Airpush are quite happy to support developers who want to deceive their users.
(Airpush are a controversial company that creates ad software that pushes ads to the Android notification bar usually used for new email and message notifications. Often users don't know which app they have to uninstall to get rid of them)

Live Chat Transcript:

Me: What are your guidelines for notifying end-users about notification area ads?

You are now speaking with Lisa of Sales.

Lisa: Hello

Me: Hi

Lisa: Welcome to Airpush
Lisa: Are you a developer or advertiser?

Me: developer

Lisa: Great
Lisa: Regarding your question, you can which users will receive your ad and that too how often
Lisa: adjust*

Me: How does a user know which app is sending the ads?

Lisa: It will be reflecting your developer's dashboard once you start listing your apps

Me: i.e. User X updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. How do they know which app is creating them?
Me: I'm talking about end users here
Me: not developers or advertisers

Lisa: ok
Lisa: There is an API key through which you can control the user engagements
Lisa: by a push notofication ad

Me: I don't understand how that sentence relates to my question.

Lisa: in this case, the users will receive the ad any time an ad is pushed to a device, whether or not the user actually views the ad or not.

Me: I asked how a user knows which app triggered an ad.

Me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?

Lisa: He will be receiving it in a push notification tray

Me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?

Lisa: Just give me a moment. let me check

Me: To repeat an earlier example - User X updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. How do they know which app is creating them?

Lisa: for each app they need to setup airpush sdk so they will get the report data in their airpush controlpanel

Me: That doesn't answer my question. Do you understand what I'm asking you?
Me: Imagine I am a user.
Me: I install several apps and one of them contains Airpush.
Me: I suddenly get notification ads and want to know which app is creating them. How can I tell?
Me: Are you still there?

Lisa: It depends on the app setting and cannot control that
Lisa: And the ads are not labelled with the originating app name?

Me: If a user dislikes the ads - is there any way for him to know which app caused it? I'm worried I'll get bad ratings.

Lisa: No
Lisa: The user will not know

Me: Hopefully users won't know it's my app that's doing it so they won't uninstall my app.

Lisa: No don't worry about that.
Lisa: Here you can also benefit through inactive users as you can configure your settings to deliver ads to users who haven't used an app for X days

Me: And they won't know it's me?

Lisa: No not at all.

Me: Cool.
Me: OK. You seem quite happy to support developers who knowingly spam their users. Do you mind if I publish a transcript of this conversation so other people can see how little regard you have for end-users?
Me: Hopefully it will hasten the speed at which your nasty company goes out of business

Lisa: Surely it will not.

Me: It's a very revealing conversation.

Me: Thank-you for being so candid.

Lisa: But I believe we maintain our privacy

Me: Who's privacy?

Lisa: And as long as we receive good responses, we will definitely look up to everyone's reputation

Me: Do you receive good responses from end-users?

Lisa: Yes definitely.

Me: Like all the users of APN Droid who have been leaving 1 star reviews and complaints on the Market?

Lisa: Anyways you can download our SDK and start listing your apps if you are happy with it.

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