This review is for the advertiser InMobi.  They are an option for MobFox backfill, and currently the only one while issues with Admob are resolved.

For those of you using the MobFox backfill feature, you may have noticed that the option to use Admob has been temporarily removed.  MobFox indicates that they’re working with Admob to fix the issue and that it will be fixed in a few days.  It’s been a few weeks now, however, so you’ll want an alternate plan.

If you previously set up backfill with Admob, it appears to still work (at least for me).  You can’t set up new apps with Admob, though, so I am looking into how InMobi performs.  I updated the Android Income Powerstart Guide (no longer available) to show setup and integration steps for InMobi.

Integration

I didn’t integrate the InMobi API into my app, but it looks to be about the same size as the Admob and MobFox APIs (around 50kb), and it looks like it requires very similar permissions as well as code and/or XML setup.

I used the MobFox backfill feature, which of course takes little more time than creating the app on InMobi and then copying the app ID into MobFox.  Since my apps were already set up with MobFox, no changes to my apps were needed.

InMobi metrics and fill rate

One good thing about Inmobi is their polished flash-based interface.  Their dashboard shows a lot of information. It’s not showing me information that I really like yet, though, but it has only been a few days so it’s too early to judge for sure.

After the first few days, I saw that my fill rate on InMobi was about 32%, which is pretty bad.  Today, I see it at 27%.  That’s not a good trend.  To be fair, Admob is showing a fairly low fill rate for one of my apps today.  A critical difference, however, is that Admob supports house ads.  At least I’m getting something out of the deal when no ads are available on Admob.

I don’t think you can create a house ad on InMobi – you have to have a non-zero budget for any campaigns you create.

Despite the low fill rate, the click-through-rate (CTR) was decent, and the pay per click was decent as well.  It rounded out to be not so bad with all factors included, so it warrants more time to see where it goes.

Other factors for InMobi

InMobi has a payout threshold of $50, which is about middle of the road.  One plus, however, is that if you don’t reach that threshold in 6 months they will close your account and pay out the balance.  That means that you will eventually get your money, even if you decide not to continue with them until reaching $50.

InMobi has less of a North American presence than some of the other ad networks, which could account for some of my problems with fill rate.

I unfortunately don’t have a method to select ad networks by region yet, but I may eventually design a solution using something like AdWhirl to accomplish that.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, I updated the Powerstart Guide (not currently available) with setup and integration steps for InMobi.  If you’re just setting up MobFox and can’t use Admob for the backfill, I think InMobi will be worth investigating.

Update:  After a few weeks of testing, I can’t recommend InMobi.  Without house ads, their abysmal fill rate means you won’t be showing any ads at all or earning any ad revenue.  Maybe they’re in a dry spell, but it for now avoid InMobi.  I may have just not sent the right demographics to them for good ad fill, but I didn’t circle back to try again.

If you previously set up backfill with Admob, don’t make the switch – you won’t be able to switch back!  Admob still performs better for me, and also has house ads.

If you need more advice on what ad networks to implement, check out my other articles or get the Android Ad Network Primer (no longer available) to get all of my recommendations.