Can't find my app in store linking search. Will it appear during the Closed Testing?

[Carlos Alberto Mata Gil (CeuxDruman)]

This year, my AdMob stopped serving ads to my app because it was not "reviewed and approved".

The requirement missing in my case was adding a store to my app (specifying where is my app uploaded).

There is a Google Play search engine integrated to find apps, but as my app is still under "Internal Testing", it doesn't appear there, so I can't fulfill the requirements, they can't review and approve it and I (and my testers) can't test real ads in my app..

Looking into my next step, my question is: Will my app appear on the Google Play search integrated in AdMob when I promote it to the "Closed Testing"? So testers can finally test real/live ads.

Otherwise, will that happen when I promote the app to the "Open Testing"? Or lastly will I have to wait until it is in production to test it and take the risk o fixing right in production...? (I really hope this is not the answer).

This may seem like a trivial question, but all answers over the internet are from people who already have their app published in Production, so new versions of that app are served with live ads from AdMob without problems. But there is not a single line of information for new apps (first versions of an app) and how to verify them on AdMob before reaching Production.

I also checked past conversations on this group, but they are all abandoned and not closed with the final solution.

Thanks in advance for your time and help, I don't want to take more risks nor disturb my testers with unnecessary intermediate internal, closed and open testings that might be useless at the end...

Regards.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Carlos,

Thank you for raising your concern to us. Let me do the best I can to answer your inquiries.

Moving to your concern, I'm afraid that you will need to release your app to the public (not as opened, closed, or internal test) in order for you to link your app into your AdMob. On some instance, you're still able to load live ads even though your app is not published to PlayStore and not linked to AdMob account. However, loading an ad to unlinked/unpublished app will greatly affect your ad request's fill rate. Meaning, there's a higher chance that you will be getting a no fill error for this use case.

On a side note, since you mentioned that you want to load live ads for testing, we don't recommend this as it may flag your account for invalid activity.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

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[Carlos Alberto Mata Gil (CeuxDruman)]

Hi @Teejay,

Thank you very much for the detailed information, it was so helpful. Given that, I have one last question: Is it possible to link my app into my AdMob during the Pre-registration phase?

I now understand that there is no reason to use LiveAds during testing phases and, even more, that could be perjudicial. But looking at the launch of my game, that could impact my first users impressions and reviews. I mean, maybe there is no impact on normal apps (just you won't get ads incomes for the first 24 hours to 1 week), but for games, ads can be a main part of the experience (e.g., rewarded ads to redeem content, virtual coins, etc...) and so impact the first impressions and reviews of the game ("first" could mean tens, hundreds or thousands users during that 24hours-1week period depending on the game launch and marketing campaign).

That is why I'm searching for a way of linking / validating my Live Ads before the exact moment of the launch, and maybe the Pre-registration phase could be an option, as it enables the Play Store listing for the entire public while not allowing them to actually download the app. Could you confirm if it is possible to link my app into my AdMob during that phase?

Thank you again in advance for your detailed investigation and information.

Regards.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Carlos,

Thank you for getting back to us and I'm glad that I were able to provide precise information on your end.

As per your concern about linking an app during the Pre-registration phase. We cannot fully comment as linking an app is on the UI side which is out of scope to our team. With this, we would recommend reaching out to our Product Support Team as they should be able to shed light on this concern.