Garage Buddy

Adding AdMob Support

Who am I?

• Not much of a presentation wiz • Currently a programmer at Turtle Rock studios•  7 years of experience in game development for PCs

and console• Garage Buddy was my first Android application • Garage Buddy was also my first Java application• email: brock@non-euclidian.net

What is Garage Buddy?

• Free version available – play along at home!• It is a multi-tool app for people that work on cars• Has various calculators and tables • We have both iOS and Android versions • Originally written for iOS

What is AdMob?

• Simple mobile advertising system  • Available on many platforms• Easy as heck to sign up as a publisher or advertister• Purchased by Google

Why add Admob Support?

• Paid version sales were stagnant (about 600 sales in 8 months)

• Many regions can't buy (or even see) paid apps• Possible a way to generate revenue from regions

that can't purchase paid app• Adds a way for people to “try before you buy”

How I integrated Admob in to a pre-existing app• Set my app to be a “Library”• Created two new apps (“Free” and “Pro”), that

reference that library • Configured the Manifests of those apps to “know”

about all the activities in the library• Added AdMob library (they supply a .jar file)• Altered some of the layouts in the library to have an

empty “LinearLayout” with a unique name• Wrote a utility function that can insert an AdView into

a LinearLayout, based on a “isAd” global public static boolean

• Added new “Application” to each project, to properly set the “isAd” variable

  

What was the Result?

• After about one week, the “Free” version had just over 1000 installs!

• After about one week, we had almost a $1.00 in ad revenue (yes, one dollar)

• Slight uptick in sales of the paid app • The free app is now over 4000 downloads, and has 3

ratings• The paid app has about 800 downloads, and has 23

ratings

Time investment was about 8 hours• 2 hours to set up an Admob account and read the docs• 2 hours to make the project into a Lib and have 2 app

projects• 4 hours to fiddle around with layouts

Questions? 

brock@non-euclidian.net