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Android / AdMob ads sometimes don't display

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Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 20th Nov 2013 19:36
Hi everyone. We've set up the ads in our game and on Android they sometimes don't display. I'm calling the commands to setup the advert well in advance and setting it to not visible until the ad screen is show.
I call RequestAdvertRefresh() a few seconds before the ad screen shows. I also have refresh rate on AdMob set to 30 seconds.

Any tips to get this to show better?
On iOS I've seen them display every single time without an issue.
On Android it is most of the time not showing anything for about 5-10 seconds.

Thanks!!

=PRoF=
21
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Joined: 17th Mar 2003
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Posted: 24th Nov 2013 00:48 Edited at: 24th Nov 2013 00:49
I had a similar problem to what you describe, most notably on my Gingerbread test devices.

Here is how I setup my adverts...

The first bit is the same as you do it I expect.



And then, when everything has finished loading etc. and I'm ready to show the advert.



I think it's the RequestAdvertRefresh after making it visible that stops the large delay by forcing an ad update. Either way, it seems to have sorted the problem out for me at least

Hope that helps...

Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 24th Nov 2013 20:41
Thanks Prof, I'll try that out. Currently I'm calling RequestAdvertRefresh a second or two before I set it visible, so the opposite of what you're doing.
Hopefully that change will do it.
Also I've noticed that on iOS the Advert always stretches to the width of the screen whereas on Android it stays true to the 300px. I've tried using the EX advert commands to resize it, but no luck. No big worry, but I'm wondering what your experience if with this

Thanks for the help!

=PRoF=
21
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Joined: 17th Mar 2003
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Posted: 24th Nov 2013 21:46
I'm fairly sure that the commands to resize the adverts only work with Inneractive ads.

I know that on android the ad's are always 320 x 50 px regardless of resolution; I've not got the kit to make Apple app's yet so haven't had chance to see it working on iOS.

Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 25th Nov 2013 19:04
Thanks Prof, knowing that resize doesn't work on AdMob is a big help!

Funnell7
12
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Joined: 8th Sep 2011
Location: UK, England
Posted: 26th Nov 2013 00:13
I haven't experienced these issues, but then it appears I am doing things differently. I do not use RequestAdvertRefresh() or SetAdvertVisible() at all... When I want to display an advert, I simply call CreateAdvert() and that's it, when I'm done, I then call DeleteAdvert()...

Might be worth a try...
Naphier
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 26th Nov 2013 05:00
Definitely worth a try. Thanks!

=PRoF=
21
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Joined: 17th Mar 2003
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Posted: 26th Nov 2013 10:22
@Funnell7:
Using your method, I have to wait on average 7 seconds for the advert to appear on my Galaxy Y test device (Very low spec Gingerbread phone)

Using my method, I can reliably get the advert to appear when I want it to (After the loading screen usually)

I'm fairly sure I started creating/hiding the ads rather than create/delete is because of the sometimes huge delay in displaying the ad on screen.

Funnell7
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Joined: 8th Sep 2011
Location: UK, England
Posted: 27th Nov 2013 16:33 Edited at: 27th Nov 2013 16:35
@=PRoF= interesting, I've not experienced that either... But then I've only had relatively high spec devices to try (mainly an S3 and S4). Additionally, I always display the ad i.e. from the moment the app loads, so there is no need for me to refresh and/or delete an advert (it is handled by AdMob)...

I can see why you would take your approach if you only had limited time to display an add. The only concern I would have is that you may be impacting your Impression/CTR. Say for example you hid the advert, and it remained hidden for 1 minute, depending on your refresh time on AdMob, you could have requested 2 or even 4 adverts in this time, but never actually displayed them (they were there, just not visible). This would give you +4 impressions and 0 chance of any CTR... If you get what I mean...

Food for thought I guess...
Naphier
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 27th Nov 2013 16:40
Yeah, also with my game the ads only show after you've made a turn, so I'll always have more impressions than CTR... well even more than normal, not a biggy for me.. I guess I could even lower the refresh rate in Admob quite a bit. Not sure if it matters at all though since we've decided ad stats are not an important metric for us due to the extremely low revenue from them.
I do wish that AppGameKit would resize the ad in Android or allow for larger ads. I've got a full screen to use after a turn is made, would be nice to use those higher paying ads.

Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 2nd Dec 2013 15:53
Prof's method seems to be working pretty well, still a bit of a delay on the older android device, but they show faster now.
Thanks!

Naphier
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 21st Jan 2014 06:59
So for some reason the method of Creating the advert long before it is shown (hiding it and showing it later with setAdvertVisible) started being quite slow again and ads weren't showing hardly at all (Nexus 7 and Nexus 5). I tried even moving request refresh to happen as soon as a player enters the game board which would give around 30 seconds for the refresh to happen before the ad is shown. Also tried requesting refresh on GetResumed after the app has been inactive for more than 30 seconds. All was a failure.
So finally I went back to trying Funnel7's method of simply creating the advert right when it is needed and it is performing pretty well. It takes about 2-3 seconds for the ad to pop in, but at least it shows.
I'll report my findings to the AppGameKit bug thread as I believe the java code needs updating for this as it isn't working well.
Just thought I'd share my final findings here first.

Funnell7
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Joined: 8th Sep 2011
Location: UK, England
Posted: 4th Feb 2014 12:10
So how are things going now Naphier? Has the changes made any difference to your Ad earnings?

Also, do you know if its possible to see which ads were clicked. Say for example you got 10 clicks, can you see which banners they were? That would be pretty helpful...
Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 4th Feb 2014 18:11
We actually decided to drop AdMob for a number of reasons. Mainly because the ads were slow to get too often and secondly because we cannot control scaling on the ads, which I really want to be able to do as I move over to the AGK Community Ad Network.
I did not see any options to find out what ads or even what category of ads were clicked on.

Naphier
13
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Joined: 2nd Oct 2010
Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Posted: 6th May 2014 05:27
Chartboost integration as well as many other fixes for AppGameKit can be found here:
http://naplandgames.com/agk/agk_android_setup.html

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