Today, I've received below email. Although they've closed my account they thought I would be interested with whats going on!!!

It looks like Google shifting all the mobile web ads from Admob to Adsense. It was clear that they wanted to use Admob for in app advertising and below email confirms this.

Not sure how long this will last but Google have a long habit of closing down startups it bought. 

Dear AdMob Mobile Web Publisher:


 Following the acquisition of AdMob by Google, 
 we have continued to operate parallel products for mobile web publishers on both the AdSense and AdMob platforms. 
 To ensure we offer a single best solution for mobile web publishers, we will be focusing our efforts on the AdSense platform going forward. 
 On September 30, 2011, we are beginning this transition to the AdSense platform and will discontinue support for WAP mobile web on the AdMob network.


 All publishers who are currently using AdMob's WAP mobile web solution are asked to register for an AdSense account and begin using the Google AdSense for mobile content. 
 This change enables Google to offer our mobile web publishers an industry leading content monetization solution with access to advertisers interested in reaching your mobile audience.


We encourage you to use Google AdSense to

monetize your mobile webpages going forward. Google AdSense for mobile provides you many of the same features with more flexible reporting tools. 
Implementing Google AdSense now will allow you to continue monetizing your mobile content after September 30 without disruption.

To get started using Google AdSense for mobile, visit google.com/adsense and log in with a Google Account. 
If you don’t have a Google Account, you can create an account for free at https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.
Once you have been approved as an AdSense publisher, simply log in to your account to create a new mobile ad unit and generate ad code for your site. If you are already an existing AdSense publisher, you can create a new mobile ad unit to start monetizing your mobile site right away.

For questions about this transition, please visit http://helpcenter.admob.com/content/admob-mobile-web-sunset. 
For additional support on Google AdSense, visit the Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/adsense/.

Sincerely,

The Google AdMob Team

Have you recently seen Official Admob Support forum? Publisher and advertiser there are many people trying to get help. No one seems to care. I've been monitoring Admob's support forum and I don't even remember when was the last time someone from Admob/Google replied.

Admob's support was really bad before acquired by Google now; there is no support at all. Emails to support@admob.com go in to black hole too and you should already know that there was never a phone support.

To me, it looks like Google turning Admob to an automated machine where users try to solve their problem either by reading help documentation or by asking other users.

Here are some comments from frustrated users/clients

"... i tried to contact Admob but i don't know why they are not responding like they are neglecting my emails and my other mates as well. Admob support is very bad."

 "...My impressions are that there is no support and there are no answers to simple questions such as "Why are no ads being displayed?". Where do we go for answers?"

 "..Several email attempts to contact the support failed as we got no response whatsoever. This is truly disappointing.."

There you have it, the first and one of the best mobile ad networks getting ruined. If this continues soon advertisers will start to pull out too.

UPDATE 22/02/2012: It looks like it happened again. Although I no longer user Admob, I've noticed increase in traffic from Google about fill rate drop on Admob. It is either a technical problem or they again started mass massacre of accounts!

Well, again problems with Admob!

5 days ago i've noticed that one of the sites I have registered with admob started to get only 5% fill rate.

This is obviously a penalty. Problem is that I didn't get any notification (as always) about it. There is no aperant reason for it too. My traffic or CTR didn't increase, infact they dropped in last few weeks.

I don't know if this is automated penalty or someone from admob marked my site.

I have also sent an email to support@admob.com to ask about it. Guess what? I didn't get any reply. I don't think I will.

Planing to or using admob? See this post about closure and re-open of my admob account

Another update on 01/08/2011: Well, Admob closed my account again! I wont bother to get it back anymore. They had droppedmy fill rate to 5% anyway. They can take and do something with their network!

Update 07/04/2011 22:55 GMT: after admob's down time my account was enabled again. why? did they restore from old backup? did they re-enabled my account?

I have been publishing ads from Admob for few years now.

Although performance is not good as last year, when it comes to generating income, it still is the best mobile ad networks out there.

Not so best on other aspects of a healthy business relationship! Today they have closed my publisher account. When I try to login I get below message

“Your account has been disabled for invalid activity or repeated policy violations. Some examples include recurring manual clicks or impressions, violation of our content policies which can be found here, robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as pay-to-click, pay-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software.”

There is no other explanation, contact or email from Admob regarding the reason. I don’t know what wasn’t right with my site that caused my account to be closed.

As I’ve said I’ve been with them long time and as a sane person I would never jeopardise income coming from Admob with fake clicks. The only thing I think of is possible some adult content on my site. My site is community site and it is almost impossible to moderate content fast enough. I’ve to rely on automated check and reports from other users.

This shows how valuable we publishers are to Admob and Google. They just dismiss you even though you have been loyal to them long time.

I felt sad, I shouldn’t. This is business and putting all of your eggs in one basket makes you vulnerable!

Take my advice and never ever rely on one company! One day they might stab you at the back!

Share your exprience if you had your Adsense / Admob publisher account was disabled. Tweet this post or your exprience!

More at

http://groups.google.com/group/admob-publisher-discuss/browse_thread/thread/66a084f6a37852ad?hl=en

http://mobilemarketinglessons.blogspot.com/2011/04/step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-get.html

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2418775

Update: It seems there was a disable accounts campaign by Google Admob . Since I have published this post I've started to get  visitors from google with searches like

"Your account has been disabled for invalid activity or repeated policy violation"

"admob account disabled"

Also got linked from a Chineese forum at http://www.cocoachina.com/bbs/read.php?tid-53303.html

Are you one of the victims? Were your earnings high?

So I've wanted to create an app for the new hype android, to see if it would be feasible to learn Java and Android.

When you are busy and got lots of things going on, it takes long to learn a new language. Due to that I’ve picked easy way before I decide. Find freelancers and get your app written for you.

After a week or so my app QFS file share was ready. It is a simple app that allows you to privately upload your media or files to http://qfs.mobi. It uses default android controls, there is no fancy UI. Getting a fancy UI costs a lot :) Here are the two views of the app.

It cost me following:

-  550 USD paid for the test phone

- 138 USD paid to freelancer who wrote it

- 25 USD paid to Google for Android Market place membership

- 50 USD to Admob for advertisement plus 10 USD bonus from Admob

I’ve bid 0.03 USD per click on Admob and received 2000 clicks within 20 minutes. Unfortunately out of 2000 clicks only 80 of them converted to installation. Today, only 73% of these installations are active.

As you see; not a good result. Probably waste of money too. It may be my app isn’t good enough, but never the less I expected at least 200-300 installations. Another issue is that I don’t know who clicked my ads. Admob does not give you geo stats on ad clicks.

It looks like I don’t need to learn another language just because it is the new buzz.

If you are interested with QFS App here are the screenshots and download links.

 Market link : market://details?id=com.nll.QFS

 Direct download: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.nll.QFS