Mobile fallback ads maximizes the likelihood of filling an impression opportunity. With fallback, Ad Manager determines the eligibility of ads served through line items, ranks them accordingly, and returns a slate of ads, rather than just one.
This feature is similar to video fallback.
How mobile fallback works
When a request is made, Ad Manager sends multiple ads to Google Mobile Ads SDK. Once Ad Manager’s position in the chain is reached, Google Mobile Ads SDK requests the first ad.
If the server fails to respond with a valid response, Google Mobile Ads SDK requests the second ad, and continues to "fall back" until it either successfully gets a creative or reaches the fallback limit you've set for the network. A successful creative could be an Ad Manager hosted creative, as Google Mobile Ads SDK assumes that the creative will definitely render.
Fallback is a combination of creatives from eligible line items.
Possible fallback triggers
- Blank creatives
- HTTP error
Requirements and limitations
- Mobile fallback requires Google Mobile Ads SDK.
- Only Google Mobile Apps SDK requests for rewarded or interstitial formats trigger fallback. The fallback chain may have line items with different creative types.
- Fallback considers dynamic allocation ads and Programmatic Guaranteed for competition only in the first spot of the fallback chain.
- For most line item types, only one line item is returned for each priority level in the chain. For multiple line items of the same type to be returned in the response, the line items should generally have different priorities.
Multiple line items of the same priority can appear in the chain for price priority line items and Ad Exchange eligible line items, as the eCPM is used.
When Ad Exchange is eligible through dynamic allocation or First Look, only one line item per type is returned.
There are additional requirements and limitations for video fallback ads.
Activate mobile fallback
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Admin
Global settings.
- In the "Video and mobile settings" section, turn on Mobile fallback ads
- Click Save.
Once activated, all Google Mobile Ads SDK rewarded and interstitial requests will use fallback.
