“This experience has been life changing. From a hobbyist, who would have at most written apps used by a few friends, I have now an app used by millions, every day! It is just unbelievable... I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, and it has been the defining story of my life!” - Mohan Noone

Dr. Mohan Noone is a neurosurgeon who was interested in programming. In 2011, he came across a service that provided live updates on train schedules and envisioned bringing that information to mobile devices. With that spark of inspiration, Noone purchased an Android book to start learning code. As he was building his app, he made sure that it was simple, functional and compact to create the best user experience. After listing his app on the Google Play store, he saw his app Indian Railway Train Status grow to over 5M downloads in just 3 years. Today, the app has over 500K daily active users.

The problem
Several months after the app was released, Noone looked for ways to monetize his popular app. He decided to implement banners, but didn’t see great results at first due to poor ad placements.

The solution
Noone then decided to move the banner ad to the homepage and saw his revenue skyrocket about 10X. Afterwards, Noone decided to add interstitials, which helped him triple his revenue overnight. He believed that it was important not to overwhelm users with ads. Instead of showing interstitials in every session, he randomly triggered the loading, which meant fewer ads for the users.

The results
Over the years, Noone’s dedication to creating a positive user experience helped Indian Railway Train Status achieve over 5M downloads.

Indian Railway Train Status’ banner ad

To check out Mohan Noone’s success story, or any other of our other success stories, visit us at at the AdMob website. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ page.

Posted by Henry Wang, AdMob Marketing