AdMob insights detects anomalies in your account and notifies you about deviations in key business metrics. Insights can help you identify changes to make in your underperforming apps and identify successes in your outperforming apps.
AdMob uses historical data trends to determine your expected performance range and detect anomalies outside of that range in the last 7 days. The insights card will alert you of any anomalies detected in the last 7 days.
Anomalies are detected on the AdMob Network for the following metrics:
- Estimated earnings
- Impression RPM
- Impressions
Use the insights card
You’ll be notified in your Home and App dashboards when anomalies are detected in your account; for example, if there’s a sudden drop in revenue or a sudden increase in impressions.
Home dashboard
In the Home dashboard, the insights card lists an overview of the apps that have anomalies detected in the last 7 days.
App dashboard
In the App dashboard, you’ll see a more detailed view of each app’s anomalies. You may have more than one insights card in your App dashboard at a time.
Each insights card in the App dashboard corresponds to a metric with an anomaly. Click through the cards for more details about the metric’s performance over the last seven days.
Note: Changing the time zone of your account only affects data from the time you make the change and is not applied retroactively. Your historical data reflects the time zone at the time the data was collected.
For example, let's say you change your time zone on 3 April and later run an account time zone report from 1 April to 5 April. All of the data in your report from before the point when you changed your time zone on 3 April will be in PST, while the data after that point will be aggregated in your selected account time zone.
Troubleshooting anomalies
There are many reasons why an anomaly might occur. Here are some tips to learn more and troubleshoot common issues that affect your insight metrics.
Estimated earnings
The first step in identifying what's caused a drop in earnings is to know the key metrics that influence your earnings. There are multiple factors that affect revenue, but in general the important metrics are: impressions, impression RPM, impression CTR, match rate and show rate.
What to do: Knowing which metric is affecting your earnings can help you determine the best way to troubleshoot the issue. View these metrics in your AdMob Network report to determine which might be correlated to the decrease in earnings. Review the troubleshooting tips to determine what actions you can take.
Impression RPM
A drop in impression RPM can be caused by poor ad unit placement or by poor targeting. Users either view your ads but don't click on them as they find them irrelevant, or they don't view your ads at all. In addition, a drop in impression RPM can be caused by floor settings that have not been fully optimised yet. A low impression RPM often leads to lower earnings.
What to do: Check your ad unit placements, the ad unit settings, as well as the targeting settings for your mediation groups. Also, review your eCPM floor settings. An increase to your floors could help support impression RPM.
Impressions
A decline in impressions could be seasonal or the result of changes in your content or your account.
What to do: If you recently changed any type of implementation, such as integrating a new SDK or replacing an ad unit, make sure there are no implementation errors. Check your app for errors and use test ads to check your implementation.
Also, review any recent changes to your account that could impact impressions, like setting new blocking controls. Check for recent changes in show rate. A drop in show rate could indicate an issue with ad implementation.
Troubleshooting tips
Review the following tips to help you troubleshoot anomalies in your account.
Account changes
- Review any recent changes to your account to determine if they may have caused the anomalies.
- Check the Policy center to find out if you have any violations that could impact your ad serving. Resolve all violations to ensure that ad serving continues.
- Review your blocking controls. Blocking any ad will lower your potential earnings, as it reduces competition for your ad space by removing advertiser bids from the auction.
- Check your maximum ad content rating. Adjusting the size of your audience can affect your revenue.
Usage changes
- Use your reports to check key metrics. For example, review the daily active users metric to understand whether fewer users are accessing your app.
- Check whether users had a regional holiday. Holidays can affect traffic, which can affect your earnings. Use your reports to filter by country and by date range.
- Review the bigger picture. Has there historically been a drop or spike in metrics at this time of year? Use your reports to expand out of the date range of the report.
Once you’ve made a change to address an anomaly, monitor your AdMob Network report to determine if it stabilises or improves.