Smaato are a name you've probably never heard of - even if you're a developer. Yet, if the latter, it's a name that should be well and truly on your radar - they tower over even AdMob - Smaato serve up over 3 billion ads each month, in both mobile applications and in mobile web sites. I found all this out when I interviewed Ragnar Kruse, Smaato's founder and serial entrepreneur, a few days ago in London. The full 20 minute video interview is embedded below - recommending watching for all, but especially for developers.
Read on in the full article.
Thanks for very interesting interview.
As a Symbian developer I can say that I still would rather sell a license for application than put ads in it. Yes, sometimes that is not good to ask a user to pay 20$ for full license but you always can ask for 1$ for 1 month license.
Another thing is that some of the most usefull symbian apps are not going to show user anything very often (call managers for example). If you develop for iPhone you have to be at foreground while app is running, but symbian apps mostly work from background. So if ads net will pay you 0,5 cent per click you won't become a millioner. And integrating ads-showing system is quite a tricky thing I guess (for Symbian since Symbian is tricky itself).
I think using such monetizing option will do in 3 cases:
1) If you are a big company like Spb Software and have millions of active users which use cracked software
2) If you develop for iPhone and still have tons of users.
3) If you want to play with fire a little and to use additional stimulation for purchasing license using ads during trial period.
In all other cases I would rather use License Manager which I already use in my products - it allows users to purchase full license as well as periodic paying using credit card or phone bill.