CashOnAd Review, COA goes global – now even more opportunities to earn for Android users [Review]

[note]Update: January 2015: COA, CashOnAd, has remained dormant as of now. There are officially no words from the company about COA but rumors tell CashOnAd is trying to find its place in Australia and East Asian countries. ~Editor[/note]

CashOnAd has finally gone a game changing update with version 3.0. Popularly known as COA now, CashOnAd is agreeably an innovative approach to advertising in the new age by displaying video ads and interactive wallpaper ad on a user’s mobile phone. However, COA has recently gone beyond just display advertising with features expanded to cover more app requirements. In this article, we share about the new changes, features and wishlist including what CashOnAd has to improve on for bringing in more users.

The app CashOnAd is now sectionized onto 3 main portions:

1. CashOnAd itself – the traditional approach of earning money with Android phone’s screen unlock feature and video-ads on phone receiving, detail earnings can be browsed from the portal web section of COA website.

2. COA Bazaar – Click and Sell. An Olx.in or app for Nepal integrated onto CashOnAd. Bazaar inside CashOnAd is a buy and sell service featured onward ver 3 of the app. It lets users to post their ads for free and lets them inquire about the posted ads and services. However, it doesn’t look like the buy-sell items are moderated by the CashOnAd team, although users can flag inappropriate ad posting.

Via COA Bazaar, you can post and get feeds of your ads. View ad analytics in real-time. Search ads with right keywords or choose the right category to find products you are looking for. Sort or filter ads by price or expiry date. Get Ad sneak peek before making a decision to buy the product or service. Interact with ads by making a phone call or email with the ad owner.

[note]Update!!! COA Bazaar is now an independent app available on Google Play store as Oho Bazaar – Free Classified.[/note]

3. COA PoP

Select a friend from your list of CashOnAd users to send a card.Choose your card from the collection of greetings fit for all occasions and moods. Preview your card and send it to your friends. The sent CashOnAd powered greeting card appears on your connected friend’s lockscreen. Voila, you got shared but not paid!

When we tried sending feedback to the COA developed via their feedback portal at http://portal.cashonad.com/feedback we never had success other than being displayed “Oops! An Error Occurred” and was never addressed.

Other updated features in CashOnAd

Clicking a profile image on the upper right corner reveals a long scrollable menu letting users access to more settings and customizations for personalized CashOnAd experience; main updated features onward ver 3.0 include

• Payment history – which was earlier not possible via the app
• List of Active Ads on CashOnAd – users can preview each ads (photo ads for screen unlocking for now) but they are not allowed to filter out ads. So far COA Ads are not based on user’s browsing behaviors or filters.
• Enable / Disable Service – this is limited to video ads only where users can entirely enable or disable video ads displayed while receiving calls. Wishlist contain the same feature for image ads (unlock swipe screen ads.)
• Notifications – this feature has been integrated with the settings now which was earlier as a separate option, but there are not much useful notifications sent out by CashOnAd app and the COA team.

COA is run by CashOnAd Pte Ltd, 10 Anson Road, International Plaza, Singapore. The parent company F1 Soft is Nepal based company but lauching CashOnAd globally is possible only from the company’s international presence. The Privacy policy and terms of conditions NOWHERE explicitly mentions the agreements and legals are directed to the court in Nepal neither the same in Singapore. Interestingly, we have here some ToC from the app and company itself:

By enrolling in COA, you permit COA to serve, as applicable, (1) advertisements to your mobile phones on your lock screen, incoming calls, messages and alarms/clocks (2) post on Social Media on your behalf; applicable with your consent only (3) new modules and features that COA releases from time to time.

By the way, did you notice, CashOnAd’s Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions are the exam same thing even tho’ they are assigned as two separate menu items.

The CashOnAd advertiser’s campaign insight estimates total targeted audience of 1,36,574 active COA users from Nepal, true as of August 2014, and we had a trial 10$ advertisement for TechSansar itself. The lock screen advertisement has estimated cost per impression of $0.0025 (~25 paisa) and for video call advertisement it’s $0.0125 (~ Rs 1.25).