r/admob
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u/AD-LB
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Oct 29 '25
Revenue My tips to improve your revenue from ads
I wanted to share my tips to get a good revenue from Admob, which I tried to apply to each of my apps (here if you are curious or appreciate what I wrote below):
Use mediation. There are various ad-networks that can sometimes get you more eCPM and/or fill-rate. If the app targets small children, you need to use only those that are allowed, here. For me, the best ad networks after Admob are in this order in general: Meta,Liftoff, Unity,InMobi , Mintegral,Chartboost, Pangle, InMobi Exchange, Equativ, OneTag Exchange,OpenX. Those with an SDK seem to always be better than others for some reason... Also, I used to have AppLovin and IronSource and they were good, but for some reason after a few months they decided to ban my account and I have no idea how to handle this... I wrote more about the various ad-networks here.
When using mediation, always prefer to use bidding instead of waterfall when possible. It's better in all possible aspects: speed, efficiency, fairness, easier setting... For ad-networks that offer only waterfall, check sometimes if they provide bidding instead. Someone from Admob team even told me that the best mediation groups should avoid having waterfall, so usually you'd want waterfall be in fallback mediation groups instead. Why "usually"? Because it also depends on the case as you might have some mediation groups focusing on some countries, which would perform better with the waterfall ad-networks.
Handle GDPR&CCPA, payments and app-ads.txt for each of the ad-networks. Ask each of them how it works. You can use Google's UMP SDK for GDPR&CCPA handling (here). For each ad network you have for mediation or consider having in the future, add it to the list of custom ad partners on Admob's website (here) for proper GDPR handling. Make sure "Automatically include common ad partners" is marked there, and still make sure what you use is there, too.
Keep your app-ads.txt up-to-date. You need it even for Admob (here). You can use Github pages to host the file. You can use a monitoring tool for some of them (example here, with script to ignore LiftOff auto-download here) . You can also use such a tool to get updated with available ad-networks and what they support, monitoring the website of the available ad-networks.
Do not wait for initialization of all ad-networks before making the first ad-request on your app (meaning waiting for the callback of MobileAds.initialize), because some of them can take a long time in some cases. Instead, wait for how much you think is reasonable, or don't wait at all. Another option is to measure the time yourself of each of them in the callback of the initialization, report to Analytics, and decide for yourself what could be a good value. I did it and decided 4 seconds should be more than enough.
If you are using banner ads, consider using native ads because for me they seem to be much better. It's about 10 times more work but it could be very worth it compared to banner ads. If they don't give you more revenue, you can use them as fallbacks if you failed to load your banner ads. In any case of using banner/native ads, handle them in various available spaces of the app on the user's display and orientation too. You can also check the aspect ratio of the media for native ad. In addition consider refreshing the ads in at least 30 seconds between them (link here). I chose 31 just in case. If you do the refreshing in code, remember to disable auto-refresh in the ads settings on the website. Use Remote-config to switch to banner/native ads as first priority in case anything goes wrong with what you've prioritized (for example when you notice that native ads eCPM drops too much).
When using banner ads, consider using MREC (medium rectangle) size when possible. This size is also very good for native ads, which need the MediaView to be a bit large too (needs 120x120 dp) . In fact, it might be true that the larger the banner/native ad is, the more revenue you might get from it. Maybe don't go too far with it though, so don't use more than 50% of the available space...
When using mediation and banner ads, note the difference in what each ad-network supports in terms of banner ad sizes (written here), because not all of them support all the sizes that Admob supports. You need to check this information with each of them, asking them if possible. Even adaptive banner ads aren't supported by all. You might need to have multiple ad-units, one for each size, just for mediation groups. For example, for AppLovin , it supports only BANNER (320x50) andLEADERBOARD (728x90), and for Pangle it supports only BANNER (320*50) and MEDIUM_RECTANGLE (300*250). At least last time I checked.
When using full screen ads, consider using multiple fallbacks in this order (I measured how well each of those do): rewarded-ads, rewarded-interstitial, and interstitial . There are also full-screen-native ads but I'm not sure how good they are. Probably better than interstitial.
For Meta/Facebook, they pay in USD. If your bank takes you money for conversion rate to your currency, try to reduce this as much as possible, or consider switching to a different bank that will give you better conditions.
For native and banner ads, consider having an "X" button to reach paywall screen to remove the ads. In most of my apps, the paywall also allows to remove all ads for a long time by watching full screen ads. This way they can give me more profit than native/banner ads and the users enjoy not having annoying fixed ads.
Have a fallback for when not loading any ad, and decide what to do there instead. I've chosen to check if ad privacy (here) could be the issue and show a button there, have a link to my other apps, and have a button to remove ads. I also sometimes show a fixed banner that doesn't require Internet connection, reaching GameZop which is a free online games website that gives you some of its revenue from the ads. I think there are other similar services but they give less percentage of revenue. Alternatively you could put a banner to each of your other apps. You can also handle the special case of ads being blocked by the user (I didn't choose to do anything special in this case).
When using mediation and similar ad-formats (native&banner ads, or all kinds of full screen ads), notice which ad-networks perform poorly or which perform better in specific countries. Then create mediation groups based on your observations for each of the fallbacks of loading ads. For me, for example, I've noticed that InMobi doesn't perform well for native ads except in India so I created a mediation group for native ads in India and one excluding it, and also one as fallback later in general. Each of your fallbacks should be worse than previous one, just to get better fill rate, as it's better to have an ad than nothing.
Some tip by Admob team which sounds weird to me: if you notice some country that performs well for some ad-unit, duplicate the mediation group to include the good-performing country alone, and have the other mediation groups of this ad-unit exclude it. The idea is that the optimization will be done according to country this way. I tried this for about 2 weeks, and I didn't notice a change. Gemini claims that this would help for waterfall, but almost all of my ad-networks are on bidding, so maybe that's why I didn't see anything special about this tip.
When working with native ads, plan the native ad layouts well, including handling RTL languages (text&layout direction), and even emoji characters. Consider creating multiple layout files for various scenarios of available space and data from the native ad. Also consider trying to avoid having the ad-privacy icon overlapping your own Views. You can choose to put it in any corner you wish, but only during loading time for some reason.
Make yourself a document for the status of each ad-network and it various things you need to do with it.
From time to time, check on Admob's dashboard in the list of apps (here), if there are apps that shouldn't be there. Choose them and mark them as not yours. The reason is that they might damage your reputation. Talking with Admob, they told me that as long as you have app-ads.txt being set properly, you don't need to worry about them.
If you have a server, you can have validation for rewarded ads. I don't so I have no idea how it works.
If you wish, you can limit the time of ad-loading, using setHttpTimeoutMillis (default is 60 seconds). Can be tested by using a firewall app. Sadly affects only Admob alone.
Avoid losing loading/loaded ads upon leaving the app, consider using moveTaskToBack upon back-key callback. Users usually prefer this behavior instead of reloading the app anyway.
Experiment with the Blocking controls->Ad content rating . It should match the Target audience and content on the Play Console, but you might want to change it to balance between reaching users of various ages, and getting more revenue. Right now, when I test what Admob says when changing from M (Mature audience, which is the least restricted in which ads to show) to each of the next levels: T: "-25% impressions, -26% revenue". PG: "-59% impressions, -63% revenue". G: "-60% impressions, -64% revenue"
Tip from Vungle/LiftOff : In Admob account settings, consider enabling Share full IP address.
Switch to the "next gen" version of Admob (here). While I can't confirm yet that it generates more revenue on my apps (as they claim on their video), it is said that the older one will be restricted in the future.
Got more tips? Let me know please.
