Native is the newest ad format supported by Google AdMob. It offers the most flexible design and placement to help developers create the ideal ad experience for your app users. Today native ads have come out of beta and are now available for all developers. 

As the name suggests, native ads allow you to design an ad experience that feels like a natural part of your app. You can customize the look and feel of native ads the way you’d design your app content.

Publishers who have implemented native ads during the beta phase have seen great results. For example, Cleveni, a South Korea-based mobile app publisher specializing in utility apps, saw 4 times revenue growth with native ads. 

With careful design, implementation and testing, native ads can feel like a natural part of the app experience. This seamless integration can lead to revenue growth by means of increased ad density and better user retention while also clearly noting that it’s a promotional unit.

Native ads allow unlimited flexibility—you can design any ad layout imaginable as long as it meets the AdMob native ads policies. We highly encourage you to explore the design freedom with this ad format and use A/B tests with different creatives to maximize engagement and revenue. 

Getting started

There are two ways to get started with native ads in AdMob: 

1. For a quick and easy start, use the native ads templates (Android, iOS). Simply use the code as-is, or modify it to better match the look and feel of your app. 
2. For more advanced users,  you can go straight to the native ads advanced section (Android, iOS). This option allows you to create native ads from scratch.

With the flexibility of native ads also comes many questions you need to think through. For example, what should my ad look like? How similar should it look to actual app content? Where should I place it? The AdMob native ads playbook provides best practices and examples to help you design and implement a successful native ads strategy. 

As with all advertising experiences, there are some important policies and guidelines put in place to help ensure a good experience for users. Please be sure to read through the AdMob native ads policy compliance checklist, and pay close attention to the restrictions around ad size and the usage of MediaView.

We hope native ads can help you unlock more revenue growth for your app and will continue to improve this new ad format. 

App developers around the world are pushing the limits of innovation to meet consumers' high expectations. In an increasingly competitive global market, it’s more important than ever for app developers to find better ways to build and grow their businesses.

Today at Think Games at ChinaJoy, we are sharing innovations that help you find more users and grow your revenue with Google’s latest solutions.

Reach more users when they’re looking for something new 

Connecting with the right people at the right time is key to building a strong user base. Google App campaigns make it easy for you to find app-happy users across Google Search, Play, YouTube and over 3 million sites and apps in our network. Here are some new ways App campaigns can help you expand your global reach.

Discover (formerly known as the Google feed) helps over 800 million monthly active users uncover fresh and interesting content related to the things they care about—like global news and topics of interest like sports, music, and mobile games. Now, you can access Discover inventory through App campaigns to make a strong impression on more users with relevant and visually engaging ads.

App campaigns running in the United States will now automatically reach more potential users on Discover who are open to exploring your app. And in the coming months, your app ads on Discover will also serve in Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. We aim to bring app ads in Discover to all available markets before the end of this year. 

In addition to Discover⁠, we’re introducing new reach opportunities on two more platforms:

• App ads on YouTube Search: Your app promotion ads are now eligible to show in the top slot of YouTube’s mobile search results. Combining YouTube’s global audience with rich intent signals helps you deliver relevant and useful ads to more prospective app users.

• In-stream video ads in our display network: Display in-stream video ads are skippable video ads that play before, during, or after a video a user is watching. Starting next month, you can reach more people with your ads while they're viewing video content on mobile apps and sites in our network.

Grow revenue and deliver a better user experience

Finding the right users is important, but developers need to think about growing overall revenue in order to build sustainable businesses. By integrating ads during natural break points in your app you can build a new revenue stream and deliver a better user experience.

Our new app open ad format allows you to show ads to your users as they wait for your app to load. Designed to seamlessly integrate with your app’s branding, this format gives you new ways to earn revenue while creating a good user experience. Reach out to your account manager to get started with this format in alpha.  

In addition to the new app open ads, here are two more ways we are helping you grow revenue while delivering better ad experiences for your users:

• Smart segmentation is now available for rewarded ad units. This feature, announced earlier this year for interstitial ads units, only shows ads to users unlikely to make purchases in your app. This protects the user experience of your purchasers while growing your ads revenue.

• AdMob Insights: Our new Insights feature provides alerts to your AdMob dashboard when our system detects abnormal changes to your key metrics like eCPM, impressions and revenue. This new beta lets you know instantly if changes in your app are impacting user experience.

To learn more about how our new solutions can help you connect with the right users and scale your business, join our livestream at 1:40 pm SST during the Think Games event at ChinaJoy in Shanghai, China on August 1st, 2019. 

To help build a safe and transparent advertising ecosystem, we’re introducing support for app-ads.txt across Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager. This will help app publishers prevent their inventory from being spoofed by bad actors while ensuring advertiser spend reaches the intended audience. 

What is app-ads.txt?

App-ads.txt is a standard released by the IAB Tech Lab that helps prevent unauthorized or domain-spoofed app inventory from being transacted across mobile, connected TV, and other devices. It defines a simple method for app publishers to publicly declare who is authorized to sell or resell their digital advertising inventory. App-ads.txt is an extension of the original ads.txt standard that was first published by the IAB in 2017. The ads.txt standard is one of the most successful industry standards and is now widely adopted by web publishers. 

Google’s support for IAB Tech Lab’s app-ads.txt

We’ve actively contributed to the specification of app-ads.txt since the beginning and will support the standard across all relevant products including AdMob and Ad Manager. Starting August 27, 2019, we will begin to block ad serving of unauthorized app inventory in both AdMob and Ad Manager as identified by a publisher’s app-ads.txt file. 

We strongly encourage you to create an app-ads.txt file and publish it to the developer domain you have listed in your App Store and/or Google Play store listing. This will help prevent unauthorized and domain-spoofed app inventory from damaging your brand and revenue.  Publishers who do not implement an app-ads.txt file will see no changes to their ad serving, but they will not benefit from these added spoofing protections.

How to prepare for the enforcement  

Correct implementation of app-ads.txt will help protect your inventory against bad actors. Implementation errors could cause interruptions to ad serving, so it is very important for you to verify that the app-ads.txt file you publish on your developer domain contains all your valid property codes before August 27. 

To prepare for the upcoming enforcement rollout, simply follow the steps below. You can find more details in our Help Center guides (AdMob, Ad Manager). 

1. Provide a developer website URL in app store listings on Google Play or the App Store
2. Publish an app-ads.txt file in the root directory of your site (e.g. example.com/app-ads.txt)
3. Include all authorized publisher codes for the networks your app sells through in the file

Once you finish implementing the app-ads.txt file, we encourage you to carefully review it to ensure that it contains lines in the following format: 

google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT

As the sample line shows, your app-ads.txt file should include the name of the ad network you are working with (e.g. ‘google.com’) as the domain name and you should replace the publisher ID with your property code. 

To help you verify correct file implementation, we are currently rolling out verifications and warnings in the user interface for both AdMob and Ad Manager when errors are detected. The warnings will appear if we detect your publisher ID is missing from your app-ads.txt file.

There will be no interruption to your ad serving should you choose not to implement the app-ads.txt file on your developer website, but your app may be at risk of inventory spoofing which could result in revenue loss. 

By supporting the new app-ads.txt standard, AdMob and Ad Manager will help you better protect your revenue and brand. 

People are spending more time on their mobile phones, especially in apps, and move across screens frequently. As people’s usage of mobile apps has grown, so has the importance of standardizing the way viewability is measured on mobile devices.

Today we’re sharing how we’ve made in-app inventory more measurable through the IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement standard. Integrating the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (SDK) into both our Google Mobile Ads (GMA) and Interactive Mobile Ads (IMA) SDKs has allowed us to enable Open Measurement on 85+ percent of in-app display and video impressions on Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager publishers. This means that buyers of this inventory can now take viewability measurements using solutions like Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Comscore, and Moat in addition to measurement that was previously available with Active View.  

“IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement (OM) initiative makes it easier for ad buyers and sellers to work together for viewability measurement and other verification needs,” said Dennis Buchheim, Executive Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “The sell-side has been adopting OM quickly, and we ask brands, agencies, and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) to get more active and take advantage of what OM offers.” 

Advertisers can get started today by appending Open Measurement enabled tags from their viewability vendor of choice to their creatives.

Measurement vendors are lauding this development as progress for a more measurable future. Joseph Ranzenbach, Director of Product Management, IAS says, "Google's adoption of the Open Measurement SDK is a huge step in moving the industry forward and creating more transparency for advertisers." Sumit Shukla, SVP, Strategic Partnerships, Comscore says, "It’s important for Brands to consistently measure viewability across the entirety of their media buys. With Comscore’s cross-platform campaign measurement as a trusted market currency, this close partnership with Google further helps Brands measure what matters."  

Viewability measurement unlocks high-performing In-app inventory for advertisers

Viewability continues to be an integral part of measuring ad effectiveness—it helps advertisers understand if their ad had the opportunity to be seen and it helps publishers offer more high-quality inventory.

In-app viewability means that advertisers can confidently take advantage of this high-value inventory. In 2018 we worked with Ipsos MORI to understand the impact of in-app advertising and found it was successful in driving action. People were 50 percent more likely to interact with a brand, buy a product or service, follow a call-to-action or recommend a brand to their family or friends after seeing its ad in an app, compared with those who saw it via a browser. Display & Video 360 customers can now confidently extend their brand campaigns to apps knowing they are able to measure ad viewability at the impression level as they would in other environments.

Publishers like Pandora recognize the importance of holistic viewability measurement. Maria Breza, VP, Ad Quality Measurement and Audience Data Operations at Pandora said, “Advertisers should be able to seamlessly use one viewability provider to measure their buys across all publishers and platforms. Open Measurement has allowed Pandora to make this a reality for our clients with less latency, less maintenance and more stability.”

What’s next for Open Measurement

We’re continuing to work with the IAB’s Tech Lab Open Measurement Working Group to expand Open Measurement to use cases beyond viewability, as well as to other environments such as web video. We believe Open Measurement has the potential to create a more transparent and accountable digital media ecosystem across all screens. Reach out to your measurement partners and Google representative to find out how you can take advantage of this new measurement technology.

Video ads are one of the most effective ad formats to use in your app. Increasingly, people expect to see ads that are relevant to them and that don’t interrupt their app experience—and video ads deliver on both counts. They’re a powerful canvas that you can use to engage users, for you and your advertisers. With a variety of formats, such as rewarded, interstitial, or native video, you can integrate video ads into your app to provide an enhanced experience. 

But using video ads goes beyond selecting them as an option in Google AdMob. To make sure users have the best experience with video ads, you need to optimize your app to play them. If the video doesn’t play correctly, users often blame the app, not the ad. Playback needs to start promptly and reliably, and continue without interruption. But serving an ad in a mobile app is not always easy—a number of factors can degrade the experience. The network connection might be poor, or the phone itself might be busy with other things.

Video ads use more memory, network, and device resources than other types of ads. The key to optimal video quality is to use these resources as efficiently and as intelligently as you can. And when your video quality is better, your ads will perform better too, and you may find that your app becomes more stable overall.

Load ads well in advance to permit buffering

The moment you load a video ad, behind the scenes the ad starts buffering (essentially pre-loading) the video. In this instance, the network is the bottleneck. For example, if the phone is connected to WiFi or 4G, buffering should happen fast. But if the user is on a slower network, it can degrade or interrupt playback. The more time you allow for the ad to fill its buffer, the more reliable playback will be.

Seconds matter. Load your ad at least 15 seconds in advance of showing it. Even a few seconds in advance will prevent some users from seeing a blank ad.

Free unused ads

If you load an ad that you won't need, like a rewarded ad where the user declined the reward, then be sure to release it right away. This frees up memory and video decoders, which will help the phone run faster and reduce the possibility of interruption on your app. On Android, we recommend you null your reference to the ad, and if you're using native ads, call UnifiedNativeAd.destroy() on the main thread. On iOS, set your reference to nil.

Avoid loading multiple concurrent ads

Every phone has a limit to the number of videos it can hold in a prepared state. The Google Mobile Ads SDK doesn't know which video ad will be shown next, so it keeps them all prepared. Lots of phones can't hold more than one prepared video at a time. So whether your app is used in developing or developed markets, it’s very important to always free up memory as soon as possible.

Load only the ads that you need to give them the best chance at successful playback. For example, if you show multiple video ads, like native video ads in a news feed, then be sure to recycle ads that have scrolled offscreen so video players don't just pile up in memory. This should also lead to better overall app performance.

Don’t show an ad before receiving a notification that it has loaded

The Google Mobile Ads SDK uses notifications to inform the app when a video is prepared to play. On Android, it is possible to show an ad before this notification--a legacy from the days of static content ads--but it's not a good idea to do that. Video performance will be poor and users may think something is wrong not just with playback, but with the app itself.

On Android, this notification arrives through AdListener.onAdLoaded().

Be extra cautious combining video ads with video content

The recommended approach of not loading multiple concurrent video ads applies equally to content video and ad video. If your app plays video outside of ads, then freeing content video resources before video ads are shown will help reliability, too.

As developers, you put a huge amount of time and energy into creating an engaging app. And a great app experience should provide a great ad experience. We hope these tips help you make the most out of video ads as part of your monetization strategy.

Supporting a healthy ads ecosystem that works for publishers, advertisers, and users continues to be a top priority in our effort to sustain a free and open web. As the ecosystem evolves, our ad systems and defenses must adapt as well. Today, we’d like to highlight some of our efforts to protect the quality of our ad network, and the benefits to our publishers and the advertising ecosystem. 

Last year, we introduced a site verification process in AdSense to provide additional safeguards before a publisher can serve ads. This feature allows us to provide more direct feedback to our publishers on the eligibility of their site, while allowing us to communicate issues sooner and lessen the likelihood of future violations. As an added benefit, confirming which websites a publisher intends to monetize allows us to reduce potential misuse of a publisher's ad code, such as when a bad actor tries to claim a website as their own, or when they use a legitimate publisher's ad code to serve ads on bad content in an attempt to demonetize the good website — each day, we now block more than 120 million ad requests with this feature. 

This year, we’re enhancing our defenses even more by improving the systems that identify potentially invalid traffic or high risk activities before ads are served. These defenses allow us to limit ad serving as needed to further protect our advertisers and users, while maximizing revenue opportunities for legitimate publishers. While most publishers will not notice any changes to their ad traffic, we are working on improving the experience for those that may be impacted, by providing more transparency around these actions. Publishers on AdSense and AdMob that are affected will soon be notified of these ad traffic restrictions directly in their Policy Center. This will allow them to understand why they may be experiencing reduced ad serving, and what steps they can take to resolve any issues and continue partnering with us.

We’re excited for what’s to come, and will continue to roll out improvements to these systems with all of our users in mind. Look out for future updates on our ongoing efforts to promote and sustain a healthy ads ecosystem.  

One of our top priorities is to sustain a healthy digital advertising ecosystem, one that works for everyone: users, advertisers and publishers. On a daily basis, teams of Google engineers, policy experts, and product managers combat and stop bad actors. Just last year, we removed 734,000 publishers and app developers from our ad network and ads from nearly 28 million pages that violated our publisher policies. 

But we’re not just stopping bad actors. Just as critical to our mission is the work we do every day to help good publishers in our network succeed. One consistent piece of feedback we’ve heard from our publishers is that they want us to further simplify our policies, across products, so they are easier to understand and follow. That’s why we'll be simplifying the way our content policies are presented to publishers, and standardizing content policies across our publisher products.

A simplified publisher experience

In September, we’ll update the way our publisher content policies are presented with a clear outline of the types of content where advertising is not allowed or will be restricted. 

Our Google Publisher Policies will outline the types of content that are not allowed to show ads through any of our publisher products. This includes policies against illegal content, dangerous or derogatory content, and sexually explicit content, among others. 

Our Google Publisher Restrictions will detail the types of content, such as alcohol or tobacco, that don’t violate policy, but that may not be appealing for all advertisers. Publishers will not receive a policy violation for trying to monetize this content, but only some advertisers and advertising products—the ones that choose this kind of content—will bid on it. As a result, Google Ads will not appear on this content and this content will receive less advertising than non-restricted content will.  

The Google Publisher Policies and Google Publisher Restrictions will apply to all publishers, regardless of the products they use—AdSense, AdMob or Ad Manager.

These changes are the next step in our ongoing efforts to make it easier for publishers to navigate our policies so their businesses can continue to thrive with the help of our publisher products.

At AdMob, we’re focused on helping publishers make smarter decisions to grow their mobile app earnings and deliver the best experience to their users. Clear, comprehensive reporting is a big part of this, and we’ve recently released some updates to our reporting so that you can gain more actionable insights about your app users. 

More insights about how people use your app

We’ve enhanced our AdMob SDK to begin providing insights into how your users are interacting with your app and engaging with your rewarded ads.  To enable these new features, you need to do two things:

1. Update your SDK to the latest version (Android SDK 18.1.0 or later, iOS SDK 7.44 or later)
   

2. Log into AdMob and take a few simple steps to enable user metrics  (Help Center Article)

Once you’ve done both, available new features will include:

User engagement card

When you log into your AdMob account, we’ll now present you with important basic user engagement metrics on your App Overview dashboard.  This report helps you keep an eye on your app’s most important top-line user numbers so you always know how your apps are performing.

Holistic revenue report including in-app purchases

We’ve updated our revenue reporting to look beyond AdMob earnings to also include in-app purchases and subscriptions. This will minimize time spent going back and forth between interfaces so you can spend more time working on your app. IAP reporting is currently only offered on iOS, but will be coming to Android soon.

Rewarded ads report

You’ll now have access to the rewarded ads report, helping you understand how users are interacting with rewarded ads.  This report captures activity from the entire AdMob platform, including AdMob, Open Bidding, and 3rd-party inventory. We’re also working to provide additional reporting around each of your ad formats so you can make the most informed decision with your app business.

Expanded functionality and ease of use

In addition to adding new reports, we’ve also launched several new features that make it easier for you to access, analyze and understand your data: 

AdMob API

Traditionally, developers have had to use the AdSense API to access AdMob stats.  This was a suboptimal solution, as AdSense uses different ad metric definitions than AdMob, resulting in inconsistent reporting.  To address this, we’re introducing a brand new AdMob API to help you retrieve your publisher reports programmatically. Metrics in the AdMob API will be consistent with those in the AdMob front-end interface and will be more accurate than those in the AdSense API.  This API is currently in beta, so reach out to your account manager or a mobile specialist if you’re interested in trying it out.

Easy comparison reporting

When looking at changes to a single AdMob metric, such as revenue, we know that context is key. So we’ve added the ability for you to compare two metrics within the same chart (see upper right in image below) so that you can more easily correlate trends within your data.

You can also now break out metrics, such as estimated earnings, by dimensions like app, ad unit, format, and country (see upper left in image below).  Our improved graph interactivity allows you to add or remove dimensions by simply clicking on the corresponding circle in the key, as shown below on the upper left.

Reporting is an integral part of optimizing any app ads business, and we’re continuously taking steps to make actionable insights easier to discover for publishers.  We hope these new features will help publishers better understand their users and ad performance so they can focus on driving more revenue and delighting their users.

In today’s mobile-first world, people use a wide range of device types. As a result, app publishers who use banner ads must now serve them across a greater variety of screen sizes and layouts.  While some responsive banner ad formats exist, they often produce ads that are too small and not sufficiently tailored to the height and aspect ratio of each device.

To address this, we’ve created a new banner type called adaptive anchor banners. These ads dynamically adjust banner sizes to deliver a creative that is ideally sized across your user’s devices without the need for any custom code.

The adaptive anchor banner advantage

Adaptive anchor banners are designed to be a drop-in replacement for the industry standard 320x50 banner size and the smart banner format.  Standard sized banners return the same sized creative across every screen, which often results in ads that appear too small or too large. Smart banners only support fixed heights, so they often return creative that appears too small on high-res devices. 

Unlike other banner APIs on the market, adaptive anchor banners consider the device in use, the ad width you’re comfortable using, and the aspect ratios and performance of all available demand.  Adaptive anchor banners return creatives with the best height and aspect ratio for each device, with hard limits to prevent the wrong sizes from being served.

Your banners will look better than ever in your app, and writing custom code to handle different devices will be a task of the past. Using this format in place of standard and/or smart banners can help you maximize revenue while also making managing your ads less complex and more efficient.

Getting started with adaptive anchor banners

Adaptive anchor banners are a great option for AdMob publishers who want the simplest solution to getting the best banner ad returned across any device.  This format is still in beta on Google Ad Manager, so publishers who want to try it out on that platform should reach out to their account managers or contact our support team.

Adaptive anchor banners are currently only available for anchored placements—banners locked to the top or bottom of the screen. However, AdMob is actively developing another adaptive algorithm for in-line banners placed in scroll views or within content.

To get started with adaptive anchor banners for AdMob, check out our implementation guides (iOS, Android). We walk you through when it’s appropriate to use adaptive banners, implementation notes, and code examples.

We recommend testing adaptive banners against some of your existing banner ads to understand how they can help you maximize fill rates, engagement, and revenue.

Although ads are often a cornerstone of successful app businesses, some developers have misconceptions that hold them back from trying ads in their app. We thought it would be helpful to address some of the more common misconceptions we’ve heard to help app publishers uncover opportunities to increase their revenue.

1) Ads interrupt the app experience of my users

One common misconception is that ads will negatively impact the app experience, when in reality most ad formats today are designed to either integrate seamlessly with your app, add to the user experience, or both.

For example, rewarded ads can give people a bonus in exchange for watching an advertisement and are a great way to make premium content available to non-paying users.

Interstitial ads are shown at natural breakpoints in your app, such as between levels or at loading screens, and allow you to engage users when they would otherwise be looking at a “waiting” screen.

Finally, native ads can be designed to match the look and feel of your app to integrate seamlessly with your app’s content, causing virtually no disruption to the user experience while earning you revenue.

2) I can't control what ads show up in my app

App publishers are justifiably concerned about what ads show up in their app, so we’ve taken steps to ensure that your app will only serve ads that meet the guidelines you’ve set. Our ad controls allow you to set a maximum content rating level orblock ads by category, ad type, URL, and more.  Both of these controls can be applied to a single app or to your whole AdMob account.  

For example, applying a maximum rating of G to your account ensures that only G-rated ads are served across all of your apps.  However, you can simultaneously set a maximum rating of T for a specific app to allow it to include PG and T rated ads as well.  For even more control, our Ad Review Center allows you to review individual ads on a creative-by-creative basis to decide whether you want to continue serving them. We’ve designed these features to ensure that you only serve ads you feel are appropriate for your users.

3) Ads will drive away my paying app users

Some publishers avoid including ads in their app because they don’t want to interrupt the experience of their paying users.  To address this, we offer a tool called smart segmentation that allows you to only show ads to non-paying users while preserving the ad-free experience for paying users.

Smart segmentation has worked well for several publishers including BlackLight Studio Games, who wanted to expand monetization in their game Ludo SuperStar without hurting paid user experience, retention, and in-app purchase (IAP) revenue.  After implementing smart segmentation, they experienced a 23% increase in game revenue with no changes to user retention or average revenue per user (ARPU).

We hope this helps clear up some common misconceptions around how ads can fit into your mobile app. Even if your app is paid or offers in-app purchases, consider testing ads in your app to maximize your revenue and grow your mobile app business.  For a more detailed breakdown of app business models, download our free No-Nonsense Guide to App Monetization. And if you’re ready to start earning money with ads, sign up for an AdMob account today.

Many app publishers attempt to maintain stability in their app by not making any changes, despite the constantly evolving mobile ads business.  This approach can be detrimental in the long run by causing you to miss out on growth opportunities. Continuously testing new approaches in your app is an essential part of an effective monetization strategy, so we’d like to go over a few examples of tests you can implement now to get you started.

What are some things I can test?

With AdMob, you can test any feature of your app that can be defined with a variable. Here are some experiments you can start with:

Ads alongside in-app purchases

If you currently monetize your app exclusively through in-app purchases (IAPs), testing ads alongside IAPs is a low risk approach that allows you to understand the impact of including another monetization model.  For example, game publisher Four Thirty Threeused to rely exclusively on in-app purchases (IAP) for their revenue.  They used smart segmentation to divide their users into likely purchasers and likely non-purchasers.  This allowed them to remove any risk of harming their IAP revenue by ensuring that ads were only shown to users who did not spend within their app anyway.  After serving rewarded ads to non-paying users, their retention, session duration, and revenue increased.

New features

Pricing

A/B testing can be an invaluable tool to help determine the best price point for a subscription or in-app purchase. Le Figaro, France’s oldest and largest daily newspaper, was looking to increase paying customers and retain paid subscribers. They used Firebase to test different subscription price points, and even found that the largest increase in paid subscriptions was driven after embedding real time interactive infographics into their mobile and web articles.

How can I test it?

If you haven’t yet linked AdMob to Firebase and wish to A/B test, we recommend you do so. Integrating Firebase into your AdMob account is simple, and lets you test small changes to your apps without having to push updates. After setting up your account, endless experiments become available to you with just a few clicks. If you’d like a quick summary of what Firebase can do for your AdMob account, check out this YouTube video.

We’re excited to see you at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) from March 16-20 in San Francisco. If you can’t make it in person, sign up to keep up to date with our announcements and view the livestream. You’ll learn about new products and solutions from Google that will help developers for all platforms take their game to the next level. 

Everything kicks off with the Google for Games Developer Summit Keynote on Monday, March 16th where product leaders from across Google will share the biggest announcements for game developers. After the keynote, join in on two days of developer sessions to learn how to use Google solutions to create great games, connect with more players, and scale your business. Check out the agenda today.

Starting Wednesday, March 18th, visit our booth in the GDC Expo to experience demos and meet one-on-one with Google product experts. 

If you can’t attend GDC in-person, you can still watch the Keynote and other Developer Summit sessions via the live stream at g.co/gdc2020.

We’ll be sharing more details about what we have planned at GDC in the coming weeks—be sure to sign up to be among the first to hear the latest updates. On-site events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.

See you there!

The 2020 Women of Publishing Leadership Series is now open for registration. This annual program is designed to facilitate industry connections, provide access to resources, and enable the future growth of women-led small publishing businesses. Apply by February 21 to join us on the live stream sessions, as well as an in-person event bringing together our female publishing community.

What you can expect

This March, the Women of Publishing Leadership Series is bringing together female entrepreneurs and leaders, who have successfully funded their passions through monetization platforms using Google AdMob or AdSense. The first online class kicks off on March 10, just after International Women's Day. 

This multi-part web series will teach you how Google tools can help to fuel the growth of your publishing business. The course will include data-driven monetization tactics for both web and apps, as well as discussions on sustaining momentum in this fast-paced and evolving digital ecosystem.

You can find detailed information about the online course below: 

Keynote

• Date and time: Tuesday, March 10 at 1:30 PM ET 

• Summary: Join an honest discussion on one woman’s journey in the publishing industry. We will also discuss how to optimize your audience engagement strategy.

Monetization and Reporting Deep-Dive, Web

• Date and time: Tuesday, March 17 at 1:30 PM ET

• Summary: Get a closer look at how to efficiently earn more for your website using the new and improved AdSense Auto ads.

Monetization and Reporting Deep-Dive, Apps

• Date and time: Thursday, March 19 at 1:30 PM ET

• Summary: Learn how to think about optimizing your app’s monetization structure and which metrics matter the most in tracking your app’s performance.

Protecting our Digital Ecosystem

• Date and time: Tuesday, March 24 at 1:30 PM ET

• Summary: Gain insight on how to maintain user trust and secure your content in an evolving ecosystem.
  
  

Google is committed to women’s success in the publishing industry

We’ve seen great strides  toward women’s parity in the global labor market in recent years. However, there’s still work to do. The empowerment of female entrepreneurship is especially critical. Globally, there are less women than men among entrepreneurs, contributing to the 50 percent gap in total income (all types of revenues) between men and women.

The Women of Publishing Leadership Series was designed to help participants learn how to maximize the value of their publishing business and earn more revenue. The curriculum is tailored for small and medium-sized businesses. Women from all types of digital backgrounds: apps, news, gaming, entertainment, video, e-commerce, etc. are encouraged to apply. Not using Google AdMob, AdSense, or Ad Manager? No worries—join the program to learn which product best suits your business needs.

Applications close on February 21, 2020. Join the 2020 Women of Publishing community by applying on our website.

Mobile apps have transformed the way people engage with the world. From gaming, to ride sharing, to messaging, apps enrich the lives of billions — and are often funded by ads. Ads help make content available to everyone, creating a more diverse ecosystem of apps for people to enjoy. But one of the biggest threats to ad-supported content is ad fraud, a pervasive issue for users, developers, and advertisers alike. 

For over 20 years, Google has been heavily investing in creating a healthier ads ecosystem that generates value fairly, for everyone involved. In 2019, we delivered on key initiatives to protect advertisers, publishers, and users. 

• Protected advertiser spend by reducing ad fraud:Google blacklisted numerous bad actors that were found to be committing large scale invalid traffic and ad fraud, which violates Google policies. In 2019 Google removed tens of thousands of apps and developers that were found to be in violation of our policies, from both AdMob and Play. Taking corrective action was an imperative step in protecting advertiser dollars, leveling the playing field for legitimate publishers, and removing bad app experiences for users.
• Protected publisher revenue from app spoofing: Bad actors may attempt to disguise their inventory as a high value app to unfairly claim associated ad revenue. To help publishers publicly declare authorized inventory to combat this issue, we launched our app ads.txt solution in August 2019 and in just four months, the majority of Google’s app ad inventory is now ads.txt-protected.
  
• Improved safety of family-friendly content for users: In addition to fighting ad fraud, the Google Play and Ads teams both announced new steps to help ensure that ad content served in apps for children is appropriate for their intended users. The Play team updated its Families Policies and the requirements for inclusion in its Designed for Families (DFF) program to better ensure that apps for children are appropriate. AdMob now offers a maximum ad content rating to give publishers more control over the ad content shown to their users. 
  

• Double down on safeguarding advertiser spend from invalid traffic: One area of focus for the Ads team is developing new ways to detect disruptive ads shown outside of the app — for example, out-of-context ads from an app not currently in use. This behavior violates Google policies, so Google removes these apps from both AdMob and Play — in fact, a recent enforcement sweep resulted in the joint removal of nearly 600 apps. Our investigations are ongoing and when we find violations we will continue to take action.
• Help app publishers towards compliance with industry regulations:As industry regulations evolve, Google is providing tools for app publishers to manage their compliance strategy, maintain user trust, and minimize the risk of losing revenue.
  
• Give users more control over their app experiences:Android is making fundamental platform changes to minimize interruptions in app experiences and keep the user more in control of what's shown on their screen. 
  

We’re excited to build on this momentum in app ad safety as well as peace of mind. Stay tuned for more updates over the next year on how Google is protecting its ad systems and improving ad traffic quality. 

Last month, Game Developers Conference (GDC) organizers made the difficult decision to postpone the conference. We understand this decision, as we have to prioritize the health and safety of our community. GDC is one of our most anticipated times of the year to connect with the gaming industry. Though we won’t be bringing the news in-person this year, we’re hosting the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free, digital-only experience where developers can watch the announcements and session content that was planned for GDC.  

Google for Games Developer Summit

The Developer Summit kicks off on March 23rd at 9:00AM PT with our broadcasted keynote. Immediately following, we’ll be releasing a full lineup of developer sessions with over 10 hours of content to help take your games to the next level. 

Here are some types of sessions to expect:

• Success stories from industry leaders on how they’ve conquered game testing, built backend infrastructure, and launched great games across all platforms. 
• New announcements like Android development and profiling tools that can help deploy large APKs to devices faster, fine tune graphic performance, and analyze device memory more effectively.
• Updates on products like Game Servers (currently in alpha)—a fully managed offering of Agones, letting developers easily deploy and manage containerized game servers around the globe.

Sign up to stay informed at g.co/gamedevsummit. 

Support for the game developer community

We recognize every developer is impacted differently by this situation. We’re coordinating with the GDC Relief Fund to sponsor and assist developers who’ve invested in this moment to further grow their games.

We also understand many developers were looking forward to sharing their content with peers. To help with this, developers can use YouTube to stream events from small to large using tools like Live Streaming andPremieres. 

We can’t wait to share what we have in store for gaming. Discover the solutions our teams have been building to support the success of this community for years to come.

As an avid gamer, every year I look forward to spending time with developers at GDC to celebrate together and learn from their successes. We are all disappointed that this year's conference was postponed, but we applaud the organizers for taking steps to protect our global community. 

Although we won’t be gathering in person this year, the Google team is hosting the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free, digital-only experience where developers can watch the announcements and session content that was planned for GDC. We still wanted to share these updates with you because we think these new products will help developers succeed and are a direct response to feedback from our developer community. 

As we study emerging gaming trends one of the most consistent things we've noticed over the years is that those who build a strong games business always put players first. That means deeply understanding players at every stage of their app journey. Today, we’re announcing new solutions that help you launch a game people love, improve it based on player insights, and earn more during the time that someone is engaged with your game. 

Launch a game players love with scaled user testing

Appealing to players at launch is essential to the success of your game. Based on recent Google internal data, more than half of installs come within the first 8 weeks of an app’s release. To make the most of this influx of users, leading developers like Big Fish Games test their apps in beta before releasing them publicly.  That’s why last year we introduced open testing in the Google Play Console to help you get early feedback from real users before your full release. 

To get even more testers into your app, you’ll soon be able to promote Android games with open testing in Google Ads as well. By running open testing ads in App campaigns, you can drive early users to your app to test things like app stability, user retention, monetization, and effectiveness of ad creatives—then use the learning to improve your results when you launch. 

In one example, Chinese developer NetEase used open testing ads to reach more beta users that helped them optimize in-app purchase behavior based on open testing data.  For their new game, Dawn of Isles, Netease was able to double in-app purchases which ultimately led to higher lifetime value (LTV) at launch.

Improve your game by learning from your players

Many developers use Google Analytics to understand how people are playing their game. Now, we’re taking it a step further by introducing a gaming-specific Analytics experience to help you get relevant insights even faster. Starting today, App + Web properties in Google Analytics will proactively surface gaming-specific user funnel metrics like acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization in one place.

With games reporting, you can see how players move through the lifecycle. Then, you can use that insight to improve the game experience and drive more revenue using both ads and IAPs. For example, you could group the players that have dropped off after one week in your game and share that audience to Google Ads to re-engage them with a tailored message and offer. There’s no extra work to set up games reporting in your Google Analytics App + Web property. Learn more to get started.  

In addition to Google Analytics games reporting, coming soon are a few other new ways for you to use Google tools to unlock more valuable insights about your players. 

• Updated Google Ads asset report: Understand how your App campaign creatives are resonating with new users and optimize campaign performance more easily. 
  

• AdMob cohort report: Understand the LTV of your players across their user journey.

• AdMob mobile app:Quickly access ads monetization reports on the go via a new mobile app.

Earn more from your game

In addition to using player insights, another way to earn more from your game is with AdMob mediation. Leading developers like GameHouse, Playdots, and StickyHands, who use AdMob mediation have seen revenue increases of up to 30%—and now they can earn even more. 

We’re introducing a new tool called Mediation A/B testing, so you can test and refine your ads monetization setups directly in your AdMob account. For example, you’ll soon be able to run a test to see how much more you could earn by using Open Bidding compared to waterfall mediation. 

Using Google’s internal A/B testing engine, mediation A/B testing will split your traffic to run on your control group and the variant at the same time. This approach provides unbiased results that can help you maximize the value of every ad you show to players. 

To learn more about how these solutions will help you build a strong games business, tune into our broadcast keynote of the Google for Games Developer Summit on Monday March 23 9AM PT. Get all the details on the digital event at g.co/gamedevsummit. 

People are turning to apps to stay informed, inspired and entertained while spending time at home. For example, searches for "meditation apps" have grown globally by over 90 percent since last year.¹ While more app usage and more ad impressions would typically suggest more revenue for app developers, reduced ad spend has led to lower overall revenue in some cases. To help developers mitigate the impact and optimize ads revenue, here are some best practices.

Capture the revenue opportunity from the growth in user engagement 

Stay on top of changing user behaviors

Enable user metrics to help understand changes in how people are using your app, so you can take actions to optimize revenue. For example, if you notice an uptick in active users, you could increase the value of rewarded ads to help drive more ad interactions. 

Help people stay engaged

Consider making changes to your app to further extend user engagement. PlayDots, maker of the popular Dots game, gave all users three hours of infinite lives daily for free for a full month in April. This allowed users to enjoy the game fully and boosted the number of levels completed, which led to more ads being watched. Rewarded ads is another great way to earn additional revenue from increased user engagement for IAP-heavy apps (in-app purchases).  Implementing rewarded ads can unlock premium content for non-paying users and keep them more engaged. 

Earn more revenue with smart segmentation

If you are concerned about negative impact from ads on paying users, smart segmentation can help you monetize non-purchasers with a personalized experience. This feature uses machine learning to predict and segment these two groups of users and will only show ads to predicted non-purchasers. BlackLight Studio Games saw a 38 percent increase in interstitial ad revenue and no impact on IAPs after implementing smart segmentation. 

Unlock more impressions to boost revenue while ensuring a good user experience

Explore more ad formats

Diversifying your ad format strategy can increase total ad placements to help drive up revenue. AdMob offers many engaging ad formats for you to choose from. For example, rewarded ads offer a great user experience. Native ads allow you to customize the look and feel to match the visual design of your app. And, banner and interstitial ads are very easy-to-implement.

Adjust ad frequency caps 

Frequency caps allow you to set the number of times ads appear to the same user. Relaxing this setting will increase ad density to help you earn more. One thing to note is that higher ad frequency caps may affect user retention. We recommend using Firebase Remote Config to A/B test the changes before rolling them out to all users to ensure a good user experience. 

Increase operational efficiency with automated features 

Maximize revenue from multiple networks with mediation

Waterfall management takes up a lot of time and manual work. Ad Network Optimization offers an easy solution to help you automate that process and free up time to spend on other areas of your business. This feature automatically pulls in the freshest CPM value from each network in the waterfall and allows the one with the highest eCPM to serve the ad.

Optimize AdMob demand on other platforms

If you are using a different platform to mediate AdMob demand, you can set your ad units to a Google optimized eCPM floor which allows Google to dynamically set the floors based on your preference. The AdMob Network’s eCPM floor placement will then be adjusted with the other ad networks automatically to help you maximize total revenue. 

We hope the best practices shared here can help inform your monetization strategy during this time. If you’re interested in other tips to help your app business, check out Google Play’s best practices for your in-app products and subscriptions.

^{1. Google Data, Global English, Feb 26 - Apr 25, 2020 vs Feb 25 - Apr 25, 2019}