Tag Archives: AdMob

The Native Way: How Native Ads Helped SmartApps India Grow Revenue 55%

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.

Using native to boost revenue: 

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%.

Smart placement: 

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.” 

UX wins:

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.

New to native ads? Check out our help center.

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob.

Source: Inside AdMob


The Native Way: Everything you Need to Know About Native Ads

Native is the next big thing in mobile advertising with spending on native ads expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018. This is a huge potential opportunity for app developers, but how can you use native ads to help boost your UX and monetize your app? Here’s a quick overview of what native advertising is, and how you can get started.

What’s Native?
Native advertisements match both the form and function of the user experience in which they’re placed. They also match the visual design of the app they live within. Native ads augment the user experience by providing value through relevant ads that flow within the context of surrounding app content. Put simply; native ads fit in.


Native advertising isn’t a new thing.
Since the golden days of wireless radio and daily newspapers, advertisers have looked for innovative ways to match up their brands and messages with the environment in which they’re served to consumers. In the digital advertising world, Google was one of the first “native” advertiser, developing search ads that directly matched the information on the search results page.

But today, consumers are everywhere.
And we’ve had to adapt; delivering higher quality content that can flex to different screens and sizes. For example, mobile-optimized websites now have big buttons and fonts and mobile apps let users scroll up and down or left and right, rather than having to click through to the pages they want to view. Native also understands that preserving that user experience is vital to successful advertising.

Our content has evolved, and our ads need to follow.
Nobody likes their app experience to be side-swiped by an obtrusive, ugly ad. Native advertising offers a simple solution: ads that fit the form and function of a developer’s content. We help you create ads that are beautiful and engaging, so consumers can maintain their good buzz.

Native ads are cohesive.
They never stand out like a sore thumb. They’re made to match the look and feel of the app, and are consistent with platform behavior, so that the viewer feels like the ad fits seamlessly with their content experience. In other words - they’re ads with UX in mind.

Get started - In 5 easy steps:
  1. Sign in to your AdMob account at https://apps.admob.com
  2. Click the Monetize tab/All apps/+ new ad unit/Native
  3. Choose from a variety of ad sizes,  templates and types 
  4. Customize them to fit within your app’s UI 
  5. Drop a few lines of code in your app to request your new native ads. Too easy!
For more on creating a native ad, check out our help center or head here.
Sign up for AdMob <Graphic>

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob.

Source: Inside AdMob


The Native Way: Everything you Need to Know About Native Ads

Native is the next big thing in mobile advertising with spending on native ads expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018. This is a huge potential opportunity for app developers, but how can you use native ads to help boost your UX and monetize your app? Here’s a quick overview of what native advertising is, and how you can get started.

What’s Native?
Native advertisements match both the form and function of the user experience in which they’re placed. They also match the visual design of the app they live within. Native ads augment the user experience by providing value through relevant ads that flow within the context of surrounding app content. Put simply; native ads fit in.


Native advertising isn’t a new thing.
Since the golden days of wireless radio and daily newspapers, advertisers have looked for innovative ways to match up their brands and messages with the environment in which they’re served to consumers. In the digital advertising world, Google was one of the first “native” advertiser, developing search ads that directly matched the information on the search results page.

But today, consumers are everywhere.
And we’ve had to adapt; delivering higher quality content that can flex to different screens and sizes. For example, mobile-optimized websites now have big buttons and fonts and mobile apps let users scroll up and down or left and right, rather than having to click through to the pages they want to view. Native also understands that preserving that user experience is vital to successful advertising.

Our content has evolved, and our ads need to follow.
Nobody likes their app experience to be side-swiped by an obtrusive, ugly ad. Native advertising offers a simple solution: ads that fit the form and function of a developer’s content. We help you create ads that are beautiful and engaging, so consumers can maintain their good buzz.

Native ads are cohesive.
They never stand out like a sore thumb. They’re made to match the look and feel of the app, and are consistent with platform behavior, so that the viewer feels like the ad fits seamlessly with their content experience. In other words - they’re ads with UX in mind.

Get started - In 5 easy steps:
  1. Sign in to your AdMob account at https://apps.admob.com
  2. Click the Monetize tab/All apps/+ new ad unit/Native
  3. Choose from a variety of ad sizes,  templates and types 
  4. Customize them to fit within your app’s UI 
  5. Drop a few lines of code in your app to request your new native ads. Too easy!
For more on creating a native ad, check out our help center or head here.
Sign up for AdMob <Graphic>

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob.

Source: Inside AdMob


The Native Way: Everything you Need to Know About Native Ads

Native is the next big thing in mobile advertising with spending on native ads expected to grow to $21 billion in 2018. This is a huge potential opportunity for app developers, but how can you use native ads to help boost your UX and monetize your app? Here’s a quick overview of what native advertising is, and how you can get started.

What’s Native?
Native advertisements match both the form and function of the user experience in which they’re placed. They also match the visual design of the app they live within. Native ads augment the user experience by providing value through relevant ads that flow within the context of surrounding app content. Put simply; native ads fit in.


Native advertising isn’t a new thing.
Since the golden days of wireless radio and daily newspapers, advertisers have looked for innovative ways to match up their brands and messages with the environment in which they’re served to consumers. In the digital advertising world, Google was one of the first “native” advertiser, developing search ads that directly matched the information on the search results page.

But today, consumers are everywhere.
And we’ve had to adapt; delivering higher quality content that can flex to different screens and sizes. For example, mobile-optimized websites now have big buttons and fonts and mobile apps let users scroll up and down or left and right, rather than having to click through to the pages they want to view. Native also understands that preserving that user experience is vital to successful advertising.

Our content has evolved, and our ads need to follow.
Nobody likes their app experience to be side-swiped by an obtrusive, ugly ad. Native advertising offers a simple solution: ads that fit the form and function of a developer’s content. We help you create ads that are beautiful and engaging, so consumers can maintain their good buzz.

Native ads are cohesive.
They never stand out like a sore thumb. They’re made to match the look and feel of the app, and are consistent with platform behavior, so that the viewer feels like the ad fits seamlessly with their content experience. In other words - they’re ads with UX in mind.

Get started - In 5 easy steps:
  1. Sign in to your AdMob account at https://apps.admob.com
  2. Click the Monetize tab/All apps/+ new ad unit/Native
  3. Choose from a variety of ad sizes,  templates and types 
  4. Customize them to fit within your app’s UI 
  5. Drop a few lines of code in your app to request your new native ads. Too easy!
For more on creating a native ad, check out our help center or head here.
Sign up for AdMob <Graphic>

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Chris Jones, Social Team, AdMob.

Source: Inside AdMob


Announcing the Winning Team for the 2016 AdMob Student App Challenge

We’re excited to announce the winners of the 2016 AdMob Student App Challenge, an app building competition for students. Over 100 student teams from around the world took on the challenge to build a great app and monetize it using AdMob, with a chance to win awesome prizes.

After reviewing our 4 regional finalists, our judges have selected the global winner who will receive will receive a trip to San Francisco, including a visit to the Googleplex. Chris Akhavnr, a judge for the Challenge and President of Publishing, Glu Mobile, enjoyed reviewing the apps, noting that “After reading the business reports, I was impressed by the amount of thought each team put into their app. I'm sure these finalists will go on to have a big impact in the mobile ecosystem."



Drumroll please…



Global Winner - Turbo Rocket Games
App: Dragon Sim Online

About the team. 
Turbo Rocket Games is a team of four: Vladimir, Yaroslava, Illya, and Serhii from Kiev, Ukraine. Vladimir and Serhii are studying informatics at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Yaroslava and Illya are studying computer science at Brock University. To build the app effectively, the team divided the work so everyone could focus on the aspect they were best at. As the project lead, Vladimir focused on managing the development process while Yaroslava took charge of game design. As programmers, Illya and Serhii worked in tandem to write the code for the game.
About the app. 
Dragon Sim Online is a game where you can become a dragon and play online with friends or by yourself. The app provides a true simulation experience by challenging players to maintain their dragons’ health and energy, raise a family of dragons, fight dangerous enemies and explore the massive 3D world. The app has been downloaded over 500K times worldwide with an average review of 4.5 stars.

Congratulations to Turbo Rocket Games and thanks again to every single student who participated! Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ page.

Henry Wang
Product Marketing, AdMob

Source: Inside AdMob


India-based Neurosurgeon Mohan Noone Builds Popular Travel App and Grows it with AdMob

“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
Dr. Mohan Noone is a neurosurgeon who was interested in programming. In 2011, he came across a service that provided live updates on train schedules and envisioned bringing that information to mobile devices. With that spark of inspiration, Noone purchased an Android book to start learning code. As he was building his app, he made sure that it was simple, functional and compact to create the best user experience. After listing his app on the Google Play store, he saw his app Indian Railway Train Status grow to over 5M downloads in just 3 years. Today, the app has over 500K daily active users.

The problem
Several months after the app was released, Noone looked for ways to monetize his popular app. He decided to implement banners, but didn’t see great results at first due to poor ad placements.

The solution
Noone then decided to move the banner ad to the homepage and saw his revenue skyrocket about 10X. Afterwards, Noone decided to add interstitials, which helped him triple his revenue overnight. He believed that it was important not to overwhelm users with ads. Instead of showing interstitials in every session, he randomly triggered the loading, which meant fewer ads for the users.

The results
Over the years, Noone’s dedication to creating a positive user experience helped Indian Railway Train Status achieve over 5M downloads.

Indian Railway Train Status’ banner ad
To check out Mohan Noone’s success story, or any other of our other success stories, visit us at at the AdMob website. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ page.

Posted by Henry Wang, AdMob Marketing

Source: Inside AdMob


Mobile Ads Garage #7: Native Ads Express

A new episode of The Mobile Ads Garage has hit 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.

Have you tried AdMob's Native Ads Express? It's a new native ads format open to all AdMob publishers that can help you slim down the monetization code in your apps, plus give you the chance to update your ad layouts without a redeploy. In this episode you'll see sample ads, implementations in Xcode and Android Studio, and details on how to create CSS templates that'll make sure the ads in your apps look the way you want. If you've been considering a move to native ads, this is a great way to get started.


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.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Supercharge your Game with AdMob at Casual Connect USA 2016

Are you attending Casual Connect USA 2016 in San Francisco from July 18th to 20th? If the answer is yes, come meet the AdMob team at the Google booth (#106), where you’ll learn how to grow your gaming revenue! AdMob specialists will be in attendance to help answer any questions you might have and optimize your account on the spot.


On Monday, July 18th at 11:30am, don’t miss our talk: Find and Engage High Value Users From the Start; Google’s Mobile Ad Platform from Soft-launch through Growth with Google’s mobile ad product management leader, Sissie Hsiao. After this session, you’ll be fully up to speed on how to harness Google’s powerful automation to find high value players and build a thriving gaming business.

After the talk, come check out our workshops from 1:00pm to 4:00pm where you’ll meet with our product leaders and get a deep dive on a range of topics. These workshops are 20 minutes long and open to everyone. Seating is limited so be sure to come 5 minutes early to the workshop you want to attend.

1:00pm - 1:25pmBest practices for finding and engaging high quality players

Find out how Google’s insights and automated ads tools can help you understand what your players value the most and how to find them.
1:25pm - 1:50pmBuild the buzz and get the install – the one-two punch of awareness and intent

Samantha and Connie from the the App Dev team will discuss ways you can improve your keywords to get the best performing Search campaigns.
1:50pm - 2:15pmAligning monetization with player happiness

Gaming BD Lead Alejandro Manchado will discuss how to maximize your revenue across ads and IAP and tailor your monetization by user segment with AdMob and Firebase.
2:15pm - 2:40pmMore than a glimpse – storytelling using engaging formats

As the team lead for Google’s App Developer Sales, Beth will share insights and best practices on how you can use Google’s app promotion solutions to take your app to the next level.
2:40pm - 3:05pmTips for taking your game global – efficiently

Google has made it really easy for you to launch your app globally. Find out how Google helps you identify which market to enter and localize your app content for users.


Even if you can’t attend this year, you’ll be able to stay in the loop. We’ll be live tweeting and sharing the event on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #Google #CasualConnect .

Posted by Henry Wang, Product Marketing, AdMob

Source: Inside AdMob


Game developer Balloon Island Increases Revenue by 150% with AdMob Mediation

"With AdMob taking care of the revenue part, we can focus on doing the fun part, which is making great games for our users.” - Tenny Woo, Direct and Frankie Lee, CTO


After working 20 years in a job that didn’t tap into his passion, Tenny Woo decided to quit in 2011 and start developing gaming apps to express his creativity. Today, he’s the managing director of Balloon Island, a successful Hong Kong-based mobile gaming company with more than 1M downloads and popular games like Ultimate Jewel, Star Gems and Lollipops series.

The problem
Balloon Island develops apps for both Android and iOS to make their games more widely accessible. Woo knew that it was important to sustain and grow his company. Woo decided to turn to AdMob because of its reputation for publisher support and global reach.

The solution
To keep user experience intact, Balloon Island used a combination of banner ads and interstitials, showing only relevant ads. After implementing ads, Balloon Island took advantage of AdMob mediation to ensure that it earned the most money possible for ad space.

The results
Balloon Island saw its revenue grow approximately 150% to $2K daily and its ad inventory increase to more than 4M daily, as a result of implementing AdMob mediation. Thanks to AdMob, Balloon Island has continued its growth and connected with users around the world.

Banner ad in Ultimate Jewel
To check out Balloon Island’s success story, or other AdMob success stories, visit us at at the AdMob website. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Henry Wang, AdMob Marketing

Source: Inside AdMob


Keep your Android apps nimble with the Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK

We understand how critical it is for apps to be lightweight. A lightweight app means taking up less space on a user’s phone, and faster loading on app launch. That’s why we’re committed to keeping the Google Mobile Ads SDK lean.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK, a lightweight Google Mobile Ads SDK that can be integrated in your Android app at a fraction of the size of the regular SDK. We also significantly reduced the number of methods, which will assist in keeping your method count low.

The Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK will help you continue earning money from your Android apps without compromising the size or speed of your apps. Here’s what one of our developers had to say about SDK Lite:
“At Holaverse, we pride ourselves on developing highly-optimized, lightweight mobile apps. Users spend less time downloading and more time enjoying the functionality and experiences we've crafted for them. When system resources or data bandwidth is limited, every byte saved is one more byte we can use to create and deliver greater value. The Android Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK allows us to do this, to do more, to effectively monetize our hard work with Google's powerful advertising solutions without adding unnecessary bloat to our apps, and without compromising our apps' user experience." - Xie Feng, CEO, Holaverse
The Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK has the same capabilities as the standard SDK, but is specific for devices with Google Play Services. Developers publishing Android apps to an app store that is not the Google Play Store should use the standard SDK.

For more information about Google Mobile Ads Lite SDK, visit our developer documentation and stay connected on all things AdMob, follow our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Alan Ni, Associate Product Manager

Source: Inside AdMob