Native Express Ads no longer supported

[david...@hedgehoglab.com]

I received the following email this morning and was not sure what it meant.

"Starting March 1, 2018, native express will no longer be available in AdMob so we are encouraging developers to switch to banner ads to continue ad serving. You are receiving this message because you have native express ad units in your account."

Does this mean that as of March 2018 my native express adverts will no longer show anything at all, and I will be displaying a blank web view to my users?

The biggest problem to this is that there doesn't appear to be an acceptable replacement in place yet. The email went on to say that I should switch over to banner adverts - which is not suitable for my application, but AdMob is still continuing to invest in native ads functionality which is currently available as a limited beta. This doesn't really help me as I am not part of that limited beta. 

So my question is what am I expected to replace this functionality with? As from the email I received, it appears as though you are just going to switch off the adverts displaying in my application and not provide an equivalent service for me to update to.

Thanks.

[Deepika Uragayala- MobileAds SDK team]

Hi David,

Thank you for reaching out regarding changes to our AdMob native offerings. Over time we have observed that native express has not been optimal for achieving the best user experience and monetization performance for AdMob publishers. As a result, we will be deprecating this functionality.

We recommend that you consider taking a look at and implementing our Google-optimized banner solution in place of your native express ad units. You may refer to the Banner ad unit creation article and our developer guides (Android, iOS). 

Here's the link to the announcement. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Regards,

Deepika Uragayala

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Ashraf Alshahawy]

Hi Deepika,

Banner Ad is totally different than Native Express, You can't turn a Banner into a small rectangle is you do with Native Express ad, for example, I use Native Express in the header / top of the Navigation Drawer, I can't do that with a Banner.

I can't deny that I'm shocked from this news, as I admired AdMob Native Express ad over Facebook Native Ad (Which is way complicated to implement), and a couple of days ago I replaced Facebook Native Ads in my apps with AdMob Native Express, just to hear about this sad news.

I hope AdMob team to reconsider this decision, unless you are going to evolve Banner Ads to have a control over its Width & Height as in Native Express.

Thank you and looking forward to hear back from you.

[Rodrigo F]

At the beginning of the year, I changed my Banners to Natives, my earnings have increased more than 5 times, and now I am very sad to know that I will have to go back to the Banners.

[david...@hedgehoglab.com]

Hi Deepika,

I'm aware of the announcement, that was what caused my initial concern, and I can also appreciate that native express adverts don't have the best user experience and may not be as successful as you were hoping for. I have no issue with AdMob intending to deprecate the functionality.

My issue is that this is being deprecated before the release/open beta of native ads. Native adverts are the obvious solution to mine, and the users below, problems. With this we would be able to update our existing native express ads to pure native ads while maintaining the style, design, and feel of the adverts that our users have grown accustomed to. Deprecating native express ads before native ads becomes fully available puts people who rely on Google AdMob in a limbo state where the current solution stops working, but we cannot yet update to the appropriate replacement.

Is there any new information about native adverts, or any signs of the closed beta coming to an end prior to March 2018 when native express will end? If not, how can we, as people who rely on AdMob for their, or their clients income, encourage AdMob to not deprecate this service until such a time that there is in fact a sufficient replacement?

Many Thanks,

David

[Deepika Uragayala- MobileAds SDK team]

Hi David,

Currently, we do not have any new information. I'll pass your feedback to the rest of the team.

Regards,

Deepika Uragayala

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Pandonee Inc]

I must admit big flop on Google's side. I have been trying to get into closed Beta for weeks but it seems like a ghost town in AdMob offices (or perhaps email servers are on strike) Can someone flip the button and enroll me into beta.

Best

[david...@hedgehoglab.com]

I'd agree that this would be a good idea, if it was possible for every developer currently enrolled in the Google AdMob Express platform could be accepted into the AdMob Native platform closed beta, this would also be a great solution.

Thanks,

David

[Ephram]

Native Express will stop working in March. Buuuut...

Why do you recommend using BANNER and not Native Advanced as an alternative?

Native Advanced, it does not look like it's going to be canceled and it's the substitute more like Native Express.

[Jens Kattwinkel]

Hello.

Two months left and still your support page is mentioning  the "native advanced ad format" of a non public beta. (https://support.google.com/admob/answer/7527424?ctx=ui&hl=en)

Will this beta become final (or public) before March?

Greets

Jens

[Deepika Uragayala- MobileAds SDK team]

Hi Jens,

We understand your concerns, but we don't have any new updates to share about Native Advanced ads availability to all users. You can monitor our blogpost for all updates.

Regards,

Deepika Uragayala

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[david...@hedgehoglab.com]

Hi Deepika,

From what I can gather here, the implication from your response is that they don't particularly care about the people who vouch for and integrate their services. I find it abhorrent that a company that supposedly touts itself as developer friendly would remove services without providing access to the reasonable replacement that already exists. We are not asking for the AdMob team to build an entirely new service, we are asking for either the Native Advanced Ads to be rolled out to a wider set of users, or holding off on the deprecation of Native Ads Express until such a time that a wider rollout is feasible.

I don't believe you do understand our concerns as this is larger than simply deprecating a service, I'm sure there are developers whose income relies on their advertising who will be impacted by this change, and developers that vouched for using this service over others, who are now under scrutiny for this decision. These things have a massive impact on the cost of development but still there appears to be no desire from the AdMob team whatsoever to mitigate this, instead declaring that the current solution will stop working without an appropriate replacement and expecting developers to shoulder this burden.

While we understand that Native Express may not have the best user experience and was not as successful as you required, and as a developer I am eager to update this to Native Advanced Ads. But due to the fact that I cannot even request access to the closed beta, your service is forcing me, and all other developers that put their trust in your platform, to either use a banner advertisement (a significantly worse user experience) or more likely change services altogether.

It also appears my feedback was dismissed without any kind of response when asking how can we, as people who rely on AdMob for theirs or a clients income, can encourage AdMob to not deprecate this service until there is a replacement. As such, how can I can escalate this issue further, beyond the support forum?

I am extremely disappointed in the way that this transition has been handled, and unless there is some advancement in the issue, I don't believe I'll be recommending AdMob in the future. It's a sad state but given this issue I feel that my trust is better placed in Facebook for their Audience Network Native Ads, than Google.

David.

[Vishavjeet Singh]

Hii David

I am totally with you on this. How can Google let the functionality deprecate and not introduce a new one first. I think this decsion by Google will highly supress the developers who are using AdMob, I think I will go back to facebook native ads because they are much good alternative. All my revenue from previous versions of my app will be stopped after 1 march 2018, seriously google give us an alternative or we will leave. Please provide a solution for migration or conversion of native ad to banner atleast to continue serving ads in previous versions so that we are not impacted by revenue loss.

[anthonin...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I'm totally with both of you too. I can't believe that Admob forces us to use Banner ads instead of Natives, whereas they are totally different ! I use native ads to present portrait ads, which is not possible with banners... I thought that the deprecation of Native Express would mark the end of private beta of Native Advanced, but it's not even the case ! A banner in my app would be awful, so I'll have to switch to Facebook too in order to preserve a good user experience. 

So disappointed about Admob on this. 

Anthonin

[s...@greedygame.com]

Hi Anthonin,

Hope things are good with you.

We've recently got access to the private beta for native advanced and can create native ads for your game.

If you'd be interested in knowing more you can reach out to me at s...@greedygame.com

Best,

Sid

[s...@greedygame.com]

Hi David,

We've recently got access to the private beta for native advanced and you can now create as well as mediate native ads advanced and others (FAN, Mopub) through our platform.

If you'd be interested in knowing more you can reach out to me at s...@greedygame.com

Best,

Sid

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 5:22:10 PM UTC+5:30, david...@hedgehoglab.com wrote: