How to Optimize AdMob Banner Without Getting Policy Flags

We Will Discuss: * Banner Ads in AdMob * Prevention of Policy Flags * Placements * Types of Banners * How to Choose the Correct Type

Banner ads are the simplest form of ads in AdMob and have been a staple of the digital marketing ecosystem for years. As one of the oldest and most widely used ad formats, banners remain popular due to their non-intrusive user experience and flexible placement options.

Banners are a great option for beginners as they are easy to place and can have video and image-only ads. Banner ads do not occupy much space but help publishers generate a huge amount of revenue. You can size or resize or use an adaptive banner, which is a totally responsive format. We have to be cautious while placing a banner:

• The ad is not overlapping the content.

• The ad is not placed in the element of the

• page.

As a rule of thumb, an ad must not overlap navigation, content, or any other clickable elements on the page. What do I mean by preventing banner ads from interacting with your app content? For example, if you have an app full of feeds—i.e., gaming, football, or news—the client might have an intention to navigate within the app, but an improper placement of an ad has caused him/her to accidentally click. This comes under misleading advertising.

Invalid Clicks Prevention: Placements matter, as an improperly placed ad can cause a user to land on another app or a website accidentally, which is termed as misleading and is also against Google’s policy. As a result, a publisher may face consequences as follows:

1. You can get flagged and limited by ads.

2. You may not get paid for all those clicks.

Tip: Place an ad while making sure that it is separated clearly from the content, elements, and UI.

Remedy: What do we do instead? How do we place banner ads? Where do we place banners? Let’s break it down and look at placements.

Commonly Used Places: Firstly, it depends on the app and is subject to the publisher’s analysis. But generally, publishers like to place banners at the bottom or at the sides of the screen as a small side rail. These are the most common placements for banner ads. Making sure you use best practices matters.

Avoid placing a banner in a way that is covering a vital part of your screen, which can be a bit distracting. A rectangular banner can occupy a portion of the content.

Advantages: There are many advantages to banner ads in AdMob:

1. One of them is ease of placement. You can place them the way you like (a highly flexible format) and where you would like them to appear. They will stay at the allocated placement.

2. Banners are great in terms of maximizing impression volume (if placed correctly), which leads to an increase in revenue.

3. They are also easy to code in your app and feature automatic refresh.

Disadvantages: In simple words, as a publisher, I am not expecting a higher eCPM for a banner ad as compared to a few others, i.e., native banners, rewarded ads, etc.

Types of Banners: Do we have types of banners too? Yes, we do, and that is quite important for any publisher to understand to interact with and place them correctly.

320 * 50 size banner – These banners are known as Fixed Banners. They are small and can be positioned on the bottom or sides of a display. Because of their fixed nature, they do not adjust to the screen size, which means their appearance can be either too small or too large depending on the device they are viewed on.

Smart Banner – Smart banners occupy a space between fixed and adaptive banners, but they still fall short in offering publishers precise customization. A common issue is that the provided height is frequently too large, resulting in the ad appearing excessively small on devices with high resolutions.

Adaptive Banner – In order to prevent wrong sizes from being served across platforms, I would recommend Adaptive Banners. An Adaptive Banner can adjust itself to the screens and ensure a smooth and playful overall experience.

How To Choose the Type Of Banner: I know the confusion of which one works best for an allocated space within your application. It depends on:

• Your Vertical / Market

• How the ad fits in the layout

• Whether the ad enhances or keeps a healthy user experience.

This is quite important, as happy users are likely to reuse your app; and in the long run, your app grows, keeping the app health safe as well.

Unhealthy & Rough User Experience: It is a losing strategy, specifically in terms of ad placements and banner ads. The strategy should be not to block any areas which can cause hindrance for app users, nor should any ad result in invalid clicks.

Conclusive Recommendation: Run an A/B test first on a small chunk of traffic in your app. After analyzing the results, you can choose the placement and ad type. Again, we have repeated this word again and again: the data-driven approach.

Frequency capping: Frequency is a tool which can be a friend to both a publisher and a user. It is often the frequency of a banner ad—rather than the ad itself—which causes a bad user experience. If the ad frequency is tuned to the user’s journey and behavior, it will cause the overall AdMob account to be improved.

I will follow up this series of ad formats with all format optimizations and placements, and we will find a way to place them correctly as well.