Striking The Right Balance With Ads
Implementing ads into your app while at the same time trying not to degrade its appeal to customers can be a very fine line to walk. If your goal is to promote a paid version of your free app, this line becomes more distinct and easier to navigate. This mainly happens because the ads are directed at up-saling your paid version rather than having random unrelated ads appear in your app.
As an example, sdkIQ Lite is a free version of our popular iPhone SDK tutorial and reference app – sdkIQ for iPhone. sdkIQ Lite 1.0 was very subtle about how it promoted sdkIQ paid version. The first view of sdkIQ Lite, shown below, didn’t mentioned anything about upgrading to the full version. This was only mentioned in the info view, which is show below as well.
With the submission of sdkIQ Lite 1.1 to the app store, promoting upgrading to the paid version of sdkIQ is now front and center. However, rather than simply throwing an “Upgrade Now” button into the first view, the message of upgrading has been woven into the scenery, making it more than a subtle message, yet not overwhelming. You can see on the first view that a shadowed panel list some of the benefits for upgrading in a visually appealing display.
Below you can see both the first view and info view have been revised to promote sdkIQ paid version.
Additionally, related ads by Cygen are displayed, which also blend into the color theme. These additional ads promote sdkIQ, sdkiphonedeveloperforum.com (an independent spin off from Cygen) and most likely will feature dotnetIQ. This is only a handful of ads and all products have been developed by Cygen.
Blended nicely into your app, ads and upgrade promotions can get your message across without tuning out your customers. Additionally, nailing down the right upgrade message can get the kind of RIO you’re looking for.
