Frequency Capping on interstitials: Technical explanation?

[Pedro]

I posted under Android but my question applies to all platforms and game engines I think. I couldnt find this information anywhere, and I believe it's crucial to anyone that is developing using Freq Capping.

How does technically Frequency Capping work on the app level (for interstitials):

- it causes the LOAD to fail until the minimum time defined on the UI has passed (ex 10 minutes)? This would mean I have to keep calling Load many times until I get a call that succeeds (ie, after time established on the UI has passed)

- it causes the LOAD to be delayed and finish after the time defined on the UI has passed? This would mean I have to call Load only once and then after a few minutes the Load will finish

- LOAD works normally (succeeds always), but when I call SHOW it ignores/throws exception if it's not the right time yet?

- LOAD works normally, but when I call SHOW it will succeed but wont show anything initially, and suddenly show the interstitial a few minutes later once the freq capping time has passed?

- some other way I cant think of

This is very important for anyone who tries to use Freq Capping to develop correctly/without guessing. If it's in the docs, sorry, just let me know where.

Thanks

[mobileadssdk-a...@google.com]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out to us. Please find my answers below: 

 it causes the LOAD to fail until the minimum time defined on the UI has passed (ex 10 minutes)? This would mean I have to keep calling Load many times until I get a call that succeeds (ie, after time established on the UI has passed)

You will receive a successful request after the duration set in the frequency capping. The idea with frequency capping is that it is used to limit the number of times an ad is shown to the user. Let's say that you need to show the Interstitial AdView every time the user looses a game level in your app. If the user looses constantly every 30 seconds and you show the Ad, it might be a lot for the user. AdMob has an option to cap this frequency and leave the business logic away from the client. You only need to call for an AdRequest every time you need to show this.

- it causes the LOAD to be delayed and finish after the time defined on the UI has passed? This would mean I have to call Load only once and then after a few minutes the Load will finish

Interstitial frequency capping lets you limit the number of times interstitial ads appear to the same person. In settings you would have to select the number of impressions per user for the amount of time (minutes, hours or dates). This would limit the number of impressions of the ads to be displayed to the user for the given time. 

- LOAD works normally (succeeds always), but when I call SHOW it ignores/throws exception if it's not the right time yet?

 In most scenarios, the  Ad Request will return a No Fill Error once you have maxed out the specified allowable number of Ads for the specific time frame that was shown to a user. 

- LOAD works normally, but when I call SHOW it will succeed but wont show anything initially, and suddenly show the interstitial a few minutes later once the freq capping time has passed?

It depends on the Ad serving and we would not be able to give you a perfect explanation for this usecase as we don't deal with Ad serving issues. You can learn more about Frequency Capping from this document.

Let us know if you still have any questions.  We will be happy to assist you.

Regards,

Deepika Uragayala

Mobile Ads SDK Team

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Also find us on our blog and Google+ page:
    http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.com
    https://plus.google.com/115658573333388777174/
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[Pedro]

Hi Deepka!

Thanks a lot for answering so fast.

I think my previous message was not well organized and I am sorry about that. My idea wasnt to ask 4 questions, but ask which of the 4 scenarios I described is the one that AdMob uses, so then knowing the exact case I can on my side develop the correct solution.

From your answer it seems that the scenario AdMob uses is the 1st one I described: calling Load() will fail if the call was before the time set in the frequency cap, so I have on my side to keep calling Load() every minute or so until it loads and then I can show it on the correct point in my app.

Is my understanding correct? The other 3 possible ways of how AdMob works I described on my previous email, so if any other describes better how frequency capping works please feel free to point to the previous email.

Regarding frequency cap I am aware of conceptually how it works, but I have never used it before because the docs always lacked this technical explanation, which makes the implementation completely fragile on my side, and relying on guesses.

Thanks again!

[mobileadssdk-a...@google.com]

Hi Pedro,

You will always receive an Ad for the very first AdRequest call for the user. After this, frequency capping, if set, comes into effect. So now if you have to show another Ad to the same user, the AdRequest will check if the previous one was made before the frequency capping parameters. So for example, if the frequency capping is set for 10 mins, then AdRequest_2 will have to be 10 mins after AdRequest_1. Frequency Capping is more optimal for a scenario where a AdRequest is made every time a particular screen is shown but you want to limit the number of times an ad is to be shown if you cannot control the number of times that screen will be shown. Like a Game Over screen.

Regards,

Deepika Uragayala

Mobile Ads SDK Team

=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~

Also find us on our blog and Google+ page:
    http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.com
    https://plus.google.com/115658573333388777174/
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~

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