Audio Banner Ads, Super Flashing Ads and Other Low Quality Ads

[Ying Chen]

Hi, 

I posted a topic "Audio Sound from Banner Ads ?" in July regarding our users in Australia were getting Audio Sound from mobile banner ads, sometimes the audio sound can last for more than a minute and there is no way to turn it off other than force close the app. Also when this happens, the banner is gone and sometimes there is an icon floating on the screen. We had to block all Ad Networks in Admob console and things are good for one month and half. Then on August 31st, three of our users reported this again in Australia. While we are spending a lot of time and energy developing high quality app, we have got close to 10 terrible reviews for this issue so far. We have a hard time reproducing this issue, and we do not want to tell our users to install alogcat to capture logs or to install a debug version to send us more information about the ads because not all android users are tech savvy. 

Would you be able to look into this? If any other developers get this issue, could you please share some information?

In addition, after looking into Admob console the past few days, I realized Ad Networks are just one part of the equation. There are also Adwords Accounts, many of these Adwords Accounts provide low quality ads. 

The following are some of the problems I noticed with many of these Adwords Ads:

1. Super flashing ads - As you can imagine how annoying these kind of ads can be for users, especially for dark theme apps not to mention battery drain. There are many super flashing ads instances for Clean Master, Virus Found, Battery Low, Storage Low with many different Adwords accounts. Is it possible to block all these flashing ads?

2. Heavily and repeatedly animated ads - These ads might not be good for mobile either because of battery drain. 

3. Adult content ads - I blocked all sensitive categories, I am still seeing some of these.

4. Not properly categorized ads - I blocked Dating and Gaming categories, I am still seeing plenty of flashing dating ads and gaming ads. 

5. Auto play video ads - I hope these won't be set to target mobile banner. Some of the auto play videos are indeed more than 1 minute long, I am wondering if this has any connection with the audio sound issue our users are getting in Australia. Auto play video/audio ads is never a good idea, when users get these, most likely the reaction is to find where it is and pause or stop it. 

Also any upcoming ads can only be held for review for 24 hours before they enter the pipeline. If I do not catch up quickly, the bad guys are in. Is it possible to hold upcoming ads until approval?

So I spend a lot of time the last few days trying to block problematic ads and their corresponding Adwords accounts. There are several tens of thousands ads. It is just too much time and energy for app developers. If I need to do this everyday, I won't be able to focus on developing apps.

So please Google/Admob team help us to control Ads quality with beautiful and elegant Ads, and then app developers can focus on developing beautiful and useful apps for Android. Your time and concern is much appreciated. Thank you very much. 

 

[Elton Kent]

Hi Ying,

It is unfortunate that you see misbehaving ads in your app. The AdMob quality team strives to ensure that the Ads you are served are not objectionable in any way to you or your users. Here are are few things you could do to help bring this under control.

• If you notice an Ad that you have filtered coming through, Try capturing the request/response using Charles and send that across
• If the Ad has an 'Ad Choices' logo, you could tap on it and report the Ad directly.
• Lastly, (And you're probably aware of this) you could blacklist Ads by their app name in the AdMob portal.

Cheers,

Elton Kent 

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Ying Chen]

Hi Elton, 

I appreciate your reply. Hope the quality of Ads will improve, and I understand it is a tough job for the AdMob quality team since there are many ads coming every day. 

As for reporting misbehaving ads, sometimes it is hard to reproduce misbehaving ads our users get. We have testing devices in North America, Europe and Asia, but we do not have testing devices in Australia. We also tried a test build with setting AdRequest location to Australia longitude and latitude through AdRequest$Builder, but it does not seem to help.

I have used Ad Review Center the last few days to block ads and Adwords accounts, and I am wondering if the following features can be added to Ad Review Center to help app developers. 

1. Filter ads by targeting country - This will help us a lot to review problematic ads in a particular country without go through all ads

2. Option to block Auto Play Video Ads

3. I have unchecked Ad type->Video checkbox in Ad Unit page, but it does not seems to work

4. Option to hold upcoming ads until approval instead of 24 hours

5. Option to block Rich Media, HTML 5 Template, Dynamic Image ads in order to reduce annoying flashing ads. Below are some examples of flashing ads, which usually have many instances registered under different Adwords accounts. 

Again your time and concern is highly appreciated. Thank you very much. 

Ying

[Vu Chau (MobileAds SDK Team)]

Hi Ying,

Thank you for the effort in helping us improve the quality of the ads served.  We appreciate that you sent across the detailed feedback.  I'll make sure to pass this onto the rest of the team so we can evaluate it.

Going forward, we have publicly made native ads available, for which you have control over the content and the UI.  You can properly format the visual design of the ad to match that of the app, plus many more features.

Cheers,

Vu Chau

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Ying Chen]

Hi Vu, 

That is great news. Thanks a lot for letting me know. 

Ying