AdMob causes frame rate drop

[Jordan]

Hello all,

we have a jump and run game which requires high fps, which we have so far achieved. 

Unfortunately when we show the banner during game-play the frame rate drops significantly. This happens when the banner starts animation. 

Currently i have one activity which shows GLSurfaceView (drawing the gameplay on it) and a AdView in the same activity. 

I am a newbie to the android architecture, but so far i read that only one activity can be shown at a time  - so i cannot put the AdView in another activity ( Or is there a way ?). I tried to put the AdView in another fragment, but this also didn't had a positive effect on the performance

Is there some way to disable banner animations or to run admob in a thread other than the main UI thread ?

I am testing on a low end device (http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_young_s6310-5280.php) 

Thanks a lot,

Jordan

[Andrew Brogdon (Mobile Ads SDK Team)]

Banner ads (from any provider) can sometimes require significant resources to load and display, and as you saw they can negatively impact game performance, especially on older devices.  There really isn't any way around this fact.

For this reason, AdMob recommends placing banners on pause screens, end-of-level screens, and so on -- screens that are displayed when the user isn't actively playing the game.  This will help your framerate, and has the added bonus of a better CTR, since users are less likely to tap on an ad (even one they're interested in) if they're actively playing a game.

See our best practices for game developers for more info on these topics.

-Andrew

[Jordan]

Hi Andrew,

thanks for the response. Yeah you are right that it is better to show ads when the user isn't actively playing the game. 

That was also our original intention, however i read here (https://support.google.com/admob/answer/3245199?hl=en ) that admob recommends that ads persist 60 seconds or longer - which led me thinking of showing banners during the gameplay.

As the most jump and run games - our menus are shown for very short periods. Are there any admob requirements on the duration of showing a banner - or is this up to the developer ? 

I know that Interstitial Ads are the best option in this case and we are going to use them, but wanted also to show banners.

[Andrew Brogdon (Mobile Ads SDK Team)]

The 60-second rule is for refreshing ads that remain in view, rather than those that are shown and then taken down.  That said, if your menu is only going to be visible for a fraction of a second as someone makes a quick choice, you're going to have an extremely low CTR, and revenue will suffer as a result.

-Andrew