‘Disruptive Ads’: Top Apps Delisted

Pixalate uncovered 564 apps that have characteristics that appear to be consistent with apps removed from the Google Play Store due to “disruptive ads”. In this list of apps, developers with at least one such app had all their apps removed—even if the developer’s other apps did not contain ads.

This article covers the following key findings:

• The 10 most popular apps delisted
• 564 apps with 2.8+ billion downloads were delisted
• Biggest developers delisted
• Over 75% of the 564 delisted apps had the “System Alert Window” permission, which Google’s documentation says “very few apps should use”.