As we usher in the new year, it’s time to look back and reflect on the mobile advertising landscape, and in particular, Google's AdMob platform. Once the undisputed monarch of mobile advertising, AdMob now finds itself in a bit of a personality crisis as it battles with the one law of google advertising that has always been, and that is “User Experience comes first". Always has been since the birth of web advertising, with their strict rules around how many pixels spacing should be between an ad and any clickable content on your site. The same was with their mobile advertising, you can't place banners too close to play buttons, you can’t show an ad while gameplay is happening (it must be shown at a natural pause in play). However, with platforms like AppLovin and IronSource and their “Clicks and Engagement first” tactics, they have been hungry and taking a LOT of Google's market share. In true "new year, new me" fashion, Google has decided to adopt some of its competitors' tactics—like a gym resolution we can only hope it is doomed by February.

The Market Shift

The mobile advertising landscape has evolved faster than your uncle learning to dab or figuring out what on earth Skibidi Toilet means. Platforms like AppLovin and IronSource have redefined mobile advertising by combining AI-driven personalization with ad experiences that are actually… tolerable (ok, I’m reaching, but they have become an accepted evil). AppLovin’s AXON AI platform, for instance, processes over one trillion ad requests daily and optimizes them in real-time. IronSource, fresh off its merger with Unity, offers tools so seamless they make AdMob look like it’s still running on Windows 98.

AdMob, on the other hand, has struggled to keep up. And when you’re behind, what do you do? Copy the popular kids. Unfortunately, in this case, the copying comes with an extra large side of user RAGE.

AdMob’s Response: If you can't beat them, copy them.

Faced with mounting pressure, AdMob has borrowed liberally from its competitors' playbooks. And by borrowed, we mean it’s taken a play and decided to run it straight into the ground. Here’s what’s new:

1. Longer wait times before being able to skip: Where admob used to be the industry leader in ensuring you could escape an ad in a reasonable time, they have somewhat loosened their grip on that. Taking the time before you can skip an Interstitial from 5s up to 12s and in the case of Rewarded taking it from 30s up to 60s. 
2. Welcome to the advert minigame: Not only will you be made to wait up to 2.4x longer to be able to skip the ad, but you’re going to to have to enter the game of “find the X”, with there now being up to 3 steps that a user will need to close before returning to their gameplay.

The Cost of These Changes

It seems like no matter how hard some of us fight to stop bad ads from being so widespread, they’re like a deadly virus that won’t be happy until we’ve gotta get past them just to switch on our TVs. It seems that's a guarantee with mobile games too, as google have moved to increase user frustration we can’t even get a break between bad ads.

What Competitors Are Doing Differently

AdMob’s strategy becomes even more questionable when you look at what its competitors are doing.

1. Is this an ad or the game?: With the huge demand for playable ads, and everyone's Copy - Paste formula of finding new creatives, are admob going to allow fake ads to be shown in their network? 
2. Developer-Centric Tools: While you have Ironsource releasing their ad quality feature, giving publishers the ability to see what ads are showing in their games and give them easy ways to remove them, Google has just ignored offering anything like that. Stuck with an ancient “ad Review” process that may as well not exist, it's so bad.
3. Open Bidding: It has taken a LONG time, but admob has finally caught up and has begun to allow most bidding enabled networks to be connected to their traffic, after years of wondering WHY THE HELL ARE THEY NOT OPENING THE PLAYING FIELD???

The Future of Mobile Advertising

As we step into 2025, the future of mobile advertising will still be a warzone of fighting between the main 3 networks, with Applovin growing at an incredible rate. With the search for how to conquer UA constantly evolving, we’ll see better quality options for campaigns when searching specifically for Ad Engaged users. 

Anyone heard much about this “Privacy Sandbox”? Is THIS the year Google starts roll out their privacy first plans and cause a year or 2 of total chaos similar to ATTs fallout?

Whatever happens, this is a business that is constantly evolving, constantly moving the goalposts, and the publishers who are ready to move quicker will be the ones standing tall at the end. 

Good luck to you all, and may the odds be ever in your favour.