Introduction
It is relatively easy for you make money via advertising in your apps. All you need is a valid Windows Store developer license and the Microsoft Advertising SDK. You’re not here to read about all my ramblings, so without any further adieu, let us start.
Microsoft Advertising SDK
The Microsoft Advertising SDK is, as its name suggests, a means for us to advertise products in our programs. We can get the advertising SDK here. Download it and install it. It is a very small file (I think just over 1 MB). This will give us a few advertising controls in our toolbox, as displayed in Figure 1.
Figure 1 – Advertising tools
AdControl
The AdControl is the most common advertising tool found in most Windows 8 Store applications. It is very easy to use and set up. Before I get too far ahead, let us start a quick project and configure it to show ads.
Our Program
Our program is quite small, and its sole purpose is to get you started with working with ads.
Create a new VB Windows Store Project. If you are not sure how to create a new Windows 8 Store app, have a look at this article I wrote a while back. You could name it anything you like. With this example I have aptly named mine Ads.
Now, we need to reference the Microsoft Advertising SDK. We do this by following the next few steps:
- Click Project, Add Reference
- Inside the Reference Manager window, expand the Windows group
- Inside the Windows group, click Extensions
- Select Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows 8 (XAML)
- Click OK
You may also need to add the Internet capability to your app, as the ads will get downloaded, fetched from the internet. If this capability does not exist yet, follow these steps to add it:
- Inside Solution Explorer window, double-click the Package.appxmanifest
- Select the Capabilities tab
- Select the Internet Client check box
Now, we can add the AdControl to our form. You can place it anywhere, as this is just an example; but in normal circumstances you’d have a clear idea of where to place the ad. Figure 2 shows the added control to our form.
Figure 2 – The AdControl is added
The following step is to configure this ad control so that it concurs with your customers’ needs. We now have to set properties such as Height and Width. A complete XAML code representation of your AdControl might end up looking like this:
<UI:AdControl HorizontalAlignment="Left", Height="357", VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="368", Height="357", AdUnitId="139500", ApplicationId="6907a92c-4800-452a-a425-36b2ef397c22", IsAutoRefreshEnabled="false", Latitude=40.47, Longitude=73.58, AdRefreshed="OnAdRefresh", ErrorOccurred="OnAdError", IsEngagedChanged="OnAdEngagedChanged" />
A couple of interesting properties here! HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment makes sense, as do the Height and Width properties. The rest however seem strange. Let us look at each one of them.
Private Sub OnAdRefresh(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs) ''' The code below will print information about the AdRefreshed event to the Debug Output window of Visual Studio Debug.WriteLine(Date.Now.ToString() + " : " + sender.ToString() + " Ad Refreshed.") End Sub Private Sub OnAdError(sender As Object, e As Microsoft.Advertising.WinRT.UI.AdErrorEventArgs) ''' The code below will print information about the ErrorOccurred event to the Debug Output window of Visual Studio Debug.WriteLine(Date.Now.ToString() + " : " + sender.ToString() + " error: " + e.Error.ToString() + " -- " + e.ErrorCode.ToString() + ".") End Sub Private Sub OnAdEngagedChanged(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs) ''' The code below will print information about the EngagedChanged event to the Debug Output window of Visual Studio Debug.WriteLine(Date.Now.ToString() + " : " + sender.ToString() + " EngagedChanged.") End Sub
Testing
You can test your ad units by supplying the Test Mode values for your AdControl. This ensures that nothing goes wrong and your ad works as expected
Conclusion
This concludes this introduction. The rest is now up to you to get sponsors for your apps, and I wish you good luck with that! Until next time, cheers!
About the Author:
Hannes du Preez is a Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic for the sixth year in a row. He is a trainer at a South African-based company providing IT training in the Vaal Triangle. You can reach him at hannes [at] ncc-cla [dot] com