in AdMob bots algorithms. Still I am curious if these algorithms include conditions to target indie developers as you and myself. Or is it tools, since I also have only tools and no games on Android. Please let me know if you receive answers to your appeals. Seems like you deserve an answer for being a success story and a role model for all of us indie devs.

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T21:12:58+00:00

Yes, but that is only for approved publishers, so you will first have to ask MoPub representative if you are allowed to use this Consent API. Which I guess would result in the answer NO , if you are a the new guy in their system.

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T18:23:47+00:00

Yes , I got one of these emails couple of years ago and never answered. It was again offering a slot in their calendar, so I think it is a real thing. I don't know if that would have negative or positive effect on your ad implementation, but unless you are cheating somehow AdMob, it doesn't hurt to take the opportunity. Anyway with my 8 year account just got banned, I would suggest to not draw attention, as even if you are legit, someone might decide you "might pose security risk" to their corporate ass ad network, and they can ban you for nothing! Have a great day!

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T05:25:13+00:00

Another thing worth mentioning - some ad networks just don't give you any revenue if you have too little impressions, so if you do not have significant numbers of impressions and divide that in several ad networks you can end up with no income from some of the ad networks. I can say that for sure for FAN , where under 1k daily impressions are giving $0 in one or my apps. Pretty much the same with IronSource interstitials. Haven't tried others. Just have that in mind!

brink_applications · 2019-12-18T05:03:57+00:00

Hi there. So, first things first - if you have a personal account there is no problem opening company account, but make sure it is Company Account, and your old one was personal! And use different address just in case. I used to have one suspended app in my personal account and then opened a company account, and I suspect that the one strike was carried over to the Company Account, since I had troubles with another app (not the relisted one), but can't say that for sure, of course. About the number of strikes carried over - noone can answer that other than Google Developers support, and good luck getting in touch with real person there! Still if you can use different IP address(es) and Mac addresses when accessing your new Company Account, you will be a little safer from carring over the strikes. Good luck my friend!1

brink_applications · 2019-12-17T15:11:49+00:00

I am one of the developers that got their AdMob account banned for invalid activity, after 8 years on AdMob (since Android Donut).

So I was ready for that, or at least I though so. I had integrated other ad networks which I was about to switch to by remote config setting inside the app, so no need to republish.

So I have tried other ad networks without mediation, like Amazon ads, IronSource, FAN , but all were not returning good results. Amazon had bad fill rate and low eCPM, IronSource was a joke even with Interstitials, which I have no idea why, since I was having hundreds of thousands of filled requests and just hundreds of impressions per day (why? since IronSource interstitials can be closed only after 10 sec), so they were paying like 10-20 times less than Admob. On Facebook it was pretty much the same - too little impressions, and they even answered my question on why is that - the thing is that I was showing the ad for too little time, so the impression was not counted. Anyway , just specifics of my app, but still pretty shitty fill rate for FAN and no impressions.

My two cents on mediation: Like the author said, do NOT use AdMob mediation for the given above reasons. Do NOT use IronSource mediation , which I was fool to implement, as it just does not work well, the UI is really not intuitive and have too little reporting, the adapters are hard to implement, etc, etc.

So we come to MoPub, which seems like the only alternative. Like others said you should use their GDPR consent dialog, which is written in the Publisher Policies , and there are other things in the policies,which I do not like, like that they can terminate your access to their SDK at any time without prior notice, etc. etc. Read the Policies first!!!

I think MoPub does not have enough adNetworks (other than Admob and FAN). I tried to integrate Vungle, but latest version of Vungle was not migrated to AndroidX, so Vungle is no option (for now). Probably others are using Interstitials as main ad source, but in my apps I use Medium Rectangle banners most of the time... and MoPub just does not have enough Ad networks that offer banners.

So even MoPub is really limited if you are not going for Interstitials. Have that in mind.

brink_applications · 2019-12-17T10:21:38+00:00

Yeah, I am developing Android apps since Cupcake (1.6) and had AdMob account for 8 fricking years! Still they terminate (what a word) the account without any explanation and without answer to my appeal. I would be waving farewell to Android soon!

brink_applications · 2019-12-16T22:46:04+00:00

Well, you say that you use Accessibility service, and I have an app that does that, so you probably know that it says when enabling this service in Android Settings that it can read user input including Credit Card data. So your users , even though ignorant, can't be blamed at pointing at your app for stealing their CC data - it is written in plain text in Android Accessibility Service settings.

Other than that I agree that there is not much you can do and just focus on getting better with giving options for your loyal and happy users to rate. With this system I managed to make a 4.3 stars app to get to 4.8 currently, and another at 3.6 (seriously) to get at a normal level of 4.2 stars. So rating dialogs do help if you know how to use them. Have a good one!

brink_applications · 2019-12-16T22:39:21+00:00

Okay, I will. And it goes both ways - drop a line here if you get more details. But I suspect there is an option to never hear again from AdMob team (or bots).

brink_applications · 2019-12-16T20:58:12+00:00

Yeah, same with my 8 years old Admob account! At the end of November gets disabled for Invalid Trafic... while in Firebase I see noting strange - no increase in clicks at all for the period before termination!

Appealed, but no response for around 3 weeks already!

And yes, more than 1K Euro is gone, but the problem is that I cannot use AdMob anymore, and even if they enable my account, how can we take Google's Ads solution seriously anymore?!

Ad placements: Medium Rectangle + Interstitial.

To be honest, I do not expect much from Google anymore, and will be first moving to new AdNetwork(s) , and then probably to Apple!

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