Authorized Buyers is a great way for buyers to buy ad inventory on apps and track their ads’ performance. Apps provide another way to increase your return on investment by placing ads where customers are likely to take action. Customers also enjoy a better user experience with the types of ads that are available on apps, such as interstitial ads.
Learn some of the things you need to do to serve your ads on apps, and how you can use Authorized Buyers to do it. There are also a few references to serving ads on mobile web, to describe where the process is different from non-mobile web.
The basics
Learn about some of the specifications needed for ads to appear on apps.
Two types of mobile inventory are available:
- Mobile apps
- Mobile web
This inventory can come from a variety of sources, including AdMob, Google Ad Manager publishers, and the Google Display Network. Learn how to target mobile inventory.
Ads that appear on apps must follow certain size limitations. Here are a few of the accepted sizes:
- 320x50
- 728x90
- 336x280
- 300x250
- 468x60
See a complete list of sizes.
Buyers purchasing ad inventory served on apps (“in-app ad inventory”) must follow certain specifications for smartphones and tablets. There are requirements for unit sizes, tag types, file types, and more. Learn more about technical specifications and creatives.
Certification
Certifications are needed when using your own proprietary technology.
If you’re using proprietary technology that’s not already certified to run on Authorized Buyers, you’ll need to fill out this form to certify your mobile app server.
Pretargeting configuration
Set up the targeting so you can serve your ads on apps. We recommend keeping the pretargeting filter as open as possible.
If you don’t want desktop inventory included, go to Bidder settings Pretargeting. Create a new pretargeting group and in "Environment", click Web and Exclude all sites. See the following screenshot as an example.
To have your ads appear on mobile apps, you’ll need to create a third-party ad with specific settings, make sure the campaign targets all available devices, add the apps you want to target, and more. Learn more about setting up pretargeting groups.
Authorized Buyers supports passing the identifier for advertising (IDFA) in app inventory bid requests. The IDFA allows developers and marketers to track activity for advertising purposes. It can be used by advertisers to run marketing campaigns and record “conversions” (purchasing or downloading).
The IDFA can be reset by users at any time, and they have the option to opt out of all remarketing.
User lists can target mobile advertising IDs, including identifier for advertising (IDFA) and Android Advertising ID (AdID). With Authorized Buyers, you can update these user lists via HTTPS POST requests, which provide the mobile advertising IDs, user lists, and update type (add or delete mobile advertising IDs). Learn more about user lists.
You can prevent ads in a campaign or ad group from being served on certain apps. Learn more.
To have your ads appear on mobile websites, you’ll need to create a third-party ad with specific settings, make sure the campaign targets mobile devices, and make the ad a mobile-friendly size.
Learn how to exclude desktop from your mobile web configuration.
Advanced settings
Configure the tools needed for real-time bidding of app inventory.
Some fields in the real-time bidding proto are required when buying mobile app inventory via real-time bidding. For example, the “is_app” field is an identifier for in-app traffic, and the “app_id” and “app_name” fields are used to specify what app inventory is being sent and from where.
Interstitial ads are usually full-page ads served before or after an expected content page on an app. Authorized Buyers makes interstitial ad inventory available to all buyers as a new ad size. Learn how to serve interstitial ads in apps.
Authorized Buyers can take the location of users into account when bidding on app ads. This is great for the serving of ads for local establishments, such as a restaurant within a few miles of the user.
Note that the location signal is available only on a limited percentage of overall mobile traffic.
If an advertiser has a list of advertising IDs from past visitors to their site domains, they can use those advertising IDs to remarket the users and determine whether a specific user completed a conversion (purchase or download).
Cookie matching allows a buyer to associate two kinds of data:
- The cookie that identifies a user within the buyer domain.
- The doubleclick.net cookie that identifies the user for Google. (We share a buyer-specific encrypted Google User ID for buyers to match on.)
You can then bid on impressions in mobile web where users have a specific Google ID. Using cookie matching to help with bidding can simplify integration, decrease latency, and enable future enhancements.