What the difference between AdMob, Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers?

[de...@pr-app.com]

Hi!

What the difference between AdMob,  Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers?
What the proc and cons of each of this?

I want to show some ads in my app but also I want to do a direct sails. What should I choose?

Thank you in advance!

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

That's a loaded question.

AdMob is the easiest to set up to show ads in your app, assuming you don't care what ads show. For direct deals, you can set up house ad campaigns in AdMob and track impressions and clicks and charge the advertiser that way, but it's more of a one-off solution. Small (especially 1 person) shops generally start out with AdMob.

Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP) has first-class support for direct deals, and can do forecasting and more complex targeting. It can also backfill to AdMob or Ad Exchange for any unfilled impressions. Generally, DFP companies have a dedicated sales team that goes out to get deals to place into DFP.

Unfortunately I don't know as much as I should about Ad Exchange. But if you aren't already using it, it's probably not the place to start. There is also more overhead involved than signing up for AdMob.

[Tony Chan]

This is an old question but it was exactly what I was trying to research just now. Even though I've used AdMob for Android extensively for a while now I've always wondered what all the other services were.

To be honest even from looking at the https://developers.google.com/ads/ site I still wasn't clear on when one service should be used over the other. The site just throws a bunch of market talk and dev guides at you without actually helping you choose the appropriate ad service. Maybe it's just me.

@Eric thanks for the succinct answer. They really should turn your answer into a flow chart or something and make it the landing page for the /ads/ site.