Announcement: New Corona Professional Bundle; retiring Corona Ads

Getting Started Announcements
#61

You all have asked some great questions.  Let me try to address the ones I can.

Re: Cutoff Date - We have not set a date yet for technical reasons. We will provide a date once we have one. The take-away here should not be to wait, but to start updating apps now.

Re: What happens if I buy a single plugin to day and the bundle later? We will pro-rate the difference. 

Re: DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange: I can’t say with certainty, but given that they share the exact same SDK and same demand partners that the AdMob plugin does, I don’t see the advantage of having one named differently. 

Re: Enterprise users: As of now, Enterprise users would need to purchase the plugins/bundle as SDK users would, but we might consider some discount options for Enterprise users in the future.

Re: Payouts: Corona Ads will continue to payout as normal until March 31, 2017. It’s important that you update as soon as possible to another provider so that your existing app customers can have time to update their apps.

Re: Dashboard access. I’m trying to see if we can have it added back to the developer portal, but in the mean time, you can access it at https://monetize.coronalabs.com

Re: AppLovin/FAN’s 5% rev share: One of the things that has become clear is we need different models for different people. This model works for some, so for now, we will likely leave this be. 

Rob

#62

You should consider an initial 50% discount for a month at the very least, due to the short notice, not to mention the time and effort we now have to put in to update our apps.  It might also help with the initial uptake of the Pro bundle.  You have done various things like this in the past when there has been major changes.

#63

I’m willing to contribute and, until now, since I don’t need native libraries, I’m not an enterprise dev.
But what’s with this professional “bundle”? (Admob is the only thing that matters)
$500 for admob? They already get a superhigh share of our ads!
I agree that you need money. The problem is recent events are making me feel insecure with my long term projects:
Selling the company twice in a ridiculously short time. Umpredictable pricing model. Coronium updates closing abruptly without post explanation. Corona ads retiring in months with so many developers envolved.
It’s getting difficult to convince partners to move here.
Corona is the platform for new comers. Game market is extremely risky, 80% of indie starters fail to profit and die. If I’d look at this prices when I was starting, I wouldn’t be here right now.
$500 for admob is just too much. And if I’m going to pay $1k, I want more features like offline builds. I also need assurance that there will not be more costs added randomly on surprise.

#64

Exactly, the cost is way over the top. Paying $1,000 for something we already had a few months ago is crazy. I would understand if it would add other features but no, it is like if Netflix sent you an email telling you that if you want to continue watching the same series you were watching, you now have to pay 10 times the price you were paying. If this is a way to filter big developers or big companies from indie or small devs, it will definitively work.

#65

First I would like to congratulate Corona on listening to the views of its developers, I think this is awesome. 

I am a long term Corona tinkerer (used to be pro) but have yet to publish any of my content, I am looking at releasing my first game in a month (after a year of development) so I thought I would give my two cents.  

At first when I saw this announcement I thought it sounded fair,  Corona has responded to the concerns shared by many in the other thread and pretty much done what many people asked for (albeit at a high price point), and there are still options available for us new developers.  However the more I read this thread, the stronger feeling I get that I am missing out on something by not using adMob, there seems to be some talk about using another option until you can afford adMob and then when you can make the jump to adMob. As someone did share earlier, this does seem a little bit on the nose to just start charging people for something that was previously free.

As an alternative,  would it be possible to make adMob free using the 5% revenue share model up to the point Corona has received $495 as their %, at which point the 5% share is removed?  Those who want to buy it outright still can, and those like myself who are small fish can still use adMob with the security of knowing I will have to recode at a later date, and new developers who want to use adMob will not be put off my the price? 

Cheers,

Craig

#66

my hobbyist thoughts:

I get a few hours a week to work on apps, and I hate having to spend it reading through blog posts and forums to figure out all of the ramifications of your frequent changes. 

I just implemented CoronaAds - now I have to spend more time researching and selecting a new provider, implementing, updating the store - for me this sets me back a week, maybe two - just to get back to where I already am.

The change to CoronaAds was based on believing it was a legitimate long-term solution.  Now, how can I trust anything from Corona about pricing and availability of any of your features?  What if I switch to Applovin?  Next month, are you going to add that to the developer bundle and make me pay to continue using it? It seems you are just as likely to take other plug-ins previously offered for free and once they become popular, start charging for their continued use.

Your attitude of ‘we have other options, just switch to one of those’ is not feasible every three months - there are costs associated with switching (time, resources, opportunity costs) for people like me. 

The splash screen was something I didn’t like but don’t carry enough weight to argue about.  The same is true for your ‘elite’ level pricing of features.  However, what is most frustrating is that you are forcing me to make changes to what was already built and released.  

Obviously, you will do what you will, and probably continue to do it without advance notification.  And in three months, when you change management or ownership again, you will start another round of changes.  Please, continue to make the changes as you want, but I am already discontinuing my recommendations of Corona SDK to other app developers.  

#67

I would highly consider staying with Corona for another year if the following plans are offered:

Basic Tier: USD99 per year

  • Access to Admob Plugin

  • No Corona Splash Screen

Professional Tier: USD499 per year

  • Access to all paid plugins

  • No Corona Splash Screen

  • Offline Build

I believe with the above tiers, you will be getting many more subscribers. I can’t say if you will be getting overall higher revenue compared to your current plans but at least I believe you will have a stronger and bigger community to support you in making Corona a better engine.

Of course, if you guys prefer to have a smaller community consisting of mainly premium users that probably your current business model will work fine.

#68

I believe this is not possible with Admob. 

#69

Hi @sonyayllc,

As with all comments in this thread, we value your opinions and concerns, and we listen to all of them. I know its tough to keep up with changes and recent shifts and blog posts, so I just want to clarify one point here. As stated in Roj’s post above, the idea of the Corona Professional Bundle is not to gradually rip apart more free plugins like AppLovin and suddenly make them paid-only or package them in the professional bundle. We intend to add to and enhance the bundle over time to make its value even better for serious developers, while retaining the free rev-share monetization options for hobbyists like yourself.

Best regards,

Brent

P.S. - May I inquire if you implemented Chartboost or AdColony in your live apps while they were integrated through Corona Ads?

#70

I understand this and I agree. Have different models for different people. Its a good idea. But what you are doing here is having different ad networks for different people. You are forcing big developers to steer away from applovin since they don’t want to pay the 5%. Have different models for different people and create the option of a flat fee for applovin. Currently there is only one model for applovin/FAN.

Thank you for listening to our concerns and answering our questions.

#71

@Brent

I like the thought - but can I trust it? Will you devote resources to plug-ins that don’t bring in $50/month? Or will the elite plug-ins get all the development attention? We will see, but it certainly feels like hobbyists are being left behind and it is probably time to move on.

To answer your question:

My live app, interestingly, has CoronaAds (interstitial) implemented with AdMob (banners). I believe I saw that this is a conflict in later documentation, but it seems to be working with my app.

#72

As I and most of the people stated before, you are losing credibility with those sudden moves. I, for one, can’t say that you won’t be making the Steamworks plugin paid at some point and say “You can still publish your games so we are still committed to Corona being free. Also, you have other options like itch.io, GameJolt etc.”

The problem here is, you are cutting out an industry standard plugin which is _ mandatory _ in many countries if you want to get the most(the only way to get highest fill rate) out of ads and making them pay something closer to the old Corona Pro subscription for just one plugin! Also, you are charging more than the Small Enterprise tier which I guess was once able to create their own AdMob, Chartboost plugins and more before you changed the Terms of Service.

It seems to me that you are bringing back the Corona Pro subscription we all knew from years ago but not being upfront about it. “Not being upfront” part is what annoyse me the most.

(For the newcomers: Corona Pro was something like this before Fuse Powered bought Corona years ago. It was around $649 dollars and developers needed to subscribe to use some of the plugins and get rid of the waiting time before taking a build.)

On the side note, how about providing a C++ / Lua support for Windows / Mac builds through Enterprise subscription? That would provide us more value with new plugins and I’m pretty sure there are some companies out there that would pay for it.

#73

@Roj and Team,

Thanks for listening to our feedback. Truly, I respect you guys for doing that. I know you have to walk a fine line between being profitable and appealing to the various levels of devs out there. There’s the hobbyists, the mid-tier devs, enterprise level devs, freelancers making their client’s apps in Corona, devs trying to shop their games to publishers, and of course everyone else in between. It seems like with every new change you guys announce there’s always a group that doesn’t agree with the changes.

I think ad plugins should have two versions: A 5% rev-share version (if this is not possible with AdMob then perhaps through DoubleClick since they supposedly share the same inventory), and an up front yearly fee version that’s more affordable (maybe $299) where the developer gets to keep all revenue. Then of course you can have your bundle prices. The free users can stick with the rev-share and won’t have to pay anything out of pocket. The bigger users who can afford to pay upfront will do so and be happy that they can keep 100% of their revenue.

Also - I said this before in the last AdMob thread and I’ll say it again here - I still believe that there should be a truly unlimited enterprise tier that doesn’t have the monetization plugin restrictions in place. Enterprise users are already supporting Corona by paying for an Enterprise license. They are not subverting your business or getting a free ride. If you have to raise the price a bit for Enterprise to keep maintaining it then so be it, but users who pay thousands per year should have the advantage of making whatever kind of plugin they want. Moreover, Corona often lags in updating the plugins and Enterprise users should not have to wait around for you guys to catch up if you haven’t added the latest features of an ad plugin. For example, AdMob has had SDK-less mediation since Feb 2016. As far as I know the current AdMob plugin doesn’t support that, and I have no idea if the new AdMob plugin will - but please correct me if I’m wrong.

Final thoughts: I agree with others who say that these business model changes need to be less frequent and have a longer notification time. For big changes like retiring Corona Ads or charging for AdMob there should be a lead time of at least 2-3 months to give everyone a chance to prepare for the changes. Some developers have over 50 apps that need updating and that’s a huge time commitment.

#74

This is more comfortable for general Corona developers, which I don’t think they (Corona) will consider. At least the “Offline Build” should be removed from the Professional Tier.

#75

For now. corona team used to say that they would not change ad-mob and iAds (when it worked) as basic free plug-ins. that only new monetization plug-ins will be rev-shared or offered as paid plaug-ins. Now you’ve broken that promise and changed it. whose to say you wont change things 3 months from now?

#76

what is this cut off date? Perhaps I’m missing something here. I have many apps using ad-mob v2 live on store. I do not intend to update them in the near future. Will they continue to work as expected and provide impressions or are they dependent somehow on your back-end or on some setup between you and ad-mob which will be shut off soon? They must function properly so long as they are live on store!

#77

Hi @rune7,

Although I’m not on the core engineering side of things, I don’t think it’s even technically possible to “shut down” the old AdMob and its impressions upon apps that are already released to the market. But as I’ve said earlier in this thread, you should begin deciding what to do with those apps when you need to update them sometime in the future and the old AdMob plugin is shut off. As always, it’s inevitable that Apple or Google will make a breaking change in some respect that requires all app developers to update existing apps, and we (Corona) will of course need to follow suit so that developers can continue to build/release apps and have them accepted by Apple or Google. This is and always has been the nature of the ever-advancing app industry. So, at some point you will be forced to update your apps, and when the legacy AdMob plugin is unavailable, you will need to migrate to the paid version or explore other monetization options.

As for the pricing/policy changes, I’m not aware of any business in any industry in all of history that did not need to re-evaluate, change, and adapt to their respective industry, competition, market trends, etc. iAds was terminated by Apple, not by Corona, although at some point Apple probably believed that iAds was the future of mobile advertising for eternity. Instead, they terminated it and left all iAds users scrambling for alternatives. I would hope you can understand that we, like Apple or anybody else, do not make decisions with some type of “malice” toward the Corona community… in fact, the spirit and passion of the Corona community personally keeps me going day to day, even when it’s negative or critical.

Best regards,

Brent

#78

But how do you intend to know your revenues as you won’t have access anymore to the dashboard once the date is here ? Unless you pay your fee for the plugin…

I imagine the plugins like Coronaads chartboost and admob will still work on existing delivered apps. But my guess is that the revenues will value 0 unless the fee is paid… Would be more than unlikely that the apps crashes out of a sudden :smile:

Edit: owned by Brent here :wink:

#79

@Brent or any other Corona Staff, as @Vince_ mentioned earlier, can you guarantee that you will keep those plugins up-to-date and not lag behind if we paid for the subscription? For example, is the current AdMob plugin(the one with $495/year price tag) up-to-date? Does it support everything that AdMob offers?

#80

They should have upgraded the Admob plugin first to support all the latest features such as Native Ads Express before introducing the price change. I believe that might convince few more guys over to their subscription plan though $495 is still way beyond what I am willing to pay.