Orly Shoavi is the CEO and co-founder of SafeDK.

App publishers spend a lot of time selecting the right ad-networks for their apps to ensure ads will increase their revenue. However, publishers measure the value of ads simply by the check they get at the end of the month.

When looking at the bottom line, many factors that often impact revenue are easily overlooked, mainly because visibility regarding which ads are shown is low.

The ad world is at the threshold of a second revolution today – six years after the attribution technology was introduced and changed the way app publishers measure revenue coming from the ads they display, a new technology is emerging to take it to the next level by providing insight about ad quality and visibility, which are fast becoming crucial. The wrong ads costs publishers a lot of money.

Being at the frontline of this new technology, we’ve seen many examples in which ads are causing a substantial loss of revenue instead of generating it.

Inappropriate ads

Look at the following examples, each seen by a large fraction of users in well-known PEGI3 apps:

Inappropriate ads are one of the most fundamental issues that can make you lose users and money. Often depicting violence or filled with sexual innuendos, users might find them disgraceful, shameful or simply put disgusting. Every day users abandon apps for this very reason and the overall lifetime value (LTV) decreases.

Probably the worst example there is concerns apps targeting children. When parents see an ad they deem unsuitable for their child’s eyes, chances are they’ll promptly act to uninstall the app that showed it. Here’s just one example of a kid app featuring an ad for e-cigarettes:

Faulty ads

Inappropriate ads are only the tip of the iceberg. There are many ad impressions which may be completely lost because they fail to be displayed to the user. Look at the following examples coming from popular apps and served by two out of the top 5 ad networks to get a sense of what that means:

A large fraction of the app’s users has seen these ads, or rather these lack of ads. One caused users to see an error page and the other simply showed a blank space where the ad should have been.

Both are bad user experiences which might make users think less of the product at hand, but both are also examples of wasted inventory. In a world which pays by the ad impression, these are perfect examples of ‘money down the drain’.

Ads with no ‘X’

However, ads don’t necessarily have to be blank to cause user frustration. The lack of a clear exit strategy has been known to spark many user complaints, not to mention that the lack of an X button can often be in violation of store policies and puts the entire app in jeopardy.

Moreover, app crashes due to ads are frustrating as well. It would appear that with ads getting more and more imaginative (videos, playable etc.) the odds of ads crashing the app have increased.

Violation of your Ad Policy (Blacklist)

Many app publishers work hard to not only protect their brand, but also their userbase. A common concern is the potential of losing a profitable user to a competitor. Which is why many publishers set policies and black lists to ad-networks, prohibiting not just the inappropriate ads but also the competition.

Nonetheless, some of these ads can still make it through and you find yourself promoting unwanted apps or brands and lose your users to them. The lack of visibility allows for such mishaps to continue to occur.

In addition, publishers sometimes cut the middleman by displaying ads themselves for their top grossing advertisers. In such cases, the publisher loses revenue when an ad-network still displays campaigns by that advertiser.

The lack of visibility often means that a publisher may know that these ads are still shown, but figuring out which ad-network is showing them and getting it to fix the issue can be very time-consuming in a world where time is money.

Stepping towards full ad visibility

All the issues mentioned above are real and have resulted in millions of dollars being lost. Until recently publishers have been in the dark. Their best effort was based on sampling the ads displayed in the app, a method which too often didn’t cover users worldwide or exposed the magnitude of problems.

We have recently introduced a solution which covers 100% of users to give publishers the visibility needed to uncover issues that result in the loss of revenue.

We know the bottom line is made up of so much more than just ads shown or ads clicked. Ad quality is an important factor as well and we’re sure that more and more publishers will become aware of it in order to spare this unnecessary loss the income.

Visit the SafeDK website here.

SafeDK will be attending Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2017 next week, drop by booth 1.1 to chat and see a live demo.