Introducing AdMob Interstitials
The New Feature
Here is an example of the new AdMob Interstitial ad units that were added to Andromo 3.2.5.
Example AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit
AdMob defines Interstitial Ads as follows:
A full page ad experience at natural transition points,
such as a page change, an app launch, or a game level load.
Interstitials use a close button that removes the ad from the user’s
experience. Ads are displayed in an iFrame that floats over the web page
or app.
Note: Interstitial ad units can (and should) be used in combination with banner ad units.
The History
For the last while a good portion of our development and design time
here at Andromo has been focused on increasing the monetization
potential of our developers Andromo apps. We have attempted to tackle
the monetization problem in roughly three ways:
- Adding new features
- Improving the look and feel of existing features
- Adding new ad networks
Some of this work has already been released, some of it is waiting to
be released, and some of it (alas) will never see the light of day. Out
latest foray into the monetization world is the release of AdMob
interstitial ads.
Before AdMob moved to their new interface and merged with Adsense,
AdMob interstitials were an invite-only ad unit. When AdMob opened up
their interstitials to everyone we knew (based on our experience with
the AdMob banner unit) that adding AdMob interstitial support to Andromo
was a no-brainer.
The Hype
There is a lot of talk in the Android development community
surrounding which ad network and/or ad unit pays the most, and it’s easy
to get sucked into the bold claims of an ad network or an app developer
claiming the best revenue out there. It’s also easy to be lured into
questionable practices by the promise of higher revenue, but as we’ve
seen by recent changes to the Google Play Developer Policy those don’t often pay off in the long run.
If you research mobile ad networks long enough the one ad network
that is always held up as being one of the strongest and most reliable
is AdMob. For most Android developers AdMob is the default ad network to
use for a few reasons:
- The largest mobile ad network
- One of the best performing
- Great world-wide fill rate
- Pays developers reliably (no concerns over late or missed payments)
- Owned by Google the makers of both Android and Google Play
Of course that isn’t to say that AdMob is the only ad network you, or
other Android developers should use. Making money in the Android app
world is always a process of experimentation and evolution. But it does
say that AdMob is a good safe choice for most Android developers, and
it’s the choice that we here at Andromo have provided to you (our
developers) since day one.
The Reality
The reality is that I’ve been testing AdMob interstitials in some of
my own apps for the last little while, trying to gauges their efficacy
and the acceptance rate of end users. Overall the interstitials have
performed very well. I’ve seen an increase in revenue and so far I have
not received one negative review because of them.
What sort of an increase are we talking about? Without going into
specifics I can say that in one app I saw an increase of 48% after
adding AdMob interstitials. Another app saw an amazing increase of 519%
(increasing from roughly $5.00 to $31.00 in a 20 day period). Another
test saw an increase of 8%, and another saw an increase of 215%. Of
course your results may vary based on the types of apps you create, and
the regions where they are popular, but the results appear to range
between merely positive all the way to fantastic.
The bottom line is that if you are trying to make money using
advertisements, and you are comfortable adding interstitials to you app,
then you should add AdMob interstitials to your app right away.
The Implementation
What’s nice about using a tool like Andromo and adding a feature like
the AdMob interstitial ad unit is that it takes almost no effort on
your part. No code to write or feeds to hunt down. You simply create an
interstitial ad unit in AdMob’s interface, enable the setting with the
correct id on andromo.com, rebuild your app, and you’re done. If you’ve
added AdMob banner ads to your app before this is just as easy. The
AdMob help has a good explanation
of how to add a banner ad unit, sadly they seem to have forgotten to
update it for interstitials, but the process is basically the same for
the first four steps:
- Log in to your AdMob account at https://apps.admob.com.
- Click the Monetise tab.
- Click All apps on the left-hand side and select the app that you want to modify.
- Click + New ad unit.
Next select “Interstitial” as the ad Format, and then provide an name for your ad in the “Ad unit name” edit field:
AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit Settigns
After that you can click the save button and you will be presented
with your Ad unit ID, which will have something similar to the following
format: “ca-app-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXX” where “X” represents
an integer.
With your new Id, you now need to then go and edit your Andromo app
and enable AdMob Interstitials on the monetization tab. Once they are
enabled you will be able to enter in your AdMob Interstitial ad unit ID,
and set the minimum time between interstitial ads.
After saving your changes the last step is to re-build your app and
upload it to the app store(s) of your choice. It’s that easy.
The Catch
The only catch is that you need to have a valid AdMob account and you
need to upgrade to the new version of AdMob. The upgrade process is
painless and you will be paid out for all of the money in your old AdMob
account. That’s it.
It’s really quite easy, and if you have Tapgage enabled that’s no
problem, Andromo will share the Ad time between the two interstitial
networks 50/50.
The Conclusion
The conclusion is that AdMob is a great ad network and their
interstitial implementation is really well done. If you want more money
from your apps, and you don’t mind interstitial ads, then I suggest you
ad AdMob interstitials to your apps as soon as you can.
Comments
The green circle marks the date the app was updated with AdMob interstitials
Either way Amazon allows AdMob supported apps in their app store so I don't think it will be a problem.
Have you (or anyone else) added AdMob interstitials to your any of your apps? If so what have the results been like?
mark.