AdMob Banner Ads Impacting Android Vitals: Seeking Solutions and Alternatives

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

We are encountering the following Android vitals issues:

- Slow warm start (4%)
- Excessive frozen frames (12%)

These issues are more prevalent on devices with xhdpi screen density (DPI).

We believe the root cause is the banner ads from AdMob. When we disabled the banner ads from AdMob, we noticed a decline in these issues.

I suspect that AdMob might be using the WebView component for rendering, which is known to be resource-intensive and can affect performance.

AdMob accounts for 50% of our total revenue, so disabling it entirely would have a significant impact on our earnings. However, we also recognize the importance of Android vitals for our app's ranking in the Google Play store.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems with AdMob? And would switching to native ads potentially address these concerns?

Thank you.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Yan,

Thank you for contacting the Mobile Ads SDK support team.

By reviewing your concern, I understand that you are encountering  Android vitals issues. Kindly provide the below information for further investigation so that we can have full visibility of your implementation:

• app ID
• ad unit ID
• Mobile Ads SDK Version
• Device/OS versions affected
• Error Screenshots/video recording
• Sample project reproducing the issue (if required) 

If the file(s) you are looking to share are less than 25mb in total you can attach them to this case on your next reply. If you are having trouble attaching your file to this case or if your file(s) are larger than 25mb, you can share your files with me by performing the following steps:

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This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02q8les:ref"

Thanks,
 

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Juan BLASCO]

We also are having problems with Admob causing ANR's on low end devices. How were you able to discern the culprits were the banners and not the interestitials?

Here we are using it as an adapter for Applovin and we tried to add the ad optimization like this:

https://developers.google.com/admob/android/optimize-initialization

The ANR decreased by a bit but not as expected. Lot's of people are having problems with Admob and ANR's but there is not a clear answer by de google team to fix this.

Mobile Ads SDK team, we can't reproduce the issue in our tests. How do we address that?

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

Because we only use banner ads, and not interstitial in our app.

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

This is the graph showing such an issue is caused by AdMob SDK banner ads.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Yan,

Thank you for getting back to us.

As requested earlier kindly provide the below information for further investigation so that we can have full visibility of your implementation:

• Mobile Ads SDK Version
• Device/OS versions affected

• Sample project reproducing the issue (if required) 

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

Thank you for looking into this issue.

This are the ads related libraries which we are using

    implementation 'com.google.android.ads.consent:consent-library:1.0.8'

    implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:21.5.0'

It is affecting all devices/ OS. But, such a problem is more obvious in low end devices (Phone with lower DPI display). I attach few screenshots to compare across different DPI display.

The below is the Excessive frozen frames for different screen density.

xxxhdpi = 2.62%
xxhdpi = 6.48%
xhdpi = 24.93%
hdpi = 35.58%
mdpi = 39.57%

Take note that, you will notice drop in every graph. This is because few weeks ago, we have remove admob ads sdk completely from our app.

[Trong Nguyen]

I also have this problem in Unity. I have reproduced the issue:

Reproduce project:
https://github.com/jacattrongnlh/AdmobAdaptiveBanner

Steps:

• Build the APK from the repo. (or download the build from Releases tab)
• Run it on a device.
• Wait a few seconds for Admob initialization.
• Tap on the button "Adaptive Banner" to load an adaptive banner.
• Drag and hold the Scroll View (as in keep your finger down and drag it, do not lift the finger up when scrolling).
• Tap on the button "Default Banner" to load the default size banner.
• Drag and hold the Scroll View.

Comparing the framerate of the Scroll View before and after loading the adaptive banner, you can see that the Scroll View was smooth and responsive before the banner was shown. After the banner is shown, the Scroll View becomes very laggy when you drag it.

The framerate of the game is unaffected, it's the rate of UI's responsiveness that is affected.

Attaching Android Studio to profile the performance, you can see the CPU usage is significantly high when the animated Adaptive banner is displayed. When a static default banner is displayed, the CPU usage is not as high.

Profiler Screenshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PMpr7BfkEkYLCFPDUJGb1MixbHUlKFqB/view?usp=sharing

Video recorded showing the problem: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KX3ht2Exx9SYfDN7ZUpx6cf0zXaX986Q/view?usp=drive_link

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi, 

Thank you for getting back to us.

We couldn’t reproduce the lag in our device, can you please let us know which device you are facing the issue with.

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

The affected devices are mostly with screen density XHDPI

They are

1. samsung a3core (Galaxy A03 Core)
2. samsung a02 (Galaxy A02)
3. motorola hawaiip (moto g22)
4. samsung a10 (Galaxy A10)
5. samsung a21s (Galaxy A21s)

Please refer to the attached screenshots.

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

Are you saying, using standard banner ads size has less performance impact, compared to using adaptive banner ads size? Thanks.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Yan,

Thanks for the additional information provided.

The memory usage and CPU usage between using adaptive and standard banner ads shouldn't vary much.

While we are investigating on the issue, can you provide a video recording that captures the CPU/memory changes when the adaptive banner ads are being displayed?


Regards,
Joshua

ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02q8les:ref

[yanchen...@gmail.com]

Hi Joshua,

I'm currently limited to using an emulator on an M1 MacBook, as I don't have access to any of the affected real devices. Given this situation, is a video recording from the emulator still necessary?

I've been considering some workarounds to address the issue, especially considering its impact on our revenue. I'd like to get your opinion on whether any of the following approaches might help reduce the issue on XHDPI devices:

1. Using native ads instead of banner ads. My theory is that avoiding the resource-heavy webview component might be beneficial.
2. Disabling video ads from the AdMob console. Do you think this could be effective?

I'd really value your thoughts on these potential solutions.

Thank you for your time and insights.

[Juan Blasco]

We are experiencing the very same problem with lowend Android devices.

Currently we are using the latest adapters 22.5.0.0 of google ad manager and google admob.

ANR's when using webviews from google are a big problem for lowend devices.

Any hint would be appreciated.

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Juan  Blasco Senior Unity Developer Homa Games +34618899460 juan....@homagames.com