Creating an Admob House Ad campaign - SUCCESSFUL

Given all the talk about cross-promotion among developers, I tried to create a “House Ad” on admob.

Here is the sequence of events …

So promoting own app in the banner ad space of another of your apps.

In admob - clicked on Sites & Apps - House Ads.

Created a “campaign” - which had a running time (default was for a week or so - with a start and end date/time). If you change it to something shorter like 2 days it shows a red mark on the end date - don’t know what that means.

Give it a “campaign name”, then an “adgroup name” (I guess this is different varieties of ads all under the same “campaign”).

Chose an ad type - there was a choice of “banner and text” and “android app download” (chose this). If you choose the android app option - the Ad URL becomes a “market://” link i.e. as you would give for an app on Google Play.

You can choose to provide an image, but I chose the text ads - and just wrote down a text line.

Entered the market:// link for the app that was requiring promotion.

There was a box for “display URL” which only has space for 32 characters or something - in the end just typed play.google.com in there - that seemed to get accepted.

There were checkboxes next to the apps you have on admob - and checked the app that was going to display the banner ads.

Then there was a “impression goal” - I checked “full allocate” - which I am guessing refers to the “House Ads” i.e. this campaign gets 100% allocation of the House Ad stream.

Apart from this - decided to add “Admob House Ads” as another “advertiser” to the banner ad mediation for the app that is showing banner ads.

I went into admob mediation for the app showing the banner ads - and while I had currently setup to:

Admob 75%
AppBrain 23%
Greystripe 1%
mmedia 1$

I changed that to (i.e. shifted some Admob traffic to house ads):

Admob House Ads 100%
Admob 0%
AppBrain 0%
Greystripe 0%
mmedia 0%

Then I may have “run” the House Ads just to make sure they were running.

After some rebooting of the phone and waiting around for no ads appearing for some time - maybe about 10 minutes later started seeing the banner ads.

Here is the format of the banner ad as it appeared on screen:

In addition to the demo shown when you entered the text - the banner ad ALSO includes the title of the app and the rating stars and the number of reviews ! - so you really need to make sure your text fits in the first line (though admob warns you if you go over into the second line) - I suspect this won’t be the case for the banner and text ads.

Perhaps if one really wants to tailor the banner to exclude the display of ratings etc. - one can use the “banner and text” option instead of “android app download” option (discussed above).

This may then have just the text you enter.

I suppose one COULD setup a between-developer setup - where instead of a market:// link one would use a redirection URL - which maybe a redirect by the developer website - this way they can count how many redirects they are getting from another developer.

Of course there could be a central website which does this redirection for developers - and that would provide stats that developers could quote as definitive etc.

CONCLUSION - Admob House Ads - for the banner ads using simple text - and pointing to Google Play app download - are working. Now to see how impactful this is for downloads. Of course much will depend on the text copy and the relatedness of the other app to the app running the banner ad.

Now that I know the House ads are working:

  • the only House Ad campaign I have is being given “full allocation” i.e. 100% of the stream from House Ads I am guessing is what it means …

  • “Admob House Ads” as an “advertiser” in the admob mediation is being given 100% - so I was sure to see their ad first …

Now to scale back the admob mediation so that “Admob House Ads” shares the ad space with the other ad networks I had before …

So the admob mediation situation goes from:

Admob House Ads 100%
Admob 0%
AppBrain 0%
Greystripe 0%
mmedia 0%

to:

Admob House Ads 50%
Admob 25%
AppBrain 23%
Greystripe 1%
mmedia 1$

Effectively I have gone from 75% Admob originally to 25% to Admob - this will surely cut Admob revenue - now to see how much it impacts downloads of the other app I am promoting …

I would be able to see the redirects in House Ad webpage - but perhaps would only be able to guess at any impact if there is an anomalous rise in the downloads for the promoted app.

This being the weekend there is going to be a bump anyway, so it maybe difficult to separate out the effects.

Let’s see what happens …

Here is admob help page for House Ads (which I read after doing the above):

https://support.google.com/admob/answer/1619751?hl=en

Select the ad type you want to create in this group.

  • iOS App Download: A banner or text plus tile ad that drives a download of an iOS application.
  • Android App Download: A banner or text plus tile ad that drives a download of an Android application.
  • Crossfade Banner: A banner ad that fades between 10 different images and leads users to a website you specify.
  • Banner or Text: A banner or text ad that leads to a website you specify.

Fully allocate: 100% of all ad requests will be allocated to this ad group during the campaign period. No paid ads will be served during this time. If you have multiple ad groups with this option set, all ad requests will be allocated evenly between those groups.

The Crossfade banner maybe used to animate the banner.

In the blog post below, the author points out that using “fully allocate” for two different campaigns which were targeting different apps (so you don’t promote the same app in the banner ad) behaved as expected.

His blog post also points out how he set up Google Play and Amazon Kindle setups - he also used “fully allocate” for his House Ads.

Stupid Admob Tricks | Gushiku Studios
Stupid Admob Tricks
Submitted by gushikuadmin on Sat, 09/01/2012 - 11:35

And some conflicting info from google on this (from 2012 I think) - since my use case is similar to the case examined in the blog post above, I am assuming it should work ok by just using “fully allocate” for all House Ad campaigns - and control their percentages with Admob mediation percentages (or if you are using eCPM etc. perhaps):

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-admob-ads-sdk/BVEW7Ix-_Cs
Google AdMob Ads Developers
Fully Allocated House Ads? + Mediation
3 posts by 2 authors
The recommendation here is to create a separate AdMob publisher ID that is fully allocated to house ads. Then when you set up AdMob Mediation, you can use your main publisher ID for the AdMob network, and your house ads publisher ID for the AdMob House Ads network.

Deleting this post which pointed to problems setting up Admob mediation (but which turned out to be my mistake - and is documented in the post below).

Problem seems to be SOLVED - by making sure the Admob House Ads for your mediation are set to the correct app (from Sites & Apps list).

The mistake I made was in not scrolling down to see that when I added Admob House Ads as an option, that it was also giving me a choice of which app to associate with.

CONCLUSION: you can setup your Admob House Ads for each app you promote to show up in the app of your choice (so app1 ads don’t appear in app1). When you set up your mediation - make sure the Admob House Ads options (which are at the bottom) are set to point to the appropriate app (this is similar to what happens when you add Admob as one of the ad networks to show in mediation).

This was somewhat helpful in pointing/reminding of that - PLUS it seems to suggest (as in the google groups link above) that Google recommends you create a new publisher ID (perhaps “Your App House Ads”) and then “fully allocate” House Ads to that new publisher ID - then in your admob mediation you set “Admob House Ads” to point to that new publisher ID. Meanwhile your Admob ad network can continue to be associated with your old apps (as listed in Sites & Apps currently):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12086541/admob-house-ads-mediation-on-android

Create a new publisher ID.
Create a House Ad campaign that fully allocates traffic - assign campaign to newly created publisher ID.
On your mediation placement, configure “AdMob Network” with your regular publisher ID.
On your mediation placement, configure “AdMob House Ads” with this newly created publisher ID configured to serve house ads every time.
Allocate your mediation placement by percentages. Assign 95% to the AdMob network, and 5% to AdMob house ads.

I have a pretty good experience with admob house ads…But I just can’t sacrifice my revenue for boosting downloads now…:slight_smile:

I am getting 2.14% click-through rate - so with say 10K impressions from one app’s banner ad space - that’s 200 clicks. Out of those how many would actually be downloading the other app ?

The CTR is much higher than for typical Admob ads - perhaps because you can choose which app is most like another to do House Ads in …

However, as you say, for these same 10K impressions you may earn maybe $5 from Admob banner ads.

So it is in effect like paying (opportunity cost) of showing House Ads.

However, what has been your experience of using House Ads for say advertising your own newly released app ?

I also switched to doing things as Google suggests i.e. set up a separate “app” in Sites & Apps:

“App1 for House Ads”

And when creating House Ads - pointed to that as the “app” it should appear in …

Then in mediation list - when adding “Admob House Ads” - made sure that it points to this new “app” as well.

Meanwhile Admob continues to point to the old app (in Sites & Apps list).

Also switched to 100% share for House Ads in mediation - this is to ensure that every user does see the banner ads.

I have seen that the ads do not appear immediately sometimes, but after a minute or so.

The same situation exists for admob.

Compare to this that AppBrain banner ads are the quickest to appear (perhaps because they are text and don’t require downloading from AppBrain servers).

While running Admob House Ads at 100% of mediation - I have added another network “Admob eCPM floor beta” (which allows you to set minimum).

What I am going to do is - while running 100% House Ads (advertising my other app) - I will allow Admob ads IF they have very high eCPM.

I am getting eCPM of $0.53 and $0.34 for two of my apps - so I chose $1.00 eCPM as the “floor” - i.e. if admob has such high paying ad then I’m willing to have it be shown even during House Ad campaign period.

To add a “Admob eCPM floor beta” - Google advises you create a new app in Sites & Apps list - and then goto mediation list and add one more ad network (i.e. Admob eCPM floor beta) - in it’s options you point it to the newly created app.

You could name the new app you created as something like:
“app1 for Admob eCPM floor beta”

So it’s name explains it’s purpose.

Then in mediation, since I was giving percentages before (which are deprecated now in Admob but will continue to work for pre-existing mediation entries), switched to the $ option for setting eCPMs instead.

Turned off all other networks - i.e. mmedia, AppBrain. Just kept:

Admob eCPM floor beta - $1.00 eCPM (I figure this is double the usual eCPM so maybe good floor to use)
Admob House Ads - $0.00 eCPM (lower paying than the Admob eCPM floor beta)

Now let’s see if I can benefit from House Ads AND also earn some Admob revenue (i.e. greater revenue from fewer banner ad space sacrifice).

Are any other banner ad networks doing something similar to Admob eCPM floor beta - i.e. is it possible to restrict banner ads from mmedia.com, or leadbolt or greystripe or appbrain if their eCPM is below a certain amount.

Note that even the eCPM “floor” used by Admob is an “estimate” - probably based on the performacnce of that banner ad so far - so Admob knows that this banner ad generally earns so much per 1000 impressions. Such an ascertainment would be difficult for a new ad.

One thing to report - with Admob House Ads - their stats do not seem to be updated for how many impressions have been generated for the House Ads.

House Ads are being served but remain stuck at the levels they were on the first day.

It turns out the date range was not changing (and was stuck to the range I used yesterday) - even when I clicked on the House Ads tab.

The CTR is nearly 2% (since this is a related House Ad - perhaps that’s the reason) - vs. the CTR for general Admob ads before - which was 0.3 to 0.75%.

So clearly choosing the right app to advertise in can make 2x to 4x difference - and is an area which really needs to be explored.

I think with mmedia.com - and perhaps some other networks - you can choose the ads which show ?

Thank you for sharing all this useful experiences , really appreciate it :slight_smile:

A negative with using House Ads - I had to switch away from the percentage allocation model to the eCPM model in Admob.

Admob used to have both an “eCPM” allocation method and a percentage method. But now they have deprecated the percentage model and gone for eCPM only.

NOTE: you can continue to use percentage for existing Sites/Apps

The eCPM number is just something YOU enter - and is used to prioritize the network requests. So if top “eCPM” network fails to deliver ad, then next one is asked.

However higher eCPM ad network will always be asked first. While the may work well when fill rate is below 100% i.e. 50% or something - however, when fill rate is 100% for the top network, then the other networks WILL NEVER BE REQUESTED.

This means one CANNOT implement something where you give 90% of banner ads to Admob and 10% to AppBrain.

As we have posted here before, in allocating traffic to say Admob vs. AppBrain, one has seen that (because of the static nature of the text ads for AppBrain and it’s simple message “download a free app”) you may only need to show it occasionally - and it is so different from the Admob banner ads that it provides some NOVELTY as well.

So I was earlier giving traffic to Admob and a smaller percentage to AppBrain.

HOWEVER, with eCPM - this means such an allocation is impossible.

Even if I were to give eCPM of $0.50 to both - when eCPM is equal Admob supposedly gives equal traffic to both - it is not clear if it does it in round-robin fashion or not.

It would be great if one could set a percentage allocation for networks that have equal eCPM somehow.

This is a long post - just some observations - problem is the numbers may not be as legitimate since they are derived from a couple of days of observations - and maybe should be considered a rough ballpark estimate for figures …

As posted earler - the issues with being able to set percentages - or something similar with the “eCPM” way of setting.

On Admob mediation, the “eCPM” way is now being preferred (percentages are being deprecated by Google).

On Admob, “eCPM” is just used to set priority and is a figure YOU will presumably enter after looking at your performance on various ad networks.

Though now for Admob House Ads it has a very real meaning - as Google then tries to give ads which have been seen to have high eCPM.

When it comes to higher eCPM for banner ads - that means the effective eCPM as seen by Google for that ad - so it may not just be higher paying, but could be very attractive to users (i.e. higher click rate etc.) - this is what I am presuming happens.

The lower fill rate did not bother me since I wanted to show Admob House Ads anyway (to show another of my apps). A low fillrate would ENSURE the house ads get shown.

This works out well when you just have:
Admob eCPM floor beta
Admob House Ads

You sacrifice a small bit of your banner ad space (I am assuming 15% or so) - in return get reasonable revenue - plus also get to show your House ads 85% of the time or so …

However I also wanted to show some AppBrain banner ads - since from prior experience they are sufficiently different looking (in landscape mode they are wider and occupy the full width of the screen) - that they don’t seem to cannibalize other revenue (because whenever you show more banner ads it has risk of cutting into revenue from the other ad networks - because users have finite attention span/interest in banner ads). But that may be less of an issue if the ad is a completely different type (?) … well anyway …

Even this seemed to work out well:
Admob eCPM floor beta - $1.00 eCPM
Admob House Ads - $0.50 eCPM
AppBrain - $0.50 eCPM

in that Admob House Ads and AppBrain were getting nearly equal requests for ads.

However, when you add a THIRD ad network with same eCPM - Admob mediation seems to drop the third one (?). That is, their giving equal percentages (requests) for ads with same “eCPM” seems to fail when you have 3 networks with same eCPM.

So when I added Admob Ads also (so they also get shown):
Admob eCPM floor beta - $1.00 eCPM
Admob House Ads - $0.50 eCPM
AppBrain - $0.50 eCPM
Admob Ads - $0.50 eCPM
(NOTE: here the $0.50 eCPM is just a fictitious number - it could have been $0.30 also - and the results “should” be the same - as it is just a number used to prioritize the networks)

Now what I saw first day was that Admob Ads were getting near-zero ads - while the other two (with same eCPM) continued to get 50%-50% share of whatever was left after Admob eCPM floor beta was shown.

I fiddled around with eCPM second day or so - and third day set it back to 3 networks getting at eCPM again - but this time it was Admob House Ads which were getting near-zero ad requests !

So basically setting 3 networks to same eCPM was NOT giving 30%-30%-30% share to them but 50%-50% two 2 of them and near-0% to the third. And maybe it depends which you turn on first or last or whatever - but from 3 only 2 get fair share, 3rd gets ignored or whatever (?).

Perhaps Admob algorithms assume there will be no more than 2 “same eCPM” networks ?

Some observations

While a lot of folks here talk of increasing refresh rate and showing more ads etc. - and some have said that showing twice as many ads gives twice revenue (the thinking here is the more ad displays means the user is more likely to eventually be shown the ONE ad he is likely to click on or “like”).

This suggests that the banner ad space is like a movie which the user is constantly monitoring - however in reality this is not the case (unless the ad itself has some animations etc. which draws attention to itself).

However, intuitively one would EXPECT that if you show MORE ad networks, the results are not going to be double - in the worst case they may even be the SAME (why ? because user has finite attention span - you show ads from network2 and the user will be distracted from the ads shown by network1.

In fact I have seen that when I turned on Admob banner ads (or the days where it WAS getting requests) - that the revenue from my Leadbolt interstitial ads was lower. Is that something others here have seen also ? Perhaps there is user fatigue when the banner ads keep changing too much - and that then makes user averse to clicking on the interstitials.

So it is possible that there is cannibalism - between ad networks on the banner space - and across ad types i.e. excessive banner display may hurt interstitial revenue - and vice versa.

If you show too many banner ads of the cheap kind (i.e. either low paying or their designers haven’t bothered to optimize them for attractiveness) - that may reduce revenue from other ad networks.

This would suggest that developers choosing “high eCPM” ads to show only MAY be a viable option (lot of ifs here - you have to check the postulates here with reality to be sure the theories are actually being supported by reality).

Which brings me to the question of WHY Google started the Admob eCPM floor beta option - as superficially it seems it harms advertisers (esp. the super cheap banner ad ones) - but gives better opportunity to the higher paying ones (and these would presumably be “Download this app” type folks wanting more downloads etc. - the same kind featured on AppWall interstitial ads etc.).

Meanwhile it helps developers if banner ad space is more revenue generating (though low fill rate means you may actually lose money by showing Admob eCPM floor beta ads - BUT you don’t bother the user as much - which means they MAY click more on your other ad types i.e. interstitials etc. ?).

In any case, I came up with some reasons:

  • the usual issue with viability of the advertising-only app model on android (since payment model is generally weaker than iphone - though some casino/games and in-game currency games banking on “whales” to buy $100 coins maybe doing well - but there is no vibrant market for tool apps and other “regular” non-gamed/non-scam apps to get a “decent” revenue) - higher revenue per app obviously benefits Google as they get higher share from Admob - but also it makes many apps/developers viable who would otherwise attrition to iOS (some types of apps just will not be viable on Android but may on iOS).

  • Google’s offering an eCPM service - gives power to developer to also choose - in effect creating a market but with ability for sellers to withhold selling (developers are selling ad space) if they find the revenue is not worthwhile (or actually hurts them if excessive banner ad display cuts into users’ appetite for interstitial ads).

If things work this way - then Google COULD potentially raise the overall banner revenue expected - it may trigger other banner ad networks to ALSO allow developers to NOT show ads that developers feel are not paying enough.

As it stands - the full risk is being borne by developers - as they choose to show banner ads WITHOUT BEING GUARANTEED the revenue they will get. This means unlike TV - where advertisers pay IN ADVANCE for the ad time they buy - with banner ads the advertiser pays for the RESULTS of running that campaign.

This model would be like if an advertiser for the Super Bowl winds up paying zero-dollars if the audience finds their ad is weak or not convincing.

Basically developers SHOULD be paid guaranteed amounts for showing ads IN ADVANCE - the developer SHOULD NOT take on the risk of:

  • the banner ad product is weak
  • the banner ad text copy or creative image is weak

These risks are currently being borne BY THE DEVELOPER !!! Can you imagine how completely sweatshop-factory type this situation is ?

After all whenever a developer gives up space for an ad - he is LOSING revenue - as that additional ad pisses off the uses 1% more - and it makes that user less likely to click on another banner ad or interstitials if the user gets irritated by excessive banner ads etc.

So a move to eCPM floor for banner ads seems like a step in the right direction. What would be great if all developers started moving to the eCPM floor version - and abandoned all ad networks which do not give this power to the developer.

This will force other ad networks to implement eCPM floor based banner ads - and it will eventually kick out all the weak banner ads (that pay low or have bad creatives which don’t give good click-through).

So recapping some observations from 1-2 days of watching (may not be accurate):

  • turning on Admob banner ads (i.e. 100% fill rate) reduced the click-through on my Leadbolt interstitial ads (i.e. that is real revenue lost which may not be made up by Admob)

  • Admob mediation may not give fair share when you have more than 2 ad networks at same “eCPM” (i.e. priority level)

  • CTR for AppBrain and Admob House Ads seems to be similar - which suggests the CTR for typical “Download this app” type of banner ads is 50% higher vs. Admob banner ads (both eCPM floor and regular kind) i.e. 2.2% vs. 1.5% on weekends and 1.8% vs. 0.6% on non-weekends (ballpark figures). In fact the AppBrain CTR seems to match the CTR for Leadbolt interstitials (?) - which is odd given Leadbolt interstitials are so much more in-your-face

  • Admob eCPM floor beta fillrate is about 10%-15% vs. 100% when you use Admob banner ads

  • Admob House Ad statistics are pathetic - they don’t show these well on the main Sites/Apps page - and the House Ads tab also has stats at 0 - even though house ads are being delivered

  • these CTR figures are for 120 second refresh rate on admob mediation - and if you set refresh rate to 60 seconds (i.e. rotate through Admob banner ads 2x as fast) - that may not mean you get 2x the revenue (though some may have suggested that here) - since user has limited attention span

This is a amazing admob post many thing you can learn from this post .Admob is a very famous idea for app or game promotion.

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If are you want to promote app in short time and want to increase the downloads then use the admob and get more installs from this campaign

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Hi :slight_smile:

Just in case, you’ll be looking for worthy Ad Mob alternative, draw your attention to Epom Apps. Our global advertising demand and ad mediation ensure near-100% fill rate with no need to set up house ad campaigns. By the way, we help to handle monetization process at all stages, so you will be FREE from the hassle and complicated settings.

Contact our team and we’ll suggest the most appropriate and high-paid monetization strategy for your app.

All the best!