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As a user of the web, you’re undoubtedly familiar with how ads can appear in an app’s overall layout:
filling gaps in space rather than in time. Typically, an app will place a control in such a space, which is
itself connected to an ad service and pretty much manages itself. The control will acquire ads to display
and track click-throughs, which is typically how you get paid: clicking is a sign that the user actually did
pay a little attention to the ad, so you receive the value for that attention; users who ignore ads and
never click them don’t register.
Either way, many developers have found that selling ad space may be the most lucrative means of
monetizing an app and building a business, but of course you have to understand your target audience
and whether they’re the sorts who will care for advertising at all.
The advertising control you use depends on the ad provider. For Windows 8, you can use the
Microsoft Advertising SDK, an extension that you incorporate into your app. For details on how this
works, see the Developer Walkthrough – HTML 5 JavaScript documentation (part of the Microsoft
Advertising SDK for Windows 8 documentation). I expect that other ad providers will make similar
controls available in time.
Paid Apps and Trial Versions
Producing an app and charging for a license is certainly the one of the oldest means of monetizing, and
it still works quite well. Value received for value delivered: that’s the simple equation on which many
successful products are built. Generally speaking, paid apps are free of advertising and are not
advertisements themselves (again enforced by policy), hence customers’ willingness to pay money for
the apps in the first place. It could be, however, that we’ll gradually see some creative means of ad
insertion even into paid apps: after all, you pay for issues of a magazine and yet that magazine contains
ads (unless you pay for premium magazines that contain none). Think too how we once balked at the
idea of advertising on cable television or in movie theaters, but all that’s just a matter-of-course now.
The simple truth is that wherever there is a focus of customer attention, as already mentioned, there is a
value to advertisers and to the businesses that can sell them access to that attention. You just have to be
careful not to abuse those customers!
An important consideration for paid apps especially (but really for all apps) is the need for marketing.
The existence of a place—the Windows Store—where customers can acquire your app doesn’t eliminate
the need for finding your customers and making them aware of your product. With every such store,
there is a brief window of time where the total number of apps is still relatively small, meaning that
users have a good chance of finding the app through casual browsing. But as soon as the store contains
more apps, and users tire of browsing as a primary means of discovery, either users have to find you in a
search (assuming you even show up in the top of the results list) or you have to generate interest
through other means. This is again one of the functions of other free apps or demo versions that you
might produce: if one of your free apps gets featured in some category, every user who downloads that
free app at least has an opportunity to learn about your other products. And then, of course, there are
all the other means to market your product: the social web, your company website and SEO, advertising
in traditional media, and so forth.
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