When I initially started Tamera I added Google Ads in the free version without giving it much thought.
I didn’t make them intrusive, I used 3 small banners in 3 different screens making sure they didn’t interfere with the user experience.
My thinking was: it’s another incentive to upgrade to the Pro version, I didn’t realize at the time the other negative impacts of ads.
Until a user emailed me saying: “Tamera isn’t a privacy-oriented app since the Ads collect user data”.
Talking about it with a friend, this statement popped in my mind:
Ads are not just about monetization they also impact how your app is perceived.
I know tech-savvy circles consider Ads a product smell and the only place where people tolerate them is inside Games.
Four months ago, I decided to experiment with removing all ads.
For context: my ad revenue from Tamera wasn’t huge, I was averaging $3/day ($90/month) so it was easy to experiment with.
The first thing I noticed was obviously the drop in ad revenue but it correlated with another metric: Daily active users was growing.
And most of those users were using the free version. I realized that ads did bother a good portion of potential users.
3 months later I’m seeing unexpected benefits:
ALTDownloads grew by almost 35%! I didn’t run any campaigns or anything. This is just from people using the app and talking about it.
Subscriptions didn’t grow as much but still they grew by almost 10% over the same period.
Conclusion
When you remove Apple’s cut, I didn’t recover the lost revenue from ads yet but I’m convinced this is the right way.
Actually, I went and removed ads from all my apps. Even the ones that don’t have any other monetization mechanism.
People are judging your app based on the design and features but also from a privacy point of view.
If you’re looking for a privacy-oriented minimalist camera app, Tamera is a 24-hour camera.