Need help from AdMob team with filtering something

[Dmitry]

Dear AdMob Team,

We are using AdMob as our main ads provider for about 2 years, and are very happy with it. While we had a couple of technical issues, your team is still the best, and we hope it stays that way.

Recently we started to get complaints from our players about some particular ads. We know that some advertiser uses it as a template for many games, so we expect more complaints in future. We tried to filter the urls, but to no avail, probably due to "Filters are not applied to keyword-targeted and Google certified ad network (GCAN) ads."

The ad has a text “(1) FREE GAME” on a briefly flashing background. A known url leads to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinidream.bingorun&referrer=utm_source%3Dmdotm%26utm_medium%3Dbanner%26utm_campaign%3D%26utm_content%3D96274a985d1df279fb7c6fe711032034%26utm_term%3D96274a985d1df279fb7c6fe711032034&deviceid=. The whole banner area flashes black and white very fast - several times per second, for a total duration of a banner. It does not sound that bad, until you see it. We ask you, please, serve a banner described below in any application you want for a recommended time of 60 seconds and try using it for a minute. Our focus group said it was extremely annoying, and made an application very difficult to use. Longer usage led to migraine in some cases.

We see from an url, that you probably partner with MdotM (via AdWord?). We have recently tried MdotM network, and they had a lot of ads using that template for different games, so we got much negative feedback from our players. Their inability to filter those ads for our game resulted in us completely dropping that network. But we cannot drop using AdMob, and hope you can do something about it. Another crazy thing is that such Google Play ad was served to a Kindle Fire user.

Best Regards,

Dmitry

[William Ferguson]

I'd like to second this.

I wasn't able to grab the URL of the ad because it doesn't show in my locality, but I have had several irate messages from users about this exact ad. It's either using a gif, css or javascript to rapidly twitch the background. As devs we really need some way to filter out these ads that are really abusing the system because it brings all ads into disrepute.

William

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

We just launched Ad Review Center for AdMob which gives you more control over the individual ads that serve in your app. I don't know much about it yet but I hope this will help.

Thanks,
Eric

[Dmitry]

Hello Eric

It sounds good judging by the article. Unfortunately, it seems to be absent in legacy site. And new AdMob only allows illegal or semi-legal withdrawal options in my country. 

I also find I cannot turn off improving fill-rate with Google-certified ads networks anymore. It says my changes are saved but they are not :-(

Any chance on checking ads from Google-certified networks and not serving google play ads to Kindle users?

Best Regards,

Dmitry

[Dmitry]

William

I have a theory - out of 5 our games, a blinking ad affects only the one which was used to test MdotM and is mentioned in our MdotM account. 

Have you tried MdotM in any of your apps? If they are the only ones affected, probably we can resolve it by deleting a game from MdotM account - depends on whether your data confirms my theory or not :-)

Best Regards

[William Ferguson]

Sorry Dmitry, missed your reply.

I haven't used MdotM. It looks like it is largely Inmobi.

[Dmitry]

Hi William

The link sent to us by our player contained a part utm_source=mdotm and a screenshot of ad coincided with what we saw in that game when we tested MdotM. Thankfully, the issue seems to be gone now. At least, we do not get angry emails anymore. Thanks for answering!

Have a nice day

Dmitry