Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about what to do when AdMob is suspended.
Alright, today, I want to answer a comment that came in last week from Aniket Kumar who said,
"Next video talk about what to do when AdMob suspended." Now, this is something I
get asked probably more often than anything else.
"My AdMob account has been suspended. What do I do? So, there's two different ways to
answer this. I mean, there's two different types of AdMob suspensions.
There's the app suspension where you get the email that says, "AdMob has stopped
serving ads to your application" and "You've got the account suspended." Now, I
have had the first one quite a few times in the past. I've had- I've got the
email from AdMob saying, "We've stopped serving ads in your application," and
they'll say for whatever reason the ad - usually it's because of the ad
placements. I have ads in a certain wet place and it might be because they
might be covering part of the user interface, which I didn't realize on
certain types of ads. Or I have an interstitial that pops up at the
wrong moment so they'll temporarily remove those - that's temporarily - but that
if the email sounds final like they just removed it. And every single time that's
happened, I have made the change and I've appealed the decisions they have. I've
made these changes, I didn't realize that I was running afoul of this so
I've made these changes. Can you please reevaluate it? And they do and they've
turn ads back on. Everything's fine, everything's good, even though I panic a
lot in the beginning. Now, when it comes to account suspensions, I have never had
that happen. I've never had my account suspended. So, this is - I've done a
little bit of research on it and usually almost all the time, wel,l every single
time according to the FAQ, when an account is suspended it has to do with
invalid clicks. Somebody's - they detect that there's probably something
invalid clicking going on. Maybe somebody's got the app and they're just
clicking their own - their own ads or they got somebody else's clicking
their own ads. And if that happens - and again, this has never happened to me, I
only see up three different options. You can do number one: You can appeal the
decision, number two: You can set up another account or number three: Find
another ad network. So, the appeal thing is like if your account is suspended, I
could almost guarantee you it's not been done by a person. It's been done by
a machine learning algorithm that has learned over all the different ad
impressions what to look out for in terms of invalid clicks. If they see
that if the algorithm suspects there's invalid clicks going on within
your application, they're gonna shut down your account and they're not even gonna
warn you first, which is exactly right. They have to protect their advertisers.
Now, me as an advertiser, as someone who pays for ads to advertise my other
applications, I want this to happen. I want them to be protecting me because
I'm not gonna pay money for somebody that run to do invalid clicks or to
actually clicking their own applications too - I'm not gonna pay for that.
That's just ridiculous, so I need to make sure that if I'm paying into
this system that it's actually gonna be fruitful. Which is why I say
everybody who makes money from ads, you should at least once run an ad campaign
just to see how it works, to see how impressions that you pay for impressions
or you pay for clicks or whatever, but then you see what the user
experiences like for the advertiser. But, if you feel that you've been like
that algorithm was wrong, and you have not been doing invalid click, then you
should appeal it and that appeal will go to a person and that person will look
into it. You might get rejected there too. And another thing, people keep asking
me about is how do you stop people from going into your app and just clicking
everything and getting your account suspended. If you look at the FAQ on the
AdMob site, there actually is a section there on sabotage. If you think your
AdMob account has been sabotaged by a competitor by another app, there is an
appeal form on that and they could probably investigate that too. If
you - if you've done nothing wrong, then you should appeal it and you should be
fine. Now, if your appeal is rejected or if you have been doing something wrong,
but you have the second option which is to create another account. I don't
know if this would work or not. Everyone keeps saying is it okay, just to create
multiple Google Play accounts or multiple AdMob accounts.
I've never done it. I've had friends that do it and the way they talk about it,
they set up separate bank accounts, separate email addresses, everything like
that. It just sounds really dodgy to me. So, that's something I've never wanted to
do in the past even with the repetitive content stuff that comes out. I've never
actually done that so I don't know if Google will be able to find out if
you've done that. But you know, so if somebody out there has actually got
around it that way, let us know in the comments because you know, I think you
should get a second chance, but I think it depends on how serious the offense
was the first time through. The third - the third option of course is finding
another ad network because AdMob is not the only game in town. There are other ad
networks out there. You've got Facebook, you got AppLovin, I mean, you got
loads of them. You got tons of them out there. And if AdMob is gonna stop serving
you ads, then you have to look at other ones. One of the things about mediation
that I've noticed in the past is that when I did have those temporary
suspensions where they remove the ads by all the other mediation networks shot up
because at least ads we're still being served in the application. They didn't
shut down ads being served through mediation networks.They just weren't
serving the AdMob ads anymore and like I said, it was a case of just saying, "Hey, I
didn't know that this was - I didn't realize we were running afoul
thing when we made these changes. Can you please reevaluate it? And 100% of the
time, for me, they turn them back on. It's just the way it is. You have to
think about AdMob makes or Google makes money when you serve ads, but they have
to. They must protect the advertisers, they must make sure those advertisers
are secure in the network, that they're not people trying to defraud them and
everything like that. When I think about it, I think about the YouTube - so every
so often, I'll put out a video and it gets demonetized. I'll get the little
yellow thing on it so it's saying they have disabled ads for this video because
it may violate the policy. But usually, it's an algorithm that
does that. Again, every time I've appealed it and said. "hey, can you just
please review it?" And then a person goes through and they just say, "Okay, yeah, we
turned it back on because they could see that I have it. I'm not doing anything
dodgy in the videos. They just - so they just switch it back on and that
algorithm. I mean, you have to understand that they can't have,
they can't check every single app that goes out there. They can't check every
single ad impression. They have to have Machine Learning that does it. And the
Machine Learning is going to make those kind of decisions, but the Machine
Learning could be wrong. But it's also - you cannot fool the machine learning at
least. So, that's in my opinion. I'm sorry it's not very good news today.
If you are at - if your AdMob account has been suspended the only advice I have
for you is to appeal that suspension. That's the only option I could think of
or set up another account or stop using AdMob and go with another ad network.
You're lucky if Google Play is stil -l is still hosting your app. So anyway, let
me know what you, guys, think. For those of you, guys, out there, if you've had an
account suspension and you've got around it, please put it in the comments coz
there's people out there based, on all the questions that I've got, who would
like to know that. And anyway, that is it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, again tomorrow.