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If you haven’t heard, we launched the AdMob Student App Challenge 2016 in January, and we’re really excited to see what you’ll build. If you’re wondering how to get started let’s meet the previous winner, Phani Gaddipati, from Colorado, USA. Phani won with Stacks Flashcards . The app lets people create electronic flashcards on any subject, quiz themselves, and analyze their performance. Learn more about what inspired Phani to build his app in the video below. As Phani mentioned in the video, he took a practical approach to building his app, designing something that he knew would be useful to himself and his peers. Because of this, he has now driven over 50K downloads of his app. As part of this year’s contest, the grand prize winner will receive a week-long trip to San Francisco, including a visit to the Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. The winning app will be featured on the Google Play Store, and you’ll also get to star in your own promotional video featuring your app.  For

This is the 2nd post of our 5-part blog series providing monetization tips straight from successful app developers. If you’re exploring the question, “what’s the best way to monetize my app?”, also check out AdMob’s free No-nonsense Guide to App Monetization . This week, we meet with Sebastiaan Moeys, co-founder of Poki , a cross-platform game publisher. They develop and publish web and app games for kids of all ages, reaching 30 million monthly active users. Originally Poki, operated exclusively on the web, but with the rise of mobile they’ve recently released their first app called Zoi. Zoi has over 500,000 downloads and a 4.4 rating across the app stores. Check out these tips from Sebastiaan. 1. Start simply when first approaching in-app analytics Sebastiaan’s team is sophisticated with their in-app analytics platform and use this data to drive all of their decision making. For context, Poki continually monitors three things. First, they measure a custom metric called ‘Pure Game Tim

When monetizing an app with ads, you want to make sure that you’re implementing them in the right way to create a positive user experience. Banner ads are an effective way to monetize because they work well in a variety of apps. Mobile phones have limited screen size, which means that careful planning for your ad placement is especially important. Close proximity of banner ads to other elements within an app is one of the biggest causes of accidental clicks. If accidental clicks occur, publishers may see a portion of their revenue deducted in order to refund affected advertisers. Publishers may also have ad-serving suspended until the issues are resolved. Learn how to implement banner ads the right way by watching our new best practices video. For additional guidance, check out our Help Center . We'd also like to highlight our newest Help Center article on 300x250 banner ad guidance . Stay connected on all things AdMob and more by following our Google+ and Twitter pages. Posted b

We’re going to Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain next week. If you’re attending the event, be sure to visit us at the Google booth in App Planet, Hall 8.1. We’d love to hear about your app and share ways that you could earn more with AdMob. We’ll be there with our colleagues from the Cloud Platform and AdWords teams, showing off a host of great services that can help you develop, grow and earn from your app. Hear from one of our AdMob experts about our latest announcements, including SDK-less mediation , and the Active View metric, newly available in the AdMob interface.  You can also organize a meeting with someone from our team by completing this form . If you can’t attend this year, you’ll be able to stay in the loop: we’ll be live tweeting and sharing the event on our Twitter and Google+ channels, using the hashtags #Google #MWC16 . We hope to see you there! Posted by Mike Schipper, Product Marketing, AdMob

We’ve been advancing measurement standards across the ad industry with Active View, Google’s ad viewability measurement solution, for some time.  In 2012, we  introduced  Active View and have been extending reporting across our ad platforms, including  DoubleClick , so that publishers can get an accurate measure of ad viewability. Now available in AdMob for the first time,  Active View  metrics in the  AdMob Network report  help you understand what portion of your AdMob ads are viewable long enough to potentially be actionable by users. With this data you can increase the viewability of your ads by optimizing how they appear in your app. At this time, the Active View metrics in the AdMob Network report are only for display ads, with metrics for video ads coming soon. Some background on ad viewability Generally, viewability is the percentage of ads considered viewable by users out of the total number of ads measured. It’s important because it helps advertisers to understand what percent

Publishers have long used mediation to maximize revenue by showing ads sourced from diverse ad networks. However adding new networks required integrating and testing new SDKs - which often led to wasted development resources, app updates, bugs and bloated code. With SDK-less mediation it is now possible to simply add new networks server side without updating their apps. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re adding SDK-less mediation to the AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers platforms. SDK-less mediation is a feature that lets developers add new ad networks without having to integrate additional SDKs or adapters. This is great for developers who are concerned with SDK size or who simply do not want to deal with the hassle of adding and updating new ad network SDKs. With SDK-less mediation, developers can conveniently add new ad networks to their mediation stack. "AdMob SDK-less allows us to test new networks without updating binaries. It means we can get more expensive tr

Here are some pointers for managing your time as your team gets started in the #AdMobSAC16. January to February:  Organize your team; if you haven’t found a team, utilize Collabfinder to ensure you find the best team possible. Assign tasks and deliverables for people according to their strengths. Brainstorm your ideas for your app. Put together your strategy for project completion.  Tip: This is also a good time to familiarize yourself with the AdMob app policy, which can be found in the AdMob Help Center . March: As springtime approaches, your team should be in the heart of building the application. Focus on: Design work and developing the basic elements of the app. Aim to have a working prototype by the end of the month. Don’t forget to integrate AdMob ads into your app. This is a key requirement. Open it up for testing among a small group of trusted developers who are willing to provide detailed feedback.Start thinking your app’s promotional strategy . Tip: A large portion of #A

We created The No-nonsense Guide to App Monetization to help you answer a burning question, “What’s the best way to monetize my app?”. Our new 5-part blog series provides additional tips straight from successful app developers. This week, meet Christoph Pferschy, the app developer and designer behind Hydro Coach . Hydro Coach is a drink reminder and water intake tracker that’s been growing in popularity, now receiving over 5,500 downloads a day. Check out these tips from Christoph. 1. Start small to get big Christoph is best known for his app Hydro Coach , but his company, Codium App Ideas, has a bigger vision. In his words, they’re on a mission “to create useful and high-quality health-related apps that are combinable to a single health & fitness system.” But right now, Christoph is focusing on just one app – Hydro Coach. Why? Because he believes the best way to accomplish a big goal is to focus on a critical piece and nail it. He chose Hydro Coach because he’s personally benefit

Invalid activity is an important topic we'd like to discuss in today's post. Invalid activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Invalid activity covers intentionally fraudulent traffic as well as accidental clicks. Publishers can take many preventative steps to prevent invalid activity on their accounts. If we find invalid activity in your app(s), you may be at risk for account suspension or disablement. We may also refund revenue generated from invalid clicks to affected advertisers. Publishers must not artificially inflate the impressions or clicks the ads receive, either through automated or manual means. Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. We understand that a third party may generate invalid activity on your ads without your knowledge or permission. However, ultimately, it is your responsibility as the publisher to ensure that the activity on your ads is vali

For many students, the AdMob Student App Challenge is an exciting opportunity to showcase their app-building prowess, or a new way to display their entrepreneurial skills. However, since the contest is a both a developer and business contest, you may be having difficulty forming the right team or worse yet, considering not participating because of it. Enter the AdMob Student App Challenge Collabfinder group . This tool allows you to find like-minded students who are interested in participating in the Challenge, who may not have been able to form a team yet. For students with a mind towards business or an app idea, here’s a way to find someone with a passion for app development that you can work together with. Or for someone who already has the skills to build the app, but is not as business-oriented, find a teammate who can help with putting a business plan behind the app idea. Be sure to visit the AdMob website to learn more and register . Follow us on AdMob G+ and Twitter and keep