I have made an iOS app which shows ads from multiple ad networks.
iTunes Connect asks me to give a rating of this app based on its content, and I am not sure wether I should consider the ads as a content, since they come from a third-party service and I have limited (or no) control over them.
In case the ads are considered a content, how am I supposed to know which kind of ads show up and how frequently, since the ad networks I implemented do not offer this kind of informations?
I looked both on google and stackoverflow but could not find an answer.
You're certainly going to be responsible for whatever content your own application displays. If your vendors can't provide any information on their content, you need different vendors. There should be content guideline documentation available from any reputable vendor. See Apple's, Project Wonderful's, and AdMob's for examples. Ad vendors certainly can and should be rating or restricting their content so that you can control what you serve. If they're not, you shouldn't work with them. It's just going to be trouble on you.
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I just spend oodles of time getting iAd to work in my AIR app for kids and now Apple tells me that it no longer supports iAd for kids apps! Any advice? The app sometimes has tens of thousands of downloads in a day. Do I take the loss and move on or is there any way to re-release this app as not "kids only"? Has anyone done this before? Thanks!
Note: Apps designed for children are not allowed to run rich media ads
I think that there is no solution about it.
The thing that is not clear to me is if this rule is valid only for Made for Kid category, you select that category in ITC when you set the parental rating. I guess that is the only way that they can recognize that. Try to see if creating a new upgrade you can remove the "Made for kids" flag.
If I'm not wrong, you cant air ads on kids apps. Maybe contact apple developer support and get the age bracket of your app changed? Thats the only thing I can think of..
You can release an update to the app and change the setting in iTunes Connect so that you app is not "Made for kids".
However, ads in general are frowned upon in kids apps. Although they're not specifically illegal, according to COPPA.
Also, if an Apple app reviewer decides that your app is targeted at kids anyway, they might reject it based on their policy of no iADs for kids apps.
Regarding COPPA's rules on ads for kids: http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions
"I want to run ads on my child-directed websites and apps. What do I need to know to make sure that I am complying with COPPA?
There are a number of questions you must find answers to before you enter into an arrangement with any entity to serve advertising to run on your child-directed sites and services. These include:
Is there a way to control the type of advertising that appears on the sites and services? (e.g., can you stipulate and contract only for contextual advertising, and can you prohibit behavioral advertising or retargeting?)
What categories of information will be collected from users on the sites and services in connection with the ads they are served? Will persistent identifiers be collected for purposes other than support for internal operations? Will geolocation information be collected in connection with the ads served?
You should make informed decisions before you permit advertising to run on your sites and services. Depending on what advertising choices you make, you may be required to notify parents in your online privacy policies and in a direct notice, and obtain verifiable parental consent, before you permit advertising to occur. Remember that the amended Rule holds you liable for the collection of information that occurs on or through your sites and services, even if you yourself do not engage in such collection."
If you want to monetise your app with advertising, you have little choice but to use an ad-network that can specifically provide ads for your target age group, and that is COPPA-compliant. Apple's ad network is neither as far as I know. Try Superawesome.tv or Ads4Kids - they may have an SDK you can add to your app for delivering ad campaigns appropriate for children.
We are a startup that provides cloud storage (www.zapdrive.com). Our iOS app was rejected, and the reason given was the clauses 11.12 of the App Store Review Guidelines, which specifically says:
"Apps offering subscriptions must do so using IAP, Apple will share the
same 70/30 revenue split with developers for these purchases, as set
forth in the Developer Program License Agreement."
Please note that we are not offering any subscription from within the App. We do not have any links or buttons in the App that take the user to any external website, whatsoever. It is a very basic app, that lets the users view their files stored in "ZapDrive". To see what the app looks like, you can see it in the Google Play Store
One thing that we see could be close to a violation of the above rule is, on the first page of the App (which is the login screen), we have a text that says:
"Don't have a ZapDrive Account? Go to www.zapdrive.com to sign up for a FREE account"
However, the above-mentioned line is just plain text, and does not "link" to the actuak website.
Also, the rejection notice says:
While your app maybe be intended to enhance the experience of your
existing subscribers, with the exception of the content specified in
Guideline 11.14, if the subscribed product is used within the app, the
subscription must be offered in the app using IAP.
Please not that we are not selling any content, or offering a subscription to any content. The users already own the content, and they copy it into their "ZapDrive". The app lets them view/stream the said content.
Although, Apple says that just because other apps are doing this, doesn't mean you can do it too. Still, a lot of other apps (DropBox, Google Drive, Box etc) offer subscriptions, but do not offer IAP.
Can someone please tell us, how are we violating the App Store Guidelines? And what can we do to make it compatible? Is it the text on the login screen that's causing this violation?
My guess is the link. Does the kindle app have a link in their app? Does Dropbox? I don't think so... Take out the link and resubmit and see what happens. Or you can ask apple for more details.
Your question is not a programming one; there's no better place to ask this than Apple themselves. All iTunesConnect rejections have a corresponding textbox you can communicate with them specifically about that rejection ticket.
I have two similar apps with in-app-purchase (IAP) content that could be shared between them. I'd like to reward customers who buy in one app, by letting them transfer the purchase to the other app. However, I'm worried that my apps would be rejected due to the App Store review guideline that says you can't have any non-App store content activation methods.
As far as technical feasibility, it's clear to me that the Document Interaction mechanism is a means to this end (sans web server). I can have each app register a custom file type. The app in which the user purchased the content can show a link to launch the other app, passing it appropriate metadata as the "launched file" so the second can then mark the items as purchased.
Does anybody know if this has been attempted, and if Apple is approving such an approach?
Note that I'm not concerned about purchase security with this approach, because making paying customers happy is much more important to me than preventing piracy.
This isn't so much an answer to the precise question above as it is a useful alternate technique of accomplishing the end goal. If you set things up correctly, two apps can share KeyChain access, and thus share metadata about purchased IAPs. This requires using the same Bundle Seed ID (e.g. "AXGUKHGX...") for the app ID, in combination with setting things up properly in your app's info plist. This latter technique is a much more elegant approach for propagating sharable IAPs.
I have several applications in App Store and I wish to get further advanced analytics for how they are doing. I'm already listed to some sites that do analytics for Number of Downloads and for Online Ranking (they check every hour where was each app ranked in each country).
I want to have the following:
Landing - I want to check how people got to my application's App Store / iTunes
page; from commercial banners, reviews (I want to see that it came
from a specific web page), from inner banners I have in my apps
directing to my other apps, etc...
App Store Search / Keywords - I want to check which keywords were
effective and which are redundant.
Keywords General Search - I want to check which keywords are
efficient in general for the categories my apps belong to.
Users Analytics - I want to check how many of my users have both the Free/Lite and Full versions of my apps. Maybe there are more
analytics I can look for in this area (if anyone has any good idea).
Any help or direction would be very much appreciated.
Answers numbered according the question
1: What you could do is set your Banners/Ads etc. to a 'middleman' URL on your Server which tracks the User Data and then redirects them to the iTunes App Store Page rather than directly going to the App Store Page. That way you can track the URL's from where the User came from etc. Also Banners and Ads should provide their own Tracking Data which could also help? For reviews, you could maybe ask the reviewer to use your Application Website Page with directs to this middleman URL and onto the App Store Link rather than just the direct App Store link.
2 and 3: I don't think Apple have any sort of tracking in place to the Developers for this kind of data besides the Sales and Trends data you get in iTunes Connect.
4: I've found Flurry Analytics to be an excellent tool for seeing how Users interact with my applications. You can set events in your Program and track various different events. You can easily track the Free/Paid by setting an event for each and then tracking it. It also provides a wealth of other data which informs you better of your user base. I definitely recommend checking it out for this kind of thing.
A media publishing company has an existing inventory of advertisers for their traditional media channels. Their iPad app is doing very well, and they want to use their inventory for in-app rich advertising.
I can't find any rich ad solutions that allow self-management. AdMob is the closest so far, but it's not true rich media: http://www.admob.com/marketing/ivau
I read some vague references to Medialets partners, but nothing concrete. Can someone please recommend a platform/provider who can deliver this?
(To cast this in programming terms, I need an ad provider who offers an iOS library/API serving ads in HTML5 or similar, and lets me upload my own content).
Medialets contacted me, they offer self-management for a fee per click. It's pretty expensive but I can't find anyone else who does it.
AdMob seems to allow free self-management but only for traditional ads.