Adding AdDuplex into your app is exceptionally easy, but there are still a few things that can trip some people up when trying to activate it on the AdDuplex site.  People often ask why their app shows as “pending activation” for its status.  While some reasons for this are on AdDuplex’s side, there are a couple of common issues on the app’s side that can be at fault.  It boils down to AdDuplex not seeing impressions from the app, and this post will go through two of the more common reasons this might happen.   As long as everything is setup correctly, your app can be approved within a day of your app being published to the store.

Using the proper AppID

About the only property you need to set on the AdDuplex control, for either the phone or Windows 8, is the AppId parameter.  This confuses some people, as every app has an AppID associated with it from the Dev Center, and they think that is what they are supposed to use.

But AdDuplex has its own AppID, and that is the one that the control expects.  You can find it from the web site, on the My Apps page, or the Details page of the app.

People also occasionally forget to set the AppID at all, so be sure that isn’t you.

Don’t Hide the Ads

While most people wouldn’t try to hide the ad control intentionally, they may not realize that it checks to make sure it is not obscured AT ALL while it is running.  This means that if any other control overlaps it, even a little, it will keep it from counting any ad impressions, and there-fore, keeping the app from being activated.
The most common cause for this is placing a small “X” button in the corner, to allow the user to remove the ads.  An exception is actually being created for this case, but for now, it is not allowed.

Another issue that can catch people off guard is that even controls that are fully transparent (Opacity = 0) count as obscuring it.  Instead, make sure that you use the Visibility=”Collapsed” property if you want to hide a control completely.

So, what can you do if you want to verify that the ad control doesn’t think that it is obscured?  Just set the ‘IsTest’ property to true.  When set, this will cause a message to pop up if it detects any other control on top of it.  This can be very handy, but make sure that you don’t forget to turn it off before publishing it.  🙂

Update: versions 2.8.0.5 (2.7.0.5) and newer of the Windows Phone SDK include additional features to simplify debugging of this issue. More on it in this blog post.