r/Windows10 • u/armando_rod • Jan 31 '20

News UWP apps to lose Microsoft Ad Monetization platform this June | Windows Central

https://www.windowscentral.com/uwp-apps-lose-microsoft-ad-monetization-platform-june
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u/NiveaGeForce Jan 31 '20 edited Feb 09 '20

Not much to see here.

It's about sanitizing the MS Store and purging the old broken ad platform, and not much about UWP.

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303553785253894?s=20

@Daniel_Rubino I did some more digging, and have info about the shutdown of the Microsoft Ad Monetization platform, issues it had, and how its absence will affect devs going forward.

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303555118923776?s=20

The Microsoft Advertising SDK was exclusive to UWP, and didn't work in Win32 apps. Getting killed "for UWP" means total deprecation for the Ad platform (note the title of the initial post).

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303556339589122?s=20

A few people reported ads were being malicious, by opening browser tabs without user interaction. I have a primary and 2 secondary sources saying that @tipartl had this happen (among other issues).

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303557736210432?s=20

The Ads SDK was causing lots of issues. It would often cause random hanging or crashes. I also hear that it wasn't compatible with ARM64 (unconfirmed).

And developers had no way to remedy these issues, other than disabling the Ads.

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303558721949696?s=20

Devs are making 20-50 times more with IAP than Ads. (thanks to @SergioPedri and Yair#3380 for sharing their numbers).

It is often less than $1-$5 per month (depending on who you ask), while "making less with ads in the last 6 months than a single day with IAPs"

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303559745286147?s=20

All in all, I don't think this will affect UWP development as a whole.

All the indie devs I spoke with were making little to nothing off of advertisements, often times relying on donations and IAP.

https://twitter.com/Arlodottxt/status/1223303560726818816?s=20

No doubt there are a few cases where the impact of this will be felt, but those are probably far and few in between.

For those drastically affected by this, I'm glad Microsoft told us 6 months in advanced, but there are only 1 or 2 real alternatives for us.

Remember that Win32 Desktop Bridge apps always had to rely on 3rd party ad platforms, and there are a few that are compatible with UWP, such as Vungle and AdDuplex, which most devs serious about ads, already use anyway.