New Windows Microsoft advertising SDK with support for video interstitials [Windows Blog]
Today we are releasing the capability to display video interstitials through the Microsoft Universal Ad Client SDK. Video ads are a highly popular way of monetizing apps and games, and can offer higher eCPM than banner ads. Video Ads are supported in Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 through the Microsoft Universal Ad Client SDK released today.
Soon apps in the Windows Store (the new Universal apps, that is) will have video ads (one assumes auto-playing) that take over the window and force you to watch a video before playing a game or using an app. If this sounds like something you don’t want your Windows PC to do, you’ll probably notice that they call it a “highly popular way of monetizing apps and games”. Popular with who? Advertisers. Game developers. Not popular with you, the user.
The whole point of supporting these types of ads in Windows Universal Apps is to try and attract more programmers to write games and other apps for the platform, since even well after launch the quality of the app ecosystem in the Windows Store is well below sub-par levels, which is actually a step up from all the scams and fake apps they had in the Windows 8 days. They are so desperate to get decent apps in the store they made it so Android and iOS apps can be simply recompiled and run on Windows without a lot of work for the developer — in fact, the Candy Crush game in the Windows Store used Microsoft’s toolkit to port the iOS game to Windows. So it makes sense for them to focus efforts on helping developers make money from their games.
Forgotten in this whole initiative are the users. Who don’t like or want auto-playing video interstitial ads, ever.
Route 29 Batman is killed after his Batmobile breaks down along a Md. highway
Robinson, a 51-year old Baltimore native who’d built his success on a cleaning business thus enabling him to indulge in the purchase of a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, turned his own passionate indulgence in a sportscar into a way to charitably do good. Dressing as batman, he’d visit sick children in hospitals around the Baltimore and DC area where he’d hand out batman toys, books and rubber bracelets.
A self-made millionaire spent his money and time becoming Batman not to fight crime, but to make sick kids smile again. It’s an article that you simply must read.
My own personal encounter before I had ever heard of him was seeing him dressed as Batman and driving the Batmobile on the highway in DC, looking it up, and finding out that there really are superheroes in the world. He will be missed.
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Previous Thoughts You Might Have Missed:
- Tuesday: Microsoft is Trying Really Hard to Shoot Themselves in the Foot
- Monday: The Best Upgrade for Your Surface Pro 3 is the SP4 Keyboard
- Saturday: First Impressions of the Apple TV: Lots of Entering Passwords Using the Remote
- Friday: Soon, Windows 10 Will Be Automatically Pushed Through Windows Update
- Monday: The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares