AdMob Announcements

From May 15 2025, we'll start to remove the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" sensitive category from Blocking controls. Once this happens you'll no longer be able to block ads from video games, online games, and downloadable games using the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" sensitive category.

If you don't have any existing blocks that use this category

You don't need to take any action. On May 15 2025, we'll remove the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" category from your Blocking controls.

If you do have existing blocks that use this category

On May 15 2025, we'll add a "Deprecated" label to the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" category in your Blocking controls. Then, beginning June 15 2025, your existing blocks will no longer apply. Note, you can still use the "Video Games, Consoles & Accessories" and "Online Games & Puzzles" general categories or their subcategories to block ads from video games, online games, and downloadable games if you believe these types of ads are unsuitable for your users.

We recommend that you review and update your existing general category and sensitive category blocks within your Blocking controls to ensure that your brand safety requirements continue to be met effectively.

The commonly used set of ad technology providers will be updated on or after June 2, 2025 to reflect the ad technology providers that work most closely with publishers globally, based on data we've collected from all programmatic demand sources, as well as meeting our privacy standards. After this date, the list will be periodically updated, and you will be able to find the up-to-date version of the list published at Ad technology providers. You can view the controls and the list of ad technology providers in your account on the European regulations settings page in Privacy & messaging. If you want to prevent automatic updates, select Custom ad partners. This will create a custom list pre-filled with your current selections, which you can then modify as needed.

Today, we’re announcing improvements to the Policy center to help you better understand, prioritize, and resolve your issues. We're introducing three new labels (policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference) that provide you with more clarity on the source of your issue. The new labels give you a clearer understanding of the cause and priority of your active issues, and help you identify which issues are policy, regulatory, or advertiser preference.

What's changed

We've made the following improvements to the Policy center:

• Replaced "Must fix" with three new issue labels: policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference.
• Added new filters so you can filter by policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference.
  
• Updated the "Issue details" page to include the new issue labels and renamed the "Screenshots" column to "View issue".
  
• Updated the review process so you can now let Google know if you believe your site or app has been incorrectly labelled with an issue.

AdMob is supporting key user metrics in the Ads Activity report and Ads Activity card to provide more comprehensive ads performance reporting and deeper analytics. 

New user metrics are compatible with a wide range of existing dimensions so you can visualize and break down ads and user metrics together by format, mediation group, ad source, and more! Learn more about metric breakdown rules and partial data scenarios here.

To view user metrics for your apps in the Ads Activity report or Ads Activity card, you need to link your apps to Firebase.

March 25, 2025 Google's CMP launches support for consent mode

Consent mode allows other Google products you use (such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, or Firebase) to respect your users' consent choices. Later this week, two new account-level flags will become available on the European regulations Settings page in Privacy & Messaging. These flags will be disabled by default. If enabled, Google’s CMP will be able to interpret your existing EEA, UK, and Swiss user consent choices for consent mode’s advertising purposes (including ad storage, personalization, and user data) and analytics storage. This setting will only be applicable for publishers who want to use Google's CMP to obtain consent and provide transparency for the use of both our publisher and advertising products. If this setting is enabled, it will apply to all of your European regulations messages shown on the web and in apps, but will not apply to messages shown on AMP. Learn more about consent mode in Privacy & messaging.

We’ve introduced some changes to AdMob Mediation. With these changes, it’s easier to manage your ad sources, map ad units and reuse them in multiple mediation groups, and optimize your mediation setup.

• Simplified mediation setup and management
• Increased flexibility in ad source management
• Improved search and filtering
• Automated tasks

Simplified mediation setup and management

We’ve made it easier for you to track and manage your mediation groups. For example:

• You can track the minimum price set for your ads across ad networks by entering the Network eCPM when mapping the ad units.
• When you add an ad unit to a mediation group, AdMob automatically suggests line items based on previously created ad unit mappings.

Increased flexibility in ad source management

You now have the option to manage mediation ad source instances directly from your ad sources tab. This can make it easier to add ad unit mappings, and delete waterfall or bidding ad source instances in your mediation groups. Learn more about managing your ad unit mapping details from your ad source page.

Improved search and filtering

We’ve added search and filtering across your Waterfall and Bidding ad source tabs so you can easily find ad unit mappings.

You’ll be able to search by:

• App name or ID
• Ad unit name or ID
• Network app name or ID
• Network ad unit name or ID

Automated tasks

Automated tasks can save time and prevent errors. Now, instead of manually entering mapping or setup details for each ad source, AdMob will suggest line items based on your previous ad unit mappings.

For example, you can copy ad source credentials, ad units, mappings, segments, and mediation groups.

February 26, 2025 Publishers based in the US can use PayPal Hyperwallet to get paid

We've made some updates to the Mediation A/B testing that will enhance and accelerate how you analyze your A/B test results.

What’s new?

• Faster test results: We've updated our A/B testing framework to use more granular data when providing recommendations. As a result, we now provide recommendations in just a few days. This allows you to make faster decisions and optimize your mediation setup in much less time.
• Chart reports: We’ve added charts to your A/B tests to make it clearer and easier for you to interpret the results. These charts help you monitor the performance of both Variant A and Variant B in real-time while your A/B test is running. The Summary chart shows you an overview of the key metrics: scaled revenue, eCPM, match rate, and scaled impressions. These charts illustrate how each variant is performing against your key metrics. You click a tab for each metric to review a line chart in greater detail. Each line chart shows daily data and plotted Variant B as a percentage change compared to Variant A.
  

Learn more about how to analyze your A/B test and take action.

Starting April 2025, we're merging our email opt-in categories: "Customized help and performance suggestions" and "Periodic newsletters with tips and best practices".

This means that if you’re subscribed to our periodic newsletters, you may start to receive performance suggestions such as exclusive performance reports, personalized tips, and webinar invites to help you grow your account.

To give you time to adjust your preferences, we’ll wait 60 days before merging your opt-in settings. If you prefer not to receive performance suggestion emails, please update your subscription preferences within this 60-day window. Please note that you may opt out at any time.

We believe this change will provide you with a more streamlined and valuable email experience.

We’ve introduced a new setting that allows you to control the enablement of high-engagement ads in interstitial and rewarded formats. This app-level setting controls high-performing ads that boost user engagement and improve overall ad performance. High-engagement ads are automatically enabled for all your apps, allowing you to benefit from improved performance. You may choose to disable high-engagement ads in your App settings. Note that this setting does not apply to partner bidding ad units. Learn more about enabling the high-engagement ads setting.

European regulations messages in Privacy & messaging now provide the ability to display or hide the "do not consent" button by country.This gives publishers the flexibility to configure consent messages to meet business goals and address country-specific requirements. On average, messages without a “do not consent” button result in higher consent rates.