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?

Below code uses google maps api with local proxy code to get country,city and local area of user. Fully functuional apart from multiple entries not being filtered in the result. I'll hopefully fix it too.

It only workd phones that support navigator.geolocation such as iPhone, webOs, Android, Nokia N900

Due to same origin policy I've had to use local proxy code to download location data from google (see below)

To run the code create an html file and paste below code on to it 

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
         function find() {
            if (navigator.geolocation) {
                navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(success, error);
            } 
            else if ( window.google && google.gears ) {
            var geo = google.gears.factory.create( 'beta.geolocation' );
            geo.getCurrentPosition(success, error);
          }
          else {
                $('#output').html('Not supported');
            }
        }
        function success(position) {
            var lat = position.coords.latitude;
            var long = position.coords.longitude;
            var pullurl = 'getLocationResponse.ashx?latlng=' + lat + ',' + long;
            get(pullurl);
            //$('#output').html(pullurl);
        }
        function error(msg) {
            $('#output').html('failed to get coordinates');
        }
        function get(url) {
            $.ajax({
                type: "GET",
                url: url,
                dataType: "xml",
                success: parseXml,
                error: function (xhr, status, error) {
                     $('#output').html("An AJAX error occured: " + status + "\nError: " + error);
                }
            });
        }
        function parseXml(xml) {
            $(xml).find("GeocodeResponse").each(function () {
                if ($(this).find("status").text() == "OK") {
                    parseOkXml(xml)
                }
                else {
                    $('#output').html('response code was not OK');
                }
            });
        }
        function parseOkXml(xml) {
            $(xml).find('type').each(function () { // find all "type" tag in XML
                if ($(this).text() == 'administrative_area_level_1') { // in here $(this) is our "type" tag
                    add($(this).parent().find('long_name').text());
                    //return false;
                }
				 if ($(this).text() == 'administrative_area_level_2') { // in here $(this) is our "type" tag
                    add($(this).parent().find('long_name').text());
                    //return false;
                }
				 if ($(this).text() == 'administrative_area_level_3') { // in here $(this) is our "type" tag
                    add($(this).parent().find('long_name').text());
                    //return false;
                }
            });
        }
		function add(data)
		{
                $('#location').append('');
		}
    </script>

Proxy code to load maps data from google getLocationResponse.ashx

<%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="getLocationResponse" %>
using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;

public class getLocationResponse : IHttpHandler
{

    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    {
        context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
        string latlng = context.Request.QueryString["latlng"];
        string url = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?latlng=" + latlng + "&sensor=true";
        WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
        request.Timeout = 1000;
        ;


        using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
        {
            using (Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream())
            {
                using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream))
                {
                    context.Response.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());
                }
            }
        }
    }
    public bool IsReusable
    {
        get
        {
            return false;
        }
    }

}

 you now can request location info by calling find() JavaScript function from html

A rough advert slipped in to Admob's publisher network costed money to quite few people who use iPhone application called Talking Tom Cat.

Application designed for kids was using Admob adverts to support free version and some adverts was designed to trick users/children to click and dial premium rate numbers.

Admob said: "Click-to-call ads with premium numbers are classified as age-appropriate and normally would not appear in apps for children. We will work with the app developer to block these ads if we discover they are showing."

From TheRegister;

Developing apps for Android, iPhone and iPad ? Go to http://inmobi.com/smart-dev/worlddevfund/ to grap some of $2 Million from InMobi.

Inmobi offers 100% revenue share for  Android, iPhone and iPad untill $2 million depleted. You will be paid 100% of you advertising income! Hurry up, first come first serve!

Personally as a mobile web developer I am a bit disappointed. Mobile web developers left out of this fund. I understand InMobi's aim to grab some share from juicy App Market(s) but there are thousands of mobile web developers who would start to use InMobi with such campaing!

Yay!!! My favorite browser's Maemo version is ready for download as Alpha release at http://labs.opera.com/news/2010/05/11/. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for download.

I must say it is way better and faster than Firefox Mobile for Maemo/N900!

The only main problem I've noticed is that page load times are quite high when you compare to on board browser MicroB.

Opera Mobile for Maemo is a hobby project by Opera engineers and IS NOT OFFICIALLY supported.

Here are some screen-shots. To get original size right click and save images to your computer.