This must be some massive bug… I was just able to go in and turn on my house ads on the whole account so hopefully those will start running so I don’t have empty ad space in my 175 apps…
I can’t believe this shit… I’m in the process of pulling them out of everything and updating with other ad networks… Does anyone know a good open source mediation layer I can impliment so I’m not stuck with just one network, but am not dependent on google for mediation if this happens again?
Hopefully we will all be re-instated or else I’ll be seeing all of you in Santa Clara Small claims court.
I’m going with MoPub, though the number of networks supported out of the box is fairly limited. I registered for Amazon (built a custom MoPub adapter), MobFox and Millennial Media, but I haven’t been approved yet in any of them. It offers full AdMob integration (banners and interstitials), so even if my Admob account gets enabled again (yeah right…) I’ll be better off and more flexible than before. Still it sucks. I was planning on working on a new app, instead I’m spending all my spare time on this ad stuff.
EDIT: Oh, and I don’t think Admob house ad banners will work. It looks like banner requests are not even coming through to the old Admob, only interstitial requests. But maybe that’s because I have all my banners on Admob mediation, but not the interstitials?
My situation right now: I updated again my app using the old admobId and my app has started showing banner ads again, so now I am receiving info into the old admob. I’m not able to enter in the new admob, still banned and they have not answered to my appeal. I don’t know if they will close our old admob account blocking the ads and the money won during the last days.
As @Skurry, I’m also moving to mopub, when I will approved and integrated their sdk I will update my app for showing their ads.
Only a question, If I use ads from (for example) Millenial Media, Who will pay me? mopub or millenial media? If it’s mopub the payer, will they apply a comision or something?
You will have to set up accounts at every network you’re planning to use, and those networks will pay you. Which is a bit of an inconvenience because your earnings will now be distributed across all the networks you use. MoPub is making money by charging you a fee once you surpass 100 million impressions per month.
There’s an old thread on webmasterworld I couldn’t dig up when a bunch of adsense accounts were mass banned, and the community representative for adsense actually said “ill look into it”. I don’t know what became of that.
“Publishers earning more than US$25 (or local equivalent) per week on a consistent basis will be eligible for email support, which they can request via a form in the Help Center. Publishers can see if they qualify for email support and contact one of our specialists by visiting How can I contact AdSense support?”
It seems like we’re going to have to fight all the battles over again trying to get a peep out of admob. Next Google I/O, when admob shows off their new gui, please give them heck during the Q&A portion.
I’ve followed your link, found the option to contact by email if the earning is more than 25$…but when I click in the options, only appears the option to contact them by a form…
I’ve also read this:
“The AdSense account you’re signed in to has been disabled by Google for ad traffic quality issues, also known as invalid activity.”
If folks are worried about excessive clicks on Admob banners, one SURE way to reduce user clicks on banners is to show a lot of interstitial ads (!) - that almost always turns users off from clicking on “any more of that sh–” - and will reduce your clicks on banners.
The Admob suggestion regarding placement of buttons seems to be that they should be on the OTHER edge of the screen from the banner ad.
Now this will be difficult to do for some apps which have a lot of buttons - and they are placed all around the edge of the screen. In that case some buttons maybe on the same side of the screen as the banner ad.
Those with high click rate may want to look at their button placements and whether they are remotely likely to lead to a click on a banner ad (on small phones I am guessing this would be more likely).
I updated my admob account on august 10th, in my OLD admob inform, in that day I can see that I have shown:
1 request 1 impression 1 click …so CTR is 100% and ecpm 72€, completely abnormal.
The following days I’ve 0 requests, 0 impressions…because all the data was in the NEW admob, still they banned me on auguts 14th when I’ve started to receive again data in my OLD admob.
Of course, the previous days and the actual days I had another absolutely different data, with CTR 1-2%…
So, I suposse that admob algorithm has shown an alarm on that day and they has banned me…but as google is not reporting me the exact reason, I can not be sure if that it’s the cause of my ban.
Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you’ve provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program. However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we’re unable to reinstate your AdSense account.
Please know that, once we’ve reached a decision on your appeal, further appeals may not be considered, and you might not receive any further communication from us. Note that AdSense publishers whose accounts are disabled for violations of our Terms and Conditions are not eligible for further participation in AdSense. For this reason, you may not open new accounts.
Also, accounts disabled for invalid click activity will receive no further payment nor any reissue of previous payment. Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
We understand that you may want more information about your account activity. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection systems, we’re unable to provide our publishers with any details about their account activity.
Did you have buttons close to the banner ad - or even on the same side (admob suggests buttons should be on other side).
Was the CTR high i.e. higher than say 2.5% for your admob banner ad ?
Was your app being used largely by small kids ? Which would cause random clicking of ads.
Does your app have a high/low rating, small/large total number of installs (presumably high rating, large number of installs would be more acceptable to Admob ?).
Do you have large number of comments by users - and do you reply to them (presumably if you interact with users it may look good to Google - but I doubt this may impact Admob ?)
Does your app have content that maybe considered objectionable for advertisers whose ads ran in your app ?
Does app have copyright content - perhaps the owner of that content asked Google to act - or maybe they are also an advertiser and put pressure on Admob to remove such app ?
Just throwing things out there - maybe there is some pattern …
In one very small game I have theres a crazy dude that keeps clicking on all my banners, getting me nearly 100% CTR some days. I think he does that because he likes the game and wants to support me, but I think that can only get me in trouble (and I make like 10 cents per day when he does that). Do you have any idea on what could I do to be safe? Maybe just disable the banner?
Now that I had some time to think about what might have been the violation, two things came to mind:
I implemented interstitials, and for some reason I wouldn’t get interstitial ads to my test device. So I had to remove the phone ID from the test device list, was getting live ads, and during testing I accidentally clicked 2-3 times. That’s 2-3 times vs. hundreds of daily legitimate clicks.
Buttons that are too close to the ad might have been an issue as well. But there are no concrete guidelines as to what constitutes misleading placement.
We’ll never know what exactly it was, since Google is stonewalling. Usually in the second case they should suspend serving the app and notify the developer to make corrections. But I guess in most cases it’s more economical for Google to swing the ban hammer.
To everyone out there still using Admob, be careful about what you’re doing. Very careful…
How could ONE person create 100% CTR for you - unless he is the only user ?
Unless you are talking about the “unknown CTR” issue.
For an update for my apps, I will be putting in some half-bakes obfuscation of the APP_ID - so hopefully the visible string in the APK (since it is a .zip file essentially it can be renamed and expanded out).
A simple way would be to do an XOR with some known string that is kept separately etc.
However have to be careful that you structure the code so that the compiler doesn’t “optimize” your effort away - for example just keeping one string APP_ID (obfuscated) and another string XOR_PATTERN and then using APP_ID ^ XOR_PATTERN in your call to Admob SDK in your code - would lead to the compiler doing the XOR itself and essentially placing the right code in the APK - thus it would not be obfuscated.
Perhaps having two strings - then doing some manipulation in a method may ensure that the compiler doesn’t optimize - or there maybe some compiler directive you can place at the top of that method (I don’t know offhand what that would be).
To any other ad company - this type of bad publicity would be TOXIC - and they would make changes to accomodate - and include the per-app ban (for example if it is a design issue with that app buttons being close to admob banner ads etc.).
But not Google.
This is generally indicative of the issues with these companies - they are public companies dealing with end-users directly - YET they do not have the infrastructure in place to deal with end-user issues. It has reached the point where they are SMUG - i.e. think that no one can touch them because they have a seriously huge legal hurdle that any challenger would need to surmount.
Google (and some other such) are beginning to use this legal barrier-to-challenge-Google as a central tenet of their actions - and seems similar to how the Tobacco companies used to behave. That is, if there is challenge they are willing to pay that one challenge off - as long as it does not make them change their overall action.
Quote:
2) Buttons that are too close to the ad might have been an issue as well. But there are no concrete guidelines as to what constitutes misleading placement.
I was re-reading one of those Admob pages - and there seemed to be some INDIRECT suggestion that buttons should be on the OTHER side of the screen from banner ads - this suggestion is hinted at by a graphic which shows a “good” way to structure the buttons and admob banner ads.
Obviously this is not possible for many games (perhaps this is why AppFlood was suggesting that banner ads are not worth putting in your game - takes up real-estate and little revenue - I guess they were comparing to the far better IAP conversion rates for good games - and from interstitials).
Though in simple apps - I have seen that admob banner ad revenue can be similar to the full screen interstitial/AppWall revenue derivable - so banner ads remain a valuable source of revenue. Of course if your IAP revenue is much higher you could probably safely remove the admob banner ads.
