Richard, 

My name is Keith Petri and I am the individual whom sent you the message in 
regards to the Apayable SDK. I have seen your post on "Making Money with 
Android" forum and will be responding there as well. I'd like to address 
each of your points individually and am happy to address any additional 
concerns you or other users may have with our SDK. 

First and foremost, we are a company with the interests of developers in 
mind. We value your time and monetary investment in building and marketing 
mobile applications - and much like the traditional publishing industry we 
see the troubles in generating revenue from your users. There are three 
issues facing the mobile ecosystem that are causing a nominal (if not, 
minimal) amount of revenue to be passed from advertisers to publishers in 
exchange for inventory and the eyes of YOUR users:
1. Engaging Ad Units: This is being addressed and we will see great new 
video pre-rolls, interstitials, engaging display units, etc. in the coming 
months. 
2. ARPU: Mobile commerce is catching on and the trust of consumers in the 
channel to complete transactions (or attribute to desktop transactions) 
will continue to rise. This quarter - with the holidays - will be the 
largest one yet. 
3. Most importantly, a lack of mobile data for use in targeted 
advertisements. 

We work with advertisers and advertising platforms to provide insight for 
targeted ad buys to i) increase CTR and hit the KPIs set forth by the 
advertiser, which in turn will ii) increase the CPM cost and optimize the 
amount of revenue YOU, as a developer, can generate. Appayable is a 
platform built for developers/mobile-publishers to benefit from. 

Appayable does not hide the data we collect. We openly share this 
information - as I would have shared with you via email - if you had waited 
for my response. There is only so much information I can provide in an 
introductory email to notify developers of our service. 

Our data collection, analysis, storage and licensing practices abide by all 
currently accepted legislation and regulation including that of the Google 
Play store (since its update on September 23rd) and even participate in 
industry working groups that discuss such issues and the future of 
advertising and technology. You are correct that there are certain regions 
in the world (here is high-level map: http://heatmap.forrestertools.com/), 
but we are more than aware of the limitations and abide by all applicable 
laws.

Perhaps most importantly, Appayable is a service. You can choose to work 
with us, or not. If you do not want to earn residual, ancillary income 
without interrupting user experience in your apps (which look great, 
1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhs.wordhero & 
2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhs.anagram), then so 
be it. Just like any ad platform (i.e. AdMob), you do not need to work with 
us. In addition, nearly all permissions are optional for the developer to 
include. You were kind enough to decompile and share our JAR file, but you 
neglected to mention that everything is controlled by the individual 
publisher. 

We work with over 6,500+ applications and none have been 
blocked/banned/etc. We are not flagged as a virus, as we *are not one*. 
Please do not talk badly about our business. If you would like to speak 
with me, I am happy to jump on a call, have a webinar, meet in-person (we 
have offices in Israel, NYC, and California), etc. *Just ask. *

~ Keith


On Wednesday, November 20, 2013 10:00:24 AM UTC-5, Richard Steventon wrote:
>
> I am pretty sure Google frowns on this sort of thing without a big fat 
> EULA.  However the company in question provides no notes to the developers 
> telling them this.  They just say "include our SDK and get paid".
>
> Data in question includes:
>  list of accounts
>  phone number
>  lat/long
>  all device info (serial, imei, etc, etc)
>  mac address
>  open udid
>  list of all installed apps
>
> I am not sure how to approach this.  On the one hand, I don't want to 
> interfere with a companies business model, on the other hand, what they are 
> doing is probably illegal (in at least some parts of the world!).
>
> Thoughts/comments ?
>
>
>
>

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