In the last couple of months we’ve been working on a better, more engaging version HomeBase lock screen, and we’re now proud to announce that the new SDK is open to all developers. The new version carry tons of improvements and new features, when the main goal is to enhance user experience and increase our partners’ revenues. The new HomeBase lock screen looks, behaves and operates better than ever before, showing awesome results from our Beta testing.

So what’s new in HomeBase Cancun?

Less Permissions

One of the main feedbacks that we got from developers in the past year was that HomeBase SDK requires too many permissions. The reason we asked for these permissions was to improve user experience by allowing end users to customize and create their own lock screen including images, RSS feeds and social accounts. The new HomeBase SDK requires only few basic permissions in order for it to work –

* Read phone status & identity

* Disable your screen lock

* Full network access

* Draw over other apps

Less permissions means happier users, more downloads and more revenues.

New content partner

We’ve partnered with new top-tier content providers to deliver an even more engaging and valuable content through the lock screen. When it comes to content consumption, there are 3 key points that should be addressed by every publisher:

1. Create valuable content that makes readers want to engage with it.

2. Matching the right content to the right crowd.

3. Serving content on a prime location that is accessible to readers.

Our new partners enable HomeBase to deliver stories that are now more engaging than ever, showing an impressive CTR throughout all geos. And the fill rate? Right there at the 100% mark.

Completely new design

Because the lock screen is the first screen end users are engaging with every time they open their device, we thought it should look awesome. The new HomeBase lock screen is designed with simplicity in mind, putting the spotlight on content instead of ads. Thanks to our premium content feeds, all images are brought in HD, providing a beautiful, sleeker experience.

All in all, the new HomeBase lock screen delivers a better, more stable experience to end users, and providing them with a real valuable tool that makes content consumption simpler. This means they will keep the lock screen for a longer period of time, yielding more profit for our partners.

In order to upgrade the SDK, you will need to download the JAR file from the admin panel. To do so, simply log in to your Widdit account and update the file – all your existing users will get the new version automatically, and newly acquired users will get the updates version as well.

If you don’t have a Widdit account yet, click here to create it and earn up to $250 signup bonus.

Happy earnings!

Team Widdit

For the past 8 years, Widdit have been providing innovative monetization solutions for desktop and web software developers. For us, smart monetization is all about utilizing prime “real estate” to deliver relevant and engaging offers without affecting the end user experience. Thanks to our vast experience with developers and the things that effect their income, we’ve identified a trend that is becoming more and more crucial to the way developers make money – The big players like Yahoo, Google and Anti-Virus companies are making tremendous efforts to eradicate 3^rd party software installation on the end user device using custom installers and download managers.

Developers nowadays face a big problem – The majority of them rely on DM and installers as their main income source. We’ve got a lot feedbacks from developers that are now looking for a new way to monetize their software, and then it hit us – The industry needs a new way to monetize desktop software.

Introducing InSoft web SDK – a simple, smart and effective way to monetize desktop software.

InSoft provides 4 different kinds of revenue streams by delivering rich and engaging ads from within the software itself, without relying on bundles. And the best part – InSoft provides 24/7 monetization for as long as the user uses the software, not limited to the installation phase alone.

InSoft’s Revenue Channels:

Display Ad Slots
Premium banners and in all IAB standard sizes with a 100% fill rate. Widdit works with top tier advertisers and have the knowledge to match the right ads to the right crowds, maximizing revenues for developers.

Display Ads

Action Triggered Ad-Events
Customizable action-triggers display ad events based on the user behavior. Once implemented, developers can choose any action the user takes inside the software, and display versatile types of ads based on the action (i.e for media players, pre roll video ad will play whenever the user clicks on the “Play” button”).

Event Triggered Ads

Text Ads
Targeted and contextualized ad labels that do not harm the software design.

Text Ads

“Premium” Feature
Offer users a “Go Premium” option that will remove all ads by selecting a one-time payment. All payment methods and collection mechanisms are already integrated and available in InSoft’s admin panel. Developers can customize the amount based on geo’s, so every user can pay a different amount based on statistical insights gathered over time.

“Go Premium”

Developers may choose to implement only one method, or use all 4 for maximum earnings – all according to the nature of their software, and the way they wish users will experience it.

InSoft’s revenue elements integrated with a software

So what’s in it for you?

Easy & Simple
Just implement the SDK and start generating revenues. We’ve kept the code as simple as we could, so implementation is only a matter of minutes. All you have to do, is to choose the relevant revenue components that you wish to implement, and you’re basically done.

Post-Install-Monetization
The SDK will generate revenues for as long as your users are using the software. Unlike bundles and download managers, InSoft provides revenues for as long as the user has the software installed.

Wide Verity of Monetization Content
Display ads, video ads, text ads, sponsored content etc. Every type has its own strengths, but all are effective.

Billing and Payments
All payment methods and collection mechanisms are already integrated and available to developers through the admin panel (Credit Card, PayPal, Wire etc.).

Admin & Analytics
InSoft’s admin panel offers valuable insights like user analytics, daily activity matrix, geographic split and performance data. You can also track the number of premium users vs. non-premium divided by geo, and calculate lifetime value per user/country.

InSoft Admin

UI Friendly and AV Flags FREE
Control your integration and monetize your software without compromising on user safety. InSoft is 100% clean of all anti-virus flags, guaranteed to deliver a clearer, more transparent experience.

InSoft is currently integrated with selected partners only. If you wish to check out how it looks on a live software, download 1Player InSoft Demo Project – a light and pretty basic media player that is integrated with InSoft to perfection.

To get started and apply for integrating InSoft with your software, create your free Widdit web account, and follow the instruction on your personal admin panel. Need some help? Your designated account manager will be happy to help you and accompany you throughout the entire integration process.

Start generating that much needed income from your software, and do it the right way – InSoft SDK.

★★ Widdit is hiring! ★★

We are looking for an exceptionally smart #Android developer with great passion for building smart & beautiful products on Android using the Android SDK.

If you have:
- At least 2 year of Android experience.
- Bs.C or higher in Computer Science or army tech units experience
- Passion for building outstanding consumer products.
- Strong skill of GUI layout and GUI programming on Android OS
- Ability to proactively take a product from design to release.
- Building SDKS – A plus
- Knowledge on AI – A plus
- Apps in the market – A plus

Drop us an email at meet@widdit.com to apply for your dream job.

GAME CHANGER -
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Alongside delivering unique messages and displaying them on the black screen of the device, BASE SDK now also delivers rich and engaging stories from top-tier content providers. This newly added features offers developers to not only maximize engagement and retention levels for their apps, but to discover a new revenue stream based on sponsored content that matters.

Once implemented, BASE will now deliver end users 3 kinds of messages:

• App Notifications –Beautiful notifications that deliver higher CTR, improve engagement and increase retention levels among dormant users.
• Sponsored Stories – BASE delivers frequently updated stories from top-tier content providers targeted to match users’ interests. All stories are personalized to match every user interests based on their geo location for maximum engagement and relevancy.
• App Recommendations – BASE offers highly performing app recommendations from top publishers, packed in a unique experience. These offers are beautifully designed, and offer a single tap to Google Play.

We’re glad to inform that BASE SDK now offers a substantial increase in the holy developer trinity – Engagement, Retention, Monetization.

Because BASE SDK now delivers so much more, we’ve released a demo app called BASE Intro now live on Google Play. BASE Intro demonstrates the content and app recommendations added features, and allows you to experience the new and improved UI. Once implemented with your app, BASE SDK will send these exact type of messages to your users.

As a special bonus, implement BASE SDK with your app by the end of January and receive a $50 signup bonus!

Click here to create your free Widdit account and implement BASE SDK with your app.

Happy integrating!

Team Widdit

It’s that time of the year again – right when the holiday season ends, the industry is gushing towards Las Vegas to attend Affiliate Summit West. If you haven’t attended this event before, you’re in to a big surprise – thousands of industry leaders will meet up and discuss all the new things coming out during 2015, mingling and creating new partnerships. As always, Widdit will be there to be a key part of the party, meeting with our existing partners and making the most out of what Vegas has to offer between January 18 and 20.

We will be officially launching Appure at ASW, so make sure to book a meeting with Widdit’s CEO Tal Wexler or our VP Web Asaf Rinat and get all the insights. If you haven’t got you ticket yet, you can purchase one here.

To book a meeting with Asaf or Tal, send them an email at tal@widdit.com or asaf@widdit.com.

See you in Vegas, baby!

Dear developers,

The holiday season is right around the corner, and as always, Widdit is here to deliver you the goods! We’re happy to announce a special holiday bonus for both new and existing developers, so everyone can enjoy some holiday spirit.

The bonus will be divided to two segments:

New developers – If you haven’t yet integrated HomeBase SDK, now is the perfect time to do so. As a special welcome bonus, new developers will enjoy DOUBLE REVENUES throughout December! You’ve read it right – every dollar you’ll make this month will be matched by us!

Existing developers – We’re also handing over cool cash to warm up the hearts of our existing partners. Widdit will DOUBLE the extra revenue generated during December compared to the revenue generated in November.
For example – a developer who earned $1000 in November, and $1500 in December will enjoy of a total revenue of $2000 ($1500 generated in December + bonus of $500 difference from November). The bigger the difference, the bigger your bonus will get! A quick tip for existing developers who really want to take advantage of these bonus – consider implementing HomeBase with your other apps for maximum revenues.

In order to enjoy this holiday promotion, please mention the code Holiday2014 to your account manager once registered (Existing developers – contact your account manager for details), or register using THIS link.

Happy holidays everyone!

Widdit Team

As part of the changes to the latest version of HomeBase SDK, we’re no longer collecting user identifiers – Instead, we are now pulling information from Google Play Services. Google have made some changes in its Developer Policy, now restricting the amount of data that can be collected by ad SDK’s and apps. According to this new update, user identifiers (such as Advertiser ID) may not be collected by third party agents. Crossing this data with other identifiers may cause privacy issues, which Google wanted to prevent.

HomeBase’s ability to match the right content to the right audience based on age, gender and geo location is only available if we get some data about the user. Instead of collecting this data by ourselves, we decided to rely on the data collected by Google Play Services, a tool that most of our partners already work with. Because we believe in delivering real value to our SDK, we urge those of you who haven’t integrated Google Play Services yet to do so as soon as possible. This will allow us to keep serving a personal experience to your users, and still stay fully compliant with the new and updated Google Developer Terms. If you choose not to integrate Google Play Services, or your app is delivered outside Google Play, please advise with your account manager to discuss different payment models available.

Since we’re no longer collecting user identifiers, we face a new issue regarding active user count. We’ve made some changes to our business model and payments sent to our partners, more on that on our next blog. In the meantime, if you encounter any drastic drop in active user count in our admin, please let your account manager know.

Learn more about Google Play Services here – https://developer.android.com/google/play-services/index.html

Happy integrating!

Team Widdit

Today, more than ever before, app developers look for new and innovative ways to communicate with their audience. Keeping a close relationship with users can sometimes be as important as the app creation process itself, and as hard to achieve. App developers are always competing for their users’ attention, a field where only the strongest, quickest and most innovative survive. Users today are bombarded with dozens (and sometimes even hundreds) of push notifications sent to their mobile phone every day- some are valuable, and some… well, not as much. The majority of those constant push notifications are sent by mobile games and news apps developers. For those developers- engagement is the name of the game. Keeping users engaged means better connection, higher usage volume, and of course higher revenues.

Push notifications are also a big deal in the eyes of Google- their last update to Google Play Developers Terms contained many do’s and don’ts regarding mobile notifications. It seems that everyone is looking for a new solution that will free end users from the clutter of the notifications bar but still engage users whenever truly needed.

Introducing Base – a smart notifications platform that delivers exactly the right information at exactly the right time. Base delivers users only what’s really important to them, one notification at a time. Unlike other notifications delivering platforms, Base evolves with the user and keeps getting better and more accurate over time. Base innovation doesn’t stop here- alongside its smarts and user segmenting abilities, it also utilizes a never used before interface by presenting the relevant information on the black screen of the device. Alongside higher engagement and retention levels with users, Base offers developers the opportunity to monetize their app by delivering personalized sponsored stories from top tier content providers directly to the black screen.

Contextual Awareness is Key

Base SDK almost instantly provides developers valuable insights like the age, gender and location of their users. As time goes by, Base gets even smarter and adjusts itself to every user’s schedule, allowing developers to engage only at the right time without disturbing the user. By utilizing Base segmentation abilities, developers can create custom notifications that achieve more, faster and smarter than before. Base was designed according to the Contextual Application Design rules and its notifications are triggered according to on real life events, so every message will get maximum exposure based on real life context. You don’t want to offer your users a game incentive while they are in the middle of a meeting – instead, offer them bonuses only at times when they can engage with your app, 30 minutes after they get back home from work, or while riding the subway. Base identifies the perfect moment when users are most receptive to your messages and dramatically increase conversions. And what about security? All anonymous information collected by Brains is stored locally to ensure maximum user privacy.

Prime Real Estate Served Fresh

Base unique UI allows app developers to engage with users on a screen that never been used before. Instead of waking and unlocking their phone, users get beautifully designed notifications directly to their off screen. The black, dull and useless screen then comes to life, prompting the user to engage with the incoming notification. Base tailor made notifications created by the developer show high conversion and can be customized to perfection. Presenting only one notification at a time ensures each notification gains maximum exposure and captures the full user attention. Worried about battery life? Base holds an ultra-dimmed display for minimum battery consumption.

All in all, Base offers 3 types of messages:

• App Notifications – Innovative, custom made notifications that deliver higher CTR, improve engagement and increase retention levels among dormant users.
• Sponsored Stories – Base delivers frequently updated stories from top-tier content providers targeted to match users’ interests. Base matches the right story to the right user for maximum engagement and revenue.
• App Recommendations – Base offers highly performing app recommendations from top publishers, packed in a unique experience.

With Base, possibilities are endless. Create your free Widdit account and learn how Base can increase your app’s performance. We also offer a special $50 signup bonus for new partners, contact your account manager today for this special promotion.

Happy integrating!

Although some lock screens (like our very own HomeBase) deliver you a sneak peak to what’s going on inside your device- they present the time & date, incoming notifications and maybe some shortcuts to your most used apps, it’s still not enough. Because your mobile phone is one of the most personal items you’ll ever possess, you keep customizing it in order to fit your needs. It stores so much data about you and your habits; it actually becomes a part of you, like your own mobile fingerprint. We thought your lock screen should reflect who you really are by delivering a tailor made experience to each user separately.

The Design

When it came to designing the ultimate lock screen, we’ve drawn our inspiration from the new Galaxy S5 phone by Samsung. We loved the intuitive and clean experience it delivers, and still we thought the lock screen can use a little motion and “life”. Because Samsung’s devices are being used by millions of versatile users worldwide, we created a robust lock screen containing a mixture of apps, notifications, colors and behaviors that change according to the user. We thought the most important role of the lock screen is to display incoming notifications and present easy access to relevant apps- that’s why our design shows a significant color to each notification, prompting you to engage with it. Instead of standing still like a motionless brick, our lock screen is in constant motion, delivering the feeling of a true living entity.

The Brains

Our concept lock screen offers a flexible behavior that allows it to zoom in and focus on who you really are, reflecting your true personality and nature. The concept lock screen draws information from the real world, representing it in an innovative way that “speaks” to you- for example, the background color scheme changes according to the time of day or to the weather outside. It learns which apps you use the most, and presents their icons inside different sized shapes according to their relevancy and your schedule. The more relevant the app is, the larger space it gets. These triangle-like shapes are also there for you to quickly access content and engage with notifications in a whole innovative yet intuitive way.

This is how we picture the perfect lock screen- sleek, intuitive and beautifully designed. It constantly changes to deliver you only the things you need the most, and offers you a much more personal experience. Our vision is to bring your mobile to the next level by making it truly your own, so no two lock screens will look the same.

We’d love to hear how you imagine your ultimate lock screen, what features should we include in it and how you want it to look. Drop us an email with your insights at mobile@widdit.com, and who knows? Maybe your ideas will come to life on our next lock screen creation.

Keeping user experience on top of the order of priorities is something every company out there can learn from. It doesn’t matter if you’ve developed a life changing product worth a (potentially) billion dollars- without users, it’s useless. Google knows that, and that’s exactly the reason they are the industry leaders.

The thing with Google is that the majority of their success depends on third party companies and developers. When it comes to Android, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of partners developing over 1 million apps.

Working on such a huge scale requires a strict set of rules that holds an ever updating adjustment platform called the “Google Play Developer Program Polices”, or GPDPP (we’ll just refer to it as “The Policy”).

The policy holds all the information Android developers need in order to create a quality app, complied with Google terms. Every now and then, the policy evolves in order to deliver better experience for Android users and the community. Last week Google added a massive update that changed the rules of the app monetization game, and affects almost every Android developer out there.

From now on, Google will no longer tolerate intrusive behavior such as adding homescreen shortcuts, browser bookmarks or icons on the user’s device. This action was taken, as always, in order to ensure Android users will get the best experience out of the apps they download, keeping annoying and unwanted ads to the minimum.

This means big news for some monetization companies leaning on rev-share that doesn’t really offer a real product, only a service. Banning notification ads also hurts those “shortcut seeking” companies that are now facing a major crossroad on their path to success. Developers now need to find a high quality monetization solution fully complied with the new Google policy, a solution that will outlast any other in the battle for fairness and value.

So, where all those disappointed developers should go? What is the right solution that fits all? Which company will prevail?

Widdit has always kept users on the number one spot, developing engaging and useful monetization solutions. By implementing the HomeBase SDK with their app, developers can deliver users a real product, one that can increase app engagement while offering true user value. HomeBase enriches the generic Android lock screen with personal and relevant content to the user, adding social, news and weather feeds all in one place.

Needless to say that HomeBase is, and always will, fully comply with Google’s developer policy. We believe it’s important to make money, but it’s more important to do it the right way.

If you still haven’t tried HomeBase, now it’s the perfect time to do so- sign up for free, and you can go live in under 10 minutes.