Preview a creative in your mobile app

You can see how your advertiser creative looks in an actual ad slot in your mobile app with Google Ad Manager in-app preview.

This can be especially useful for creatives that interact with an app, have unique behavior, or require the app to render elements correctly, including native creatives and MRAID.

Developers can use the Google Mobile Ads SDK to test creatives.

Get started

Before previewing creatives in your mobile app, you need to link your mobile device to Ad Manager. You can then push an Ad Manager creative to your device's mobile app.

Once that's done, you can go back to your device and preview the creative in the app.

Initiate a creative preview in your device's mobile app

1. On your mobile device, open your mobile app and find an ad served by your Ad Manager network.

2. Touch and hold the ad with two fingers to open the "Debug options" menu.

   Be careful to not repeatedly tap the creative as accidental clicks might be mistaken for invalid activity.

   What if the debug gesture doesn't work for my creative?

   Some creatives, such as custom native ads, aren't compatible with the debug gesture. As an alternative, you can add a special function in your mobile app's code to trigger the in-app menu. For example, you might add this function to a special button or gesture. Learn how to do this for iOS or Android.

3. From the "Debug options" menu, tap Creative preview.

Push a Google Ad Manager creative to your device's mobile app

Once you've initiated the creative preview and have a device linked, you can use Google Ad Manager to push a creative to the device. You’ll then be able to preview the creative in the app.

1. On your computer: Sign in to Google Ad Manager.

   Make sure you're signed in to the same Google Ad Manager account and network as your device.

2. Click Delivery Line items.
3. Use filters to find and open a line item with the creative to preview and targeting that matches the ad slot for which you initiated a preview. Line items in "Draft" status can be previewed.
4. Click Creatives, then click the name of the creative you want to preview.
5. Click Preview Mobile.
6. In the pop-up that appears, select In app.
7. Under "Push to device," select your linked device from the menu.
8. Click Done.

Preview the creative on your device

Once you've pushed a creative to your linked device and mobile app, return to the device to trigger the creative preview.

1. Open your mobile app and initiate the creative preview process on the Google Ad Manager creative ad slot you want to preview.
2. From the "Debug options" menu, tap Creative preview.
3. Your campaign and creative will be returned the next time an eligible ad request is sent.

   The app does not force a refresh, so you’ll have to wait for another ad request to occur naturally over the course of app usage. The creative preview serves according to the details of the line item from which the preview was triggered, so verify the ad slot where you expect to see the creative.

Allow others to preview creatives on a linked device

Linked devices are private by default, which means that only you can use them in Google Ad Manager. If you want to open up the device for others in your Google Ad Manager network, update the settings in Google Ad Manager.

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Admin Access & authorization Linked devices.
3. In the row for the device and mobile app you want to share, select Public from the dropdown under the "Visibility" column.

   Changes are saved immediately, and can be reversed at any time. Only the user who originally linked a device and mobile app can update this setting.

Test creatives with the Google Mobile Ads SDK

The Google Mobile Ads SDK provides an API that allows you to specify a desired creative type for test queries. When the ft_ctype parameter is set, only creatives of the desired type are retrieved and rendered.

This feature works only with Google ads, and does not work with reservation or mediation. We recommend testing with an ad unit that does not have mediation or reservations eligible.

Learn more in the developer documentation for Android and iOS.