Push Notification Ads and Icon Ads

[JerryScript]

Over the past few months, a new trend is appearing in the development community. Developers are being approached by companies who want to bundle their advertising software into apps. This is not new, but the method of presenting the ads is. Instead of banner ads in the app, or popups, they are now adding them to your notifications, and the notification dropdown menu. They are also adding them to your homescreens via icons that are nothing more than gateways to their offers. Here's an article with more details:
Sneaky Mobile Ads Invade Android Phones | PCWorld

Currently, there is no mechanism in the market to determine if an app has this sort of advertising, nor any requirements by the market to disclose them. There are a few apps that can help you determine which apps may harbor these types of instrusive advertising platforms, and maybe even block a few of them:

AdFree Android by BigTinCan

Addons Detectore by denper

AirPush Detector by Dan Bjorge

 

[LeslieAnn]

This has been happening in the background for a few months actually.

The last major program to do it was slammed by complaints as will any of these. What these idiots (yes, idiots!) fail to realize is that they are making nothing more than a trojan or adware and may as well be a virus writer. They fail to take into account the idea that you may end up with 5 apps all doing the same thing. Ever see internet explorer with 20 toolbars? Same situation.

If you find an app like it, COMPLAIN, make it known, quickly. Shame these idiots for what they are doing and watch them fall fast.

It takes a while to make a good reputation and only seconds to destroy it.

 

[Eollie]

Cant agree with LeslieAnn enough. I thought I was having deja vu reading this. I normally know what the offending app is and I will in turn let the dev know they are idiots and going to lose users instead of gain.

 

[theforerunner]

I have seen this with the "Go launcher ex" apps, like Go Notification, Go Locker, Go SMS, and etc. ITs hard to tell exatly which one of these said apps has the adds that you are talking about but im pretty sure its the notification app. I had all three of them, then deleted all but SMS at one point before ROMing and i got adds as notification in my status bar. It might even be from "Statusbar+ Lite" (those were just the last things i installed before i noticed it happening. pretty positive it was one of the GO apps though.)