Hi guys - sorry for the confusion that an unannounced change (different department, different city) in ad server configuration has caused. This caused problems internally to engineering and QA too.
The default URL was changed to serve ads only to approved-for-ads, production apps. Not to side-loaded, new apps or unpublished yet versions of existing apps. And indeed that caused initial confusion with certification testing.
This will be addressed in the upcoming version 2.6 of RAF: side-loaded app ("dev") and unpublished versions (those that show id with underscore "_" in `plugins` at telnet 8080 or
http://<rokuIP>:8060/query/apps) will receive ads from a test feed (these are test ads, to be used to verify functionality only and they will not be compensated).
Once published, only Roku-approved for ads apps will receive ads - real ads through the default URL; others will get no ads. This will end confusion and misunderstandings about when a channel is serving real, billable ads.
Until next RAF version is out, i can offer you to install the beta version of it via add-code RAFBETA (or
https://my.roku.com/add/RAFbeta). It will show up as a purple tile named "RAF Beta" on the home screen - you can always uninstall it with "*" - "Remove channel" and thus return to production version of RAF. Then you can re-install it again at will. And so on.