Windows Store In-App Ad Revenue Plummets 196
jfruh writes "One of the hooks Microsoft has used to get developers to build apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 has been pubCenter, an ad network that's easy to add to apps and provides revenue back to publishers. But many developers found that on April 1 that revenue abruptly dropped by an order of magnitude, with most potential ad impressions going unsold; one developer reported only 160,000 ads served to 60 million requests, a fill rate of less than 0.3%. Since many of the ads before April 1 had been for Bing, this may be a sign that Microsoft is no longer willing to subsidize its developers — and that advertisers aren't that interested in buying ads in Windows 8 apps."
You don't have to (and shouldn't) use pubcenter (Score:5, Informative)
don't want to see ads I pay for at all (Score:5, Informative)
dirty little secret: those ads loading are data you are charged for.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Google, who seems to be running the advertising network that's actually doing well, makes around 98% of its money from selling ads.
FYI, Google does make the vast majority of its money from ads, but not 98%. Here are recent percentages (calculated from http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html [google.com]):
2011: 96.3%
2012: 94.9%
2013: 91.9% (Q1 only, obviously)
For Q1 2013, Google's non-advertising revenues saw 150% year-on-year growth and 27% quarter-on-quarter growth, to just over $1B for the quarter. At that rate, Google is on track to have ~6B in 2013 in non-advertising revenues, and for advertising revenues to drop to less than 90% of total revenues. Perhaps even more.
Note that none of the above includes Motorola Mobility revenues. If you count Motorola, Q1 advertising revenues were 85% of total revenues.
Also note that this isn't because Google's advertising business isn't doing well, it's because it's non-advertising business is doing even better (except for Motorola, which is still posting losses).
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but this is all public information.)
Re:don't want to see ads I pay for at all (Score:4, Informative)
Plenty of servers host really big image files... NASA, for example, has a handful of great ones.
Re:Good, very good (Score:4, Informative)
I make 1 or 2 cents per user. Most ad networks pay on a click-through basis, and nobody clicks on ads. The ones that pay per impression pay pennies per 1000 impressions. If you have any costs its not a sustainable way to run a business. If you make an amazingly popular app, you may be able to pay for 1 developer for a year at US rates. You'd need to shotgun out an app every few weeks to really stay alive.
Re:Good, very good (Score:4, Informative)
You're orders of magnitude too high. I made 4 cents on a click through yesterday through admob. It was the only click that day. I make nothing on an impression basis. There are a few networks that pay on an impression basis, but its pennies per 1000 impressions.
Now exacerbated by Firefox v20 ESC key disabling (Score:4, Informative)
Re:As a customer... (Score:4, Informative)
They're not free apps. You paid for them when you purchased Windows 8.