AdMob constantly analyzes data across our network to find ways to improve performance for our advertisers and publishers.  These ongoing analyses examine many aspects of our network such as: advertiser bids, competition, the type of sites or apps in which ads are served, and value of a click to advertisers.

If our data shows that a click from a specific publisher site or application is significantly less likely to accomplish an advertiser’s business objective (ie. driving a download), we may reduce the flow of ads to that publisher. This shift in allocation is performed in an effort to both reward publishers that provide us with high quality, valuable clicks, as well as maximize performance for our advertisers.

While some factors that impact traffic performance are outside of a developer’s control, there are many that developers do have control over. One of the most important contributors to click performance is implementation style. Because of this, we strongly encourage our application developers to take these best practices into consideration:

• Ads should not be placed very close to or underneath buttons or any other object which users may accidentally click while interacting with your application.
• Ads should not be placed in a location that covers up or hides any area that users have interest in viewing.
• Ads should not be placed in areas where users will randomly click or place their fingers on the screen. In these cases we recommend implementing our ads on a title or ending page.
• Ads should not be placed on a “dead end” screen. There must be a way to exit a screen without clicking the ad (ex, a “back” or “menu” button). Otherwise, the user should be notified that the home button will exit the application.
• Ads should not be refreshed more than once every 60 seconds.
• Ads should not be pre-cached, cached, or stored in any fashion. All ads should be requested dynamically and refreshed when the page is refreshed.
• Click through URLs should not be proxied. All publishers should pass AdMob’s click through URL to the client exactly as it is returned by AdMob.
• The number of ads on a single page should not exceed 1 if the ad is fixed to the screen top or screen bottom.  If the page scrolls, then there should be a maximum of 1 ad on the top and 1 ad on the bottom, and both ads should not appear on the same page.

While these guidelines can significantly increase traffic quality, not all developers who follow these best practice guidelines will raise click performance high enough to regain ad flow.

We understand that these optimizations cause some of our publishers to earn less as their fill is reduced. However, we believe that these changes will ultimately lead to both higher payouts for publishers that provide high quality inventory, and significant increases in advertiser performance.

Bryan
Product