Conditional Suppression of Advertisements Based on Data Cost

Mobile app publishers earn revenue from serving ads to users on their devices. In some cases, the ad revenue from an ad served on a user device is smaller than the direct cost incurred by the user for having the ad served on their user device. This disclosure describes techniques to automatically suppress ad serving on mobile devices based on direct costs. With user permission, the direct cost to the user from an ad request and subsequent ad served is estimated. Ad revenue associated with an ad impression is estimated and compared to the estimated direct cost. Based on the comparison, the ad is suppressed. Further, the user can be billed a charge based on an agreed upon mechanism and the publisher is credited with a portion of the charge