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.

Note: If you do not already have an Andromo account register now and start creating Android apps.

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:

1. Log in to your AdMob account at https://apps.admob.com.
2. Click the Monetise tab.
3. Click All apps on the left-hand side and select the app that you want to modify.
4. 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:

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.