Hey everyone,
I’m the developer/creator, so feel free to ask any questions about ads here.
A few things I’ve seen:
When ads are shown
Ads are shown in between app pages. So going from the tracker to the community, you might see an ad. However, you won’t see any ads once you’re in the community. So you can spend literally all day in the community and see no ads (besides maybe one ad when you enter it initially).
How Premium works
It’s a monthly or yearly subscription. Yearly is 50% less overall. It doesn’t just remove ads, it also provides a bunch of other useful features. You get a widget that you can add on your home screen so you can track your sobriety without having to open the app, you get access to cloud sync so you can back up, restore and transfer your data between devices, community perks which is a title and icon that you can choose from, and more backgrounds.
You can get Premium by tapping on the app’s main menu in the top-left, then Premium. The Patreon thing is old and not as good value as Premium, as you don’t get any of the benefits that Premium gives you.
Type of ads
I have some control over the type of ads. I can enable or disable certain categories. I’ve disabled some like medication, substances and gambling. They shouldn’t show in the app, unless the advertiser has incorrectly categorized them. Ads are generally also based on what Google thinks you’re interested in. So if you’re getting a certain type of ad the whole time, that’s probably because Google thinks you like that.
Why we have ads/premium:
I listed more detail here when the change to Premium was made Premium is changing
In summary:
Sober Time needs revenue to run. The servers, community, and cloud storage all cost a monthly fee to maintain. So I could either make it a paid app with an upfront cost, or a free app with other monetization. I chose to go with free, because I believe it can reach more people this way.
This way, people can choose to watch ads instead of spending any of their money, but they can still access Sober Time’s tools and community.
Happy to answer other questions.