Google bans apps showing ads on lock screen

For mobile developers, advertising revenue is one of the core sources of their income. It is fine that mobile developers sometimes keep the applications on freemium-model and do display ads in order to keep the lights on.

But we all agree that the ads are very annoying, obtrusive and irrelevant too. Google has finally taken a step to improve the ad user experience for Android Users. It has banned applications that display lock screen ads. But here is a catch, an application which is specifically designed for lock screen will be able to show the ads but an application which is not designed specifically for lock screen wouldn’t be able to show ads.

To better understand,

“Unless the exclusive purpose of the app is that of a lockscreen, apps may not introduce ads or features that monetize the locked display of a device.”

This means that applications like VPN, File explorers or photo editing services which overtake your lock screen with added features wouldn’t be able to display advertisement on lock screen anymore.

Google keeps improving its policies for Android Play store, just recently it cracked down against shady applications as well as a result of which a popular web browsing application UC Browser was removed from the store as it was using unhealthy and misleading ways to increase its installations.