question

Millenium Apps asked Aug 8, '14

Whats going wrong with amazon ads?

Hi there, I want to see if there is many developers like me who noticed serious issues with amazon Ads. The first bad news is the fill rate in the new added countries going down by 70% in the 30 of July. I don't know if it's just a bug in reports but it seems to be fixed as by the 6 of August, it was back to normal values. I wonder if someone from Amazon ads team can explain what happened. The second bad and the worst news it that i didn't get payment at the end of July, it seems that i wasn't the only one and i read that amazon team will issue the payment for the next month, i don't understand why you have to delay it by one month with the risk that the issue will happen again the next month. I think that it's more responsible to make exceptional payment during the month in this special case than waiting the next month. Don't forget that you have one month of delay compared to other main ad networks like Google Ads. Maybe this can be improved as you are a big company more experienced in payments than Google (i think). The third bad news is the support team stopped doing it's job as before, i mean now i request support but no reply, before i get response very quickly, but know i had to contact the team twice, after many days without an answer, to get an email telling me that my request is sent to the appropriate team. since no news. Any explanation? maybe all the team is in holidays at the same time? that's the only explanation i can find. The last bad news is eCPM going down for the first time it loses 50% in 31 July and continues losing value (in my very engaging app, it was at 1.55$ and since the 31 July, it continues going down to attain 0.8$ yesterday the 7 August. Any explanation about that? an other issue i guess? i hope so, cause if it's amazon that reduces the quality of it's ads, it will be a very sad news. By the way, any other feedback to confirm (or not) what i said will be appreciated. As you know amazon team do read posts here. that's the good news that i will end this post with. Cheers

mobile ads

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ZomboDroid answered Aug 11, '14

Hi fellow developer! I will try to address all your issues, since it seems that you're not the only one with these type of problems. Fill rates - ours have always been around 30-50%. Sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. We recommend you set up a backup network for when Amazon can't give you ads. Missed payments - We did not receive a payment as well. But we got the money afterwards. But there were issues with that as well. I'll make a huge post about my recent bad experience with Amazon support, payments and tax teams. Let's wait a few days and then I'll see if they play fair or they play carelessly. Lets just say for now that they withheld 30% of our earnings despite the fact that we submitted all the necessary tax info to them. So we received a double payment, but they withheld 30% for the first time in the last year. I hope you understand how frustrated we are. As I said - I'll make a separate post about this. Support - horrible. They denied our app twice because they did not know how to use it. The explanation of the "bug" was written in such bad English we could not understand it at all. It could be that support is so bad lately, due to the holiday season. eCPM - Since the 6th of August we have seen a 60% drop in eCPM. We are already discussing this here: https://forums.developer.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=12332 We have had nothing but bad experiences with Amazon in general in the last three months. I hope this is just temporary because other ad networks are honestly even worse. :)

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Millenium Apps answered Aug 12, '14

Hi ZomboDroid, Thanks for your feedback, i see that i am not the only one. For fill rates, i use AdMob as a backup so i don't really care about fill rates but with the eCPM going down, it makes me think about moving amazon to second position if it continues this way. Of course a higher fill rate will be very appreciated, I think that they are improving fill rates by adding new countries, i hope that will not induce negative effect on eCPM. for the payments, i understand how frustrating it can be i know that they take 30% for sales, but for ads i don't understand why as they already take a part that we don't know (i think that Google takes about 60%, it can be around that number). I am not a US citizen but i know that there is more complex tax requirements for US devs. If you give them all the documents i think that they have no reason to not solve your issue, I hope so. For July payments, it seems that they are going to add them to August as they failed in July, i don't understand why they can't do it before. for eCPM, we finally get a reply from Kevin (Thanks man) saying that it's a bug that they are working on, i don't know if we will get the lost earnings but it seems to improve from today. Let's wait and see. I agree, especially the last weeks, it was a horrible experience as it was with AdMob with their buggy GPS crashing our apps, but Amazon still the best even with these issues, It took months for AdMob team to fix their issues while amazon is about to solve the issue in two weeks. For Amazon team, keep up the hard work and thanks for being very responsive :-)

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zheng jinrong answered Aug 13, '14

My first payment (should receive in October 2013) also delay for 2 months. After that, I get the payment on time every month.

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Sujoy@Amazon answered Aug 13, '14

Millenium Apps, Thank you for your post and sorry for the delay to respond. For the first issue, we apologize for the sudden drop in eCPM. We resolved the issue already. Please see below thread https://forums.developer.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=3861 For the second issue, thank you for your patience with this issue. Our Mobile Ads team has identified the issue with your payment and they have added your missing balance to your upcoming payment. You should be receiving your June and July earnings during the next payment cycle. Please let us know if you have any other issues with your payments. For the last one, thank you for taking time to share your feedback with us. I will share it with internal appropriate team.

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Millenium Apps answered Aug 21, '14

Thanks Sujoy for your response, I am very happy with the service as all the issues were fixed in less than a week. I still have one suggestion for support team, it's about the way it works, I will appreciate if you allow us to reply from email to responses after support request. now we have to create a new case just to answer the questions on an existing request. You're the best guys, keep up doing what you do :) Cheers,

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T. Holyoak answered Aug 22, '14

My impressions are still way below requests. Is that not what was fixed?

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Millenium Apps answered Aug 25, '14

Hi T.Holyoak, That's normal if your app is available worldwide, the best fill rate i get is 35%. The reason for that is that few countries only are covered. They are including more countries, i hope that one day will get 80% of fill rate if the eCPM still as good as it is, because it's not helpful to include countries that will lower the eCPM (ex: India). But the fill rate still to improve as for USA, i don't understand why we can't get higher than 90% fill rate. Another request to Sujoy, please can you tell the payment team to proceed before the 29 of August? as after that i will receive it the next month. I would appreciate if you can follow the good example of Google (every 23-25 of the month). I will finish with a very important request for the developer consol, answering reviews. I have review in spanish, i could help the user if i have the ability to reply, but no way even with logging as a user, i can't comment on the spanish store. I think that adding reply to reviews will benefit the ecosystem. Best regards,

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Sujoy@Amazon answered Aug 29, '14

Happy to help. You do not need to send a separate mail for a followup support request. If you see our response mail for the request you raise, you should be able to find a link (like below) to send your followup query in the same case https://developer.amazon.com/help/contact-us.html?caseID=xxxx replace 'xxxx' with your case id and submit the form with your latest query. Please note you can use same url to reopen a resolved case also this way.

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Millenium Apps answered Sep 28, '14

Thanks for the information. I have a new issue with Amazon ads, since 25th all data (request, impressions, fill rate, income) are down. It seems that all developers are seeing the same thing. Can you please tell us if it's just a bug in developer console showing incorrect reports or more than that? I guess that your team is working on a fix, any idea about the time it will take to be fixed? Greetings,

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Millenium Apps answered Jan 7, '15

Hi Amazon team and devs, It's me again, I am facing the same serious issue from the last time, impressions are going down by 50% since the 23rd of December. I don't understand why it's not that stable compared to other ad networks like Google Ads. It's always the same reason, impressions outside US: Germany -80% Italy -60% France -70% since 2nd December 2014 Spain -70% since 30th December 2014 Asia - 90% Other Europe -50% Please find a solution to that to make it as stable as US impressions. This lose of impression causes a lose of at least 50% of revenue which might be taken seriously. Any explanation and hope for a fix from Amazon team? Devs please let us know if you are facing the same issue. Thanks

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