Exit Ad is not allowed in Google Play Store !!

Hi ,

yesterday I uploaded an update of one of my apps which has an exit ad .
the update is rejected by google play store and i received the following email :

Here’s how you can submit your app for another review:

Remove any interstitial ads that appear outside of your app.
Review your app to make sure it’s in compliance with thead policy and all other policies listed in the Developer Program Policies.
Sign in to your Developer Console and submit your app.
Policy Issue: Ad policy

Interstitial ads may only be displayed inside of the app they came with.
Make sure users can dismiss any interstitial ad without penalty or inadvertent click-through.
Just as a reminder, you’ve agreed to follow the Google Play Developer Program Policies and additional enforcement could occur if there are further policy issues with your apps.

If you’ve reviewed the ad policies and feel this rejection may have been in error, please reach out to our policy support team. One of my colleagues will get back to you within 2 business days.

I appreciate your support of Google Play!

Does this means exit ad is not allowed ??

Yes, it was disallowed quite a long time ago. Although the wording was not perfectly clear. The best way to deal with it is to ensure your app is still alive when the interstitial is shown and that it is still there when user closes the interstitial (for example you might show it BEFORE a “Are you sure you want to close the app?” dialog). Also exit ads from AppBrain seem to be still allowed - they ask the user when you close the app if he wants to see more apps and only then show an appwall.

Is there a ad network that make this:
Can control all ads mean first when you upload it to google you can off the ads .
When approved active it.
Also when there is ad network that auto download ads better special games on your list it is possible ??

Exit Ads are still allowed but after the user closes them the Application who launched them still needs to be active and be effectively closed after that.

So you should override onBackPressed to open the Interstitial Ads (and not finish your app activity yet).
Then use the Ad Listener to actually close the activity after the Interstitial has been dismissed by the user. (like 1 second later)

If you want simple solution you can look at MobileCore exit ads.

This certainly won’t go down well with Google. I won’t be surprised if one gets banned for this.

Exit ads are allowed but before your app actually exits. If you allow your main activity to exit without making sure that there are no pending interstitial requests, a delay in ad delivery can lead to an ad popup after the user has already landed on the home screen. This is considered out-of-app advertising and violates Google Play policies.

Also, if you’re using Admob, do not trigger an interstitial when the user presses the “back” button to exit to app. Admob are banning for doing that now…

Do you have a source for that ?

It’s clearly stated in AdMob policy (along with interstitials on app launch)

I am already doing exactly what you have described , this is why I am confused
Anyway I decided to make an exit dialog " Are you sure you want to exit ? …" and I will add native ad to it to avoid any violation of the policies .

Are you sure you aren’t doing something wrong with the integration of exit ads? which Ads Network you used?

I am using 3 ad networks ( for each exit only one of them will be selected ) :
1 - Facebook Audience Network ( I call the main activity 's finish on the following ad listener methods ( onAdClicked or onInterstitialDismissed)
2 - Mobile Core ( I call the main activity 's finish on the ad’s onConfirmation method )
3 - app brain ( and actually I finish the activity exactly after displaying the ad not after the user click or reject it - maybe the problem is here !! )

Ad. 3. should be OK - I do it the same way. I think maybeShowInterstitial method is blocking. So it won’t close until it returns. But I might be wrong.

1- I think would be safer to finish the activity onInterstitialDismissed only (not on AdClicked), that’s what I do with FAN
2- is ok (for example with MC implementation, the activity is finished only when the Ad is dismissed and not when simply clicked)
3- I never used app brain so maybe I miss something, but I think if you finish your activity as soon as the Ad is displayed then that is against Google Play policy (as at this moment the Ad is still displayed outside of your App after you finish the activity)

I have checked their policy with the “Disallowed interstitial implementations” title and I think you missunderstood their policy. Here is the related part :

Placing an interstitial ad after every user action, including but not limited to clicks, swipes, etc. You should place no more than one interstitial ad after every two user actions within your app. Please note that this requirement also applies when a user clicks the Back button within the app.

It does not say you can’t use back button triggered interstitial, it says you can’t put multiple interstitial ads with different user actions and it reminds you that back button is also counts as user action.

App load or exit
Do not place interstitial ads on app load and when exiting apps as interstitials should only be placed in between pages of app content. Ads should not be placed in applications that are running in the background of the device or outside of the app environment. It should be clear to the user which application the ad is associated with or implemented on.

We are not talking about app load and exits here. Here is the relevant quote

I asked a source for “back button” and you posted something unrelated as a source, it seems we are having a miscommunication.

I don’t understand what you mean sorry.
If you click the “back button” you will exit from the App. So then the policy about App exit is applied.

Not necessarily, you can override back button press and not close the app until after the ad has been closed. So technically the ad would not be show outside the app, but still consider exit ad. You just have to make sure you do it right. So do you have any info on if they are banning for showing exit ad INSIDE app?

Showing ads outside the app, gets you in trouble mainly with Google Play. I believe that it doesn’t matter if you override and control to show the ad inside the app when the user press the back button, indeed you will be following Google Play guidelines, but it will be still against AdMob as they want you to show interstitials in between content, not when the user wants to close the app.