Episode twelve of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
With their customizable presentations and ability to be precached, Native Express ads fit right in with list-based user interfaces:
In this deep dive episode of the Mobile Ads Garage, you'll learn how to integrate Native Express ads into an iOS app that uses a UITableViewController for its primary UI. Along the way you'll get a detailed set of step and see screencasts of an implementation in Xcode. The episode also covers a handy technique for tapping into the ad lifecycle to load native express ads sequentially, from the top of the list to the bottom.
If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube Playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.
We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes and examples you'd like to see. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.
Remember to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.
Thanks for your feedback on our recently launched The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads. We’re thrilled to announce that it’s now available in Spanish and Japanese.
For our Spanish and Japanese-speaking developer communities, we hope that this ebook will help you implement native ads, an ad format that effectively monetizes while preserving the user experience. Native ads match the look and feel of the content within your app and as spending on native ads is expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018, this presents a huge opportunity for publishers to enhance their user experience and tap into new revenues.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
Download your free copy of The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads in Spanish and Japanese today and learn practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads in your app.
Episode 11 of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and Doubleclick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
In a break with tradition, this video is a deep technical dive on one subject: Native Ads Express in an Android RecyclerView. You'll learn how to modify an existing RecyclerView implementation to include Native Express ads, all the way from updating the adapter to loading the ads. In addition, you'll get a clever trick that makes sure your ads are always sized to match the UI, so they fit right in with your content.
If you haven't used Native Ads Express before, you can see them in action in Episode 7. Andrew and Gary cover all the basics: loading ads, placing them in layouts and storyboards, and using CSS to style the ads to match your app.
Are you a developer building the next great app? Do you wish you could better analyze your app and its users, so you can monetize without compromising the overall user experience? If so, you’re at the right place!
Not only can these questions be addressed simultaneously, but there is already a solution in place: Firebase. Firebase can help you build your app, understand and grow your user base, and link with AdMob to help you better monetize.
Developing your app
Firebase can provide a Realtime Database, Authentication, Cloud Messaging, Storage, Hosting and Crash Reporting to aid you in developing your app. Forget about infrastructure - you can focus on building your masterpiece and leave the operations to Firebase.
Analyze your audience
At the heart of Firebase is a 100% free analytics solution built specifically mobile apps. With unlimited reporting on up to 500 distinct events, you can set up multiple measurements to know exactly what your users are doing in your app, how they’re engaging with your app, and what they love most about your app. With this data, you can focus your efforts to drill down and sustain the best features of your app, while at the same time improve newly surfaced areas of needs.
Grow your audience
After you’ve launched your app, Firebase can help you grow and re-engage users with powerful growth features. Using Firebase Notifications console you can re-engage users, run marketing campaigns, and target messages to Audiences in Firebase Analytics. Dynamic Links can survive the app install process and take users to relevant content whether they're a brand-new user or a longtime customer. There is also the Firebase Invites feature, an out-of-the-box solution for app referrals and sharing, which lets your existing users easily share your app, or their favorite in-app content, via email or SMS. Finally, Firebase can also track your AdWords app installs and report lifetime value to the Firebase Analytics dashboard and Firebase Audiences can also be used in AdWords to re-engage specific groups of users. For example In-app events can be defined as conversions in AdWords, to automatically optimize your ads, including universal app campaigns.
Monetize your product
With AdMob by Google, Firebase can also help you monetize your app by linking your Firebase Analytics with monetization. By combining these two products, you gain deep insights into usage data, which you can then use to optimize your user experience and monetize your app. Do your users have trouble progressing past certain levels? Help them progress with Rewarded Video. Are certain users spending all day endlessly scrolling through your content? Help them discover other cool apps with Native Express. Do a few users spend heavily on your IAPs and you want to keep their experience ad free? Segment them with Firebase, and exclude them from the ad experience.
Want to learn more?
Check out the above video, where Andrew Brogden, Mobile Ads Developer Relations and David East, Developer Advocate, walk you through what benefits there are to using AdMob and Firebase together, and how to get your Android and iOS projects set up with both SDKs.
Ready to start exploring the true power of Firebase and AdMob? Sign up for a Firebase account and an AdMob account and link the two accounts.
Stay tuned for our next blog on Firebase in the coming weeks, where we will deep dive even further on user behavior analytics (of which you now have deep insights thanks to Firebase) and how this can help you increase those 5-star reviews!
Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.
Posted by Alex Fan, Business Development Executive, Mobile Partnerships.
Episode 10 of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube! If you haven't seen it before, the Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
Knowing what's going on with your ads is a big part of maintaining a great user experience. In the latest episode of the Mobile Ads Garage, you'll see how to tap into the ad lifecycle so your app's informed of loads, clickthroughs, and other key events. You'll also get a detailed breakdown of the steps that occur in the life of an ad, info about which classes and callbacks to use for common tasks like pausing game engines and muting audio, and a real world example of how to put it all together.
To improve our product and service, we send out a survey to our developers every 6 months.
Thanks to previous suggestions, we’ve launched new features to improve our product and help you grow your earnings. These included offering expanded frequency capping, support for new mediation networks, and updating reporting capabilities.
You may have received a survey by email over the last few weeks, if so please take the time to respond to it as we value your input.
To make sure that you're eligible to receive the next survey email, please:
Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!
Posted by Susie Reinecke - Developer Happiness Team
From time to time, you may encounter Google Play policy issues with your apps. The Google Play policy team has been working hard to provide you with the resources and support you need to resolve policy issues.
If the app review team notices a policy issue with your app or app update, you’ll receive an email with the subject line “Notification from Google Play.” (If you didn’t receive this email, make sure to update your email address on the account details page in your Developer Console.)
The policy notification email includes the policy your app violated and the steps you need to take to resolve the issue. If your app is rejected, you can fix the issue and submit the app again for another review - you don’t need to reach out to the policy support team.
If you disagree with a policy violation, or if you’d like help resolving your policy issue, you can always contact our support team. Simply use the contact details in the notification email or click on the question mark at the bottom of each page in the Developer Policy Center.
For the quickest response, make sure to include your package name. As soon as you submit the form, you’ll receive an automated response with a case number in the subject line. This means your appeal has been submitted successfully. A specialist will review your case and respond to you within 72 hours.
If you’d like to learn more about Google Play policy, check out the “10 tips to stay on the right side of Google Play policy” video on the Android Developers YouTube channel or below.
Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob.
In a previous blog post, we introduced the Google Play Developer Policy Center. To go along with making the policies more accessible and useful to developers, the policy team has created an engaging video to help developers stay on the right side of Google Play policy.
Here are the 10 tips to stay on the right side of Google Play policy;
Review the Policy Center: It’s recommended that you review the Policy Center whenever you're unsure if your app violates policy.
Describe your app appropriately: Take the time to describe your app appropriately in order to avoid metadata policy violations. Remember that every translation of your app description needs to be compliant with the metadata policy.
Use images you have the rights to: Your app icon and any graphic assets in your Store Listing should only include images you have the rights to use. If you have been granted permission to use assets owned by others, you can notify the app review team using this form. Make sure that all text and images used in your Store Listing are appropriate for app lovers of all ages.
Rate your app accurately: When answering the content rating questionnaire, it’s important to provide accurate responses in order to receive an accurate rating.
Handle user data with care: User data can include information provided by a user, collected about a user, or collected about a user’s interactions with the app or device. If your app is collecting personal or sensitive user data, you’ll need to handle it securely and include a privacy policy in your Store Listing and in your app.
Make sure ads in your app are policy compliant: Ad behavior should be straightforward - it’s against policy to show ads that are disruptive or deceptive, including ads that pose as system notifications, ads that aren’t dismissible, or ads that appear after a user closes the app. Additionally, ad content in your app should not include adult images, violence, or anything else that would violate the restricted content policy. You may want to check with your ad provider to learn about filtering options.
Don’t forget the restricted content policy: Check your app and your Store Listing for any restricted content, such as adult content, violence, or drugs. If you're concerned about any content in your app, read through the restricted content policy for more details and examples. If any content in your app is user-generated, you’ll need to take additional precautions in order to provide a policy compliant app experience. Check out the user generated content policy to learn more.
Update your email preferences: Make sure to update your email address on the account details page in your Developer Console. That way, if a policy issue does come up, we can contact you with the steps to address it.
Fix any policy issues found in review: Even though you’ve checked your app against the policies, it’s always possible that your app gets rejected or suspended after review. If your app or app update gets rejected, keep in mind that many violations can be fixed! Just follow the steps in the “Notification from Google Play” email you received.
Reach out to us for support: If you disagree with a policy violation, or if you’d like help resolving your policy issue, you can contact our policy support team.
In the next blog post, we’ll talk more about our enforcement process and policy support resources.
To maximize your app’s revenue potential, you’ll want to make sure your app is compliant with Google Play policies. If your app violates Google Play policy, ad serving can be disabled, so it’s a good idea to regularly review policy updates.
The Developer Policy Center (found at play.google.com/policy) was launched earlier this year and includes:
You can select a specific policy to learn more about it.
Stay tuned to learn more about policy best practices - we’ll be posting a short video highlighting 10 tips to stay on the right side of Play policy.
Whether you're just starting out on AdMob or already have several successful apps under your belt, you'll almost inevitably want to test ads on your app to see if they're working properly. Today, we're here to provide helpful tips to help ensure you're compliant with AdMob policies.
Ultimately, it is your responsibility as the publisher to ensure that the activity on your ads is valid. Publishers may not click on their own live ads, even for testing purposes, or use any other means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially. During app development and testing, please use test ads.
If you need to render live ads before launch, avoid clicking on them. If you're showcasing your app to friends, family and/or beta testers, ask them to avoid clicking on live ads.
Your AdMob account may be suspended for invalid activity if one or more users are repeatedly clicking on live ads in your apps, including for testing reasons. If, after the designated suspension period has cleared, and invalid activity continues contributing low value traffic to our ads ecosystem, your AdMob account may be disabled.
Reference our developer documentation on how to implement test ads (Android or iOS). Additionally, the ad unit and samples in our developer tutorials (Android or iOS) return test ads. Test ads are always available for use, even if your AdMob account is suspended or disabled.
For more information about account suspensions, visit our AdMob help center.
Posted by Danielle Chang, Ad Traffic Quality team.
Episode nine of The Mobile Ads Garage is live on YouTube!
If you haven't seen it before, The Mobile Ads Garage is a video tutorial series that covers how to use the Mobile Ads SDK to display ads from AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers. Each episode covers one aspect of the SDK, breaks down the feature, and shows screencasts of real implementations on both Android and iOS – all in a friendly format.
In this episode of The Mobile Ads Garage, we discuss mediation, which is a way for publishers to get multiple networks of advertisers competing to display ads in their apps. We’ll show you how AdMob mediation works and what it can do for your business. Learn the pros and cons of mediation, see the details of implementation, and find out whether it’s right for your app. You'll also get screencasts for Android and iOS showing the integration of a third-party SDK, plus links to samples, written resources, and Gary the Graphics Guy acting like his usual, snarky self.
If you like the video, save the Mobile Ads Garage playlist to your YouTube playlist collection and you'll never miss an episode.
We’d love to hear which AdMob features you’d like to learn more about. The comment sections for the videos are open, and you're welcome to toss out ideas for new episodes. If you have a technical question relating to something discussed in one of the episodes, you can bring it to our support forum.
Today we’re launching a new eBook called "The No-Nonsense Guide to Native Ads", the latest in our No-Nonsense series. This guide is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of native ads and share practical tips and best practices for implementing native ads in your app.
Over the last several years, app users have raised their expectations for a high quality app UX. To meet these expectations, ad formats have evolved accordingly. The most fitting new format that meets these higher expectations is native ads – ads that match the look and feel of the surrounding app content. And as spending on native ads is expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018, this presents a huge opportunity for publishers to enhance their user experience and tap into new revenues.
In the eBook, you’ll learn:
Download your copy here:
Vishal Kumar, Senior Product Manager, AdMob
Implementing native ads in-app can be time-consuming and complicated, but with AdMob’s native ads express, you can start implementing native ads quickly and simply. We made native a cinch to use: available to everyone, easy to set-up, and able to be changed on the fly.
Native ads express is designed for developers of all sizes, looking for self-serve, easy-to-launch native ad products. Here are four ways native ads will get you back to doing what you love, faster:
1. Implement native ads super fast.
An intuitive and user-friendly interface means you can create and style your ad, in the AdMob interface, very quickly. Choose from a variety of ad templates to get started, then customize them to fit within your app’s UI. You’ll be shown a variety of ad types, not just app install ads. Once you're done designing, just drop a few lines of code in your app to request your new native ads, and you're all set.
2. Get your creatives approved quickly.
If everything is within these policy guidelines, we can approve your ad creatives quickly.
3. Update your ads without having to update your app.
There’s no need for users to update the current version of your app to allow you to test different ad creatives. This makes A/B testing really simple. If you need to tweak the look and feel of your ads at any stage, you can do it easily from the AdMob interface, without needing to re-publish your app.
4. Preview your ad creatives quickly.
Need a dress rehearsal? Review your ads in your web browser, before they go live, without having to push code.
Making money from your app is a great feeling and we’re glad AdMob can help! But maybe you find yourself hopping out of AdMob to perform other activities like analyzing app analytics or refining your app code. We hear you. All this back and forth can be time-consuming. Discover how Firebase can be your single Android, iOS, and mobile web development platform for a unified experience.
Save time by linking your AdMob app to a Firebase project
If you already have an AdMob account, it’s easy to link your app to a Firebase project. Learn how to do this for both Android and iOS apps. Once linked, you can take advantage of other critical app services within Firebase including real-time storage, crash reporting, and authentication without spending time searching for and accessing these services elsewhere. It’s all right there for you to use!
Monetize smarter with Firebase Analytics
You could be earning more with more engaged and active users on your app. Firebase offers powerful analytics capabilities to help you make more intelligent monetization decisions. With Firebase insights on active users, demographics, and in-app purchase revenue, smarter monetization decisions can be made to show the right segment of users the most relevant ads. Use the “Audiences” feature in Firebase to define groups of users with common attributes and analyze in-app activity. By segmenting users, you can identify where you want to position and test specific ad formats for better revenue performance.
Help grow your users with Firebase
Firebase not only helps you build and monetize your app, but it also enables you to grow your audience with in-product notifications, dynamic links that behave across all device types, app indexing so that your app makes it to top search results, and more. It’s a complete solution with services across your app’s lifecycle.
Ready to start exploring Firebase?
Sign up for a Firebase account and link your AdMob app.
Posted by Ameeti Mishra, App Partnerships Specialist, AdMob.
At AdMob, we know how important user experience is to creating a great app. Consistent patterns, refreshing simplicity and polished, thoughtful design make for happy users and potentially higher ad engagement rates. Native advertising is the next step in meeting user’s UX expectations. Native ads are less jarring than traditional ads and fit in with app content more naturally, providing a better user experience. Now, that’s smart business.
Here are four ways you can make UX a priority both within your app and ad experience.
1. Consistency
Sometimes it’s good to be predictable. By sticking to consistent UX patterns in your app, you can help users focus less on navigating and more on your app’s content and value. Don’t surprise your user with new elements – stick to a steady user flow like swiping left on a news app to exit an article or navigate the headline feed. Use consistent design elements like dedicated font sizes, colors, buttons, and screen sizes.
Same goes for your users’ ad experience. With reliable UX patterns, you’ll form clear breaks in your apps where users are expecting to see engaging ads. In the example of the news app, you might also want to use that swipe left feature to allow users to seamlessly dismiss ads. This also applies to ad styling. For example, if you use 14px, Lato, bold, dark grey for prominent text, then use that font for your ad’s headline, as well. The result? Users will expect that styling is dedicated to important text.
2. Clarity
Nobody likes clutter. Simplicity in your app says you’re not wasting your user’s time by throwing every possible option at them, without thinking about what they really need. Simplify your app by uncluttering your screen, writing concise copy, keeping design legible and well-spaced and providing single call-to-action buttons where possible. Likewise, clean, beautiful, single call-to-action ads will communicate that you understand your users and help gain their trust.
3. No tricks
Let’s be clear, a native ad is still an ad. Don’t try to distort or overlap ad components (there’s no quicker way to offend a user!). At Google, we care about building trust in the app advertising ecosystem. For instance, we have extended our accidental click protections to native ad formats (including fast clicks and edge clicks) in order to prevent users from a slip of the finger and deliver greater value to advertisers.
4. Thoughtful design
Thoughtful details in your app are important to let your users know you care. That means sharp imagery, curated fonts, specced margins and quick loading times. It’s important to use the same level of care and polish for small details in your native ads design. Simple, intuitive and well-designed native ads can help you say; ‘thanks’ to your valuable user base.
AdMob’s native ads express is a quick and simple way to set up and monetize your native ads effectively. Three developers share their success stories of switching to native and growing both their revenue and business.
1. Word Search by Pink Pointer
Word nerds all over the globe can’t get enough of Word Search (also known as Word Find, Word Seek or Word Sleuth), a Latin American word search puzzle game with more than 22,000 puzzles, distributed in 37 languages.
How they use native ads:
Native ads work well in content feeds, so Pink Pointer uses them in their feed of entertaining word search puzzles. When users log in to play, they see a list of all available puzzles. The native ad is embedded within this list, making it attractive, easy to spot, but never obtrusive.
Results:
By replacing banners at the top of the page, Thiago Lopes Rosa of Pink Pointer saw an increase of 50% in CTR and 90% in RPM - helping to maximize revenue, without compromising user experience.
Tip from developer Thiago Lopes Rosa:
“I recommend creating different ad units for each placement of native ads. This way you can analyze the performance for each one individually and take appropriate actions and gain insight on how to improve.”
2. Battery Doctor (also called Battery Saver) by Cheetah Mobile
330 million users have booked a consult with Battery Doctor, an app which measures the worst offenders in mobile phone battery usage and offers an optimization feature that stops power-guzzling apps with a single tap. The popular tool is the brainchild of one of the world's leading developers, Cheetah Mobile, who boasts over 600 million active monthly users.
Battery Doctor measures app usage and gives users a prediction of remaining power in a list of informational cards. Within this list, a native ad is seamlessly shown as its own card.
Using native ads gave a powerful charge to Cheetah’s revenue. According to Charles Fan of Cheetah Mobile, “our Battery Doctor monetization revenue went up 400% and those are pretty amazing results.”
Tip from developer Charles Fan:
“Look for areas where you can integrate native ads without disrupting app workflow or user flow.”
3. Chinese Calendar by Linghit Limited
Those needing a glimpse into the future turn to Linghit’s Chinese Calendar app, a divination guidance and calendar, based on traditional Chinese beliefs and lunar calendar. The app highlights optimal times and days to hold important events like weddings and also to plan holidays, renovations or relocations.
The app features facts about each day’s festivals, holidays, and lucky “five elements”, according to Chinese tradition. This daily rundown is presented as a card and provides the perfect spot for Linghit to display a native ad.
Native ads held all the luck for Jinnee Lee of Linghit Limited. “After implementing native ads, our ad impressions increased by 114% and ad income increased by 100%.”
Tip from developer Jinnee Lee:
“Native ads are more intuitive, so display them in more prominent positions within apps. We were able to view the effects on user click-through rates in real time based on the information in the ad backend. We could make quick adjustments to the native ad to maximize the effect of the ad.”
New to native ads? Check out our help center.
Have you started using AdMob native ads, but feel like you could be getting more out of it? We know it can be hard to get it right the first time, so we recommend A/B testing when implementing native ads in your app. Why? Because native ads give you so much more flexibility and even the smallest tweaks can make a huge difference in your app revenue or give you peace of mind that you’re improving your user experience. With that in mind, here are four steps to help you run an effective A/B test.
1. Start with a defined goal and a hypothesis
Step back and decide on a single hypothesis that has the most potential to improve your business and start there. So where should you start testing? One good place to look at is design elements on your ad template and how it can impact greater user ad engagement. For example, a simple variation like changing font sizes (10px to 13px) would lead you to hypothesize that a larger font size will increase user engagement with the ad and make the call to action more clear. Meanwhile, key metrics to look for would be click through rate, ad revenue, and app exit rates.
Example variables that you could test are:
2. Remember to test only one variation at a time for it to be a true A/B test
Go ahead and slip on your white lab coat. The testing stage will require two variations of your app screen – the original, current version and your new, re-designed version. When creating these variations, using an A/B testing platform will make it easy to design, run and monitor your tests.
3. Run the experiment
Time to test your results. Set up your app to randomly show your original set-up to half of your users (i.e., the “control group”) and the second variation to the other 50% (i.e., the “experimental group”). By using a control group, you’re collecting baseline data to compare against your results. Without it, you can’t tell the difference between the response to your new designs or other variables, like seasonal chance.
4. Make a decision
Once the experiment is done, it’s time to crunch the data, revisit your initial goal and hypothesis, and make that all-important final call on whether the new variation is worth changing in the long run. Don’t be too hasty to lock in a new look. If the changes are significant, it’s smart to run the experiment over several time periods to ensure the results aren’t due to seasonality, or other variables.
As you continue to run more tests, remember that even with helpful tools, testing takes time and resources. Don’t waste time testing elements that won’t significantly impact your goal. Use app analytics data (https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/) to help uncover spots in your app with a lot of opportunity and potential (think: screens with high traffic, high engagement, or large user drop off, for example). A good idea might be to have a devoted team member spend 25% of their time on monitoring analytics, identifying ad optimization ideas, and testing them.
Every day in India, millions of people jump on a train to get to where they want to go. SmartApps India created a must-have local app to make this journey easier. This fast, convenient app - Indian Railway IRCTC Train PNR - allows users to check the live status of their train, browse rail schedules, book seats and even order snacks and meals for their journey. Super handy.
Looking for an ad solution to closely match the look and feel of their app, SmartApps chose to monetize with AdMob native ads. After implementing just one AdMob native ad, SmartApps grew their ad revenue by 55%.
When scanning through train schedules and available seats, app users are shown a list of information cards. This feed presented SmartApps with a golden opportunity to show non-obtrusive, yet visible, native ads to users.
“We made good use of the various template customization options available on the native ad express dashboard,” says SmartApps India’s co-founder, Sagar Mutha. “With native, it’s a good idea to try to place the native ads where there is a natural fit, and keep iterating and A/B testing until you get the desired results and CTRs. If you’re trying native, make sure the ads are unobtrusive and deliver a good user experience.”
AdMob native ads provided SmartApps with plenty of UX benefits. “User experience has been the biggest win after implementing native ads,” says Mutha. “We've received positive feedback from users and CTRs have gone up in comparison to regular banners.”
With such significant results, SmartApps plans on showing more native ads in the future as commuters scroll through their useful travel content.
“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
