How to Create a Google AdMob App

Looking to earn money from your mobile app? Setting up Google AdMob is an excellent way to start serving ads and generating revenue. This guide provides a clear, step-by-step walkthrough for creating a Google AdMob app, connecting it to your project, and understanding the best practices for success.

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What Exactly is Google AdMob?

Google AdMob is a mobile advertising platform created by Google that allows app developers to earn income by displaying targeted advertisements within their apps. It acts as a bridge between advertisers who want to reach mobile users and developers who have the space (their app) to show those ads.

AdMob lets you integrate several types of ads, from simple banners to full-screen interactive videos, ensuring you can choose the formats that best fit your app's user experience. It's one of the most popular and trusted platforms for app monetization, used by millions of developers worldwide.

Before You Start: A Quick Checklist

Before jumping into the setup process, make sure you have a few things ready. Having these on hand will make the entire process much smoother.

• A Public or Nearly-Finished App: You can set up AdMob for an app that's already live on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, but you can also do it for an app that's still in development.
• A Google Account: You’ll need a standard Google account to sign up for AdMob.
• An AdSense and Google Payments Account: To get paid, Google runs everything through AdSense and Google Payments. If you don't have these, AdMob will help you create them during the sign-up process.
• Developer Website (for app-ads.txt): You'll need a basic website linked on your app store listings to host a simple app-ads.txt file, which helps prevent ad fraud.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your AdMob App

Ready to go? Let's walk through the exact steps to get your app registered and configured in the AdMob dashboard.

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Step 1: Sign Up for a Google AdMob Account

First, you need an AdMob account. If you already have one, you can skip to the next step.

1. Navigate to the Google AdMob website and click "Sign up."
2. Log in with the Google Account you want to associate with your AdMob activity.
3. AdMob will guide you through a verification process. You'll need to select your country, time zone, and billing currency. Careful here - you cannot change the country or currency later.
4. Review and accept the AdMob terms and conditions.
5. After clicking "Create AdMob account," you will be asked a few "yes" or "no" questions about promotional emails. Then, you’ll be taken to a page to start the setup process, which includes verifying your payment details. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your payments profile.

Once your account is created and your payment information is validated, you’ll land on your new AdMob dashboard.

Step 2: Add Your App to AdMob

Now, it's time to tell AdMob about the app you want to monetize.

1. From the left-hand menu on your AdMob dashboard, go to Apps > Add app.
2. You'll be asked to provide some basic information. First, select the platform your app runs on (Android or iOS).
3. Next, AdMob asks if the app is listed on a supported app store like Google Play or the Apple App Store.
4. Confirm your app, and you'll be taken to the next step: creating ad units.

Step 3: Create Your First Ad Unit

An "ad unit" is a specific placement in your app where ads will show up. You need to create at least one ad unit to get started. AdMob offers several formats, each designed for different user experiences.

Click the "Add ad unit" button to see your options:

• Banner: A common ad format that displays a small rectangular banner, typically at the top or bottom of the screen. Great for constant, non-intrusive visibility.
• Interstitial: A full-screen ad that appears at natural breaks or transition points in your app, like finishing a level in a game or after editing a photo. They command user attention but should be used sparingly.
• Rewarded: An ad that users voluntarily choose to watch in exchange for an in-app reward, like coins, extra lives, or premium content. This is a very popular format because it provides a positive value exchange for the user.
• Native: Highly customizable ads designed to match the look, feel, and function of your app's content. For example, a native ad in a news feed app might look just like an article preview.
• App Open: An ad that appears when a user opens or switches back to your app. It helps monetize your app's loading screen.

Example: Creating a Banner Ad Unit

1. Click "Select" for the Banner format.
2. Give the ad unit a descriptive name. This is for your reference only, so name it something clear, like HomeScreen-Bottom-Banner.
3. Click "Create ad unit." And that's it!

AdMob will now show you two important pieces of information you’ll need for your app's code: your App ID and your Ad Unit ID. The App ID identifies your entire app with AdMob, while the Ad Unit ID is specific to the placement you just created. Copy these and keep them somewhere safe!

You can repeat this process to create different ad units for different placements or ad types in your app.

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Implementing Ads in Your App with the Mobile Ads SDK

Here comes the technical part. To show ads, you need to integrate Google's Mobile Ads Software Development Kit (SDK) into your app's code. While the exact code differs depending on your programming language (e.g., Kotlin for Android, Swift for iOS), the overall process is the same.

Note: What follows is a high-level overview. For detailed, code-level instructions, always refer to the official Google Mobile Ads SDK documentation.

1. Add the SDK to Your Project

First, you must add the SDK as a dependency in your app project.

• For Android (using Android Studio): You'll add the dependency to your app-level build.gradle file:
• For iOS (using Xcode): The recommended way is to use Swift Package Manager or CocoaPods to integrate the "Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK" package into your project.

2. Initialize the Mobile Ads SDK

This is a critical step that you only need to do once in your app's lifecycle, typically when the app starts. Initializing the SDK allows it to prepare and fetch ads in the background. In your main activity (Android) or app delegate (iOS), add the initialization code, providing your unique AdMob App ID.

• Android Example (Kotlin):
• iOS Example (Swift):

3. Load and Display an Ad

With the SDK initialized, you can now load and display an ad using its specific Ad Unit ID.

Let's continue with our banner example. In the screen where you want to show the ad, you'll need to:

1. Add a container for the ad in your UI. This is usually an AdView (Android) or GADBannerView (iOS).
2. Create an ad request in your code. This tells the SDK to go fetch an ad from the AdMob network.
3. Load the ad into the view. Use your Ad Unit ID to tell the container which ad placement to fill.

The SDK handles the rest - finding the best ad, displaying it, and tracking impressions and clicks.

Finishing the Last Few Steps in AdMob

After getting the ads running in a test environment, there are a couple of housekeeping items to take care of in your dashboard.

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Set up your app-ads.txt file

AdMob will show you a warning about app-ads.txt. This is a standard created to fight ad fraud and ensures only authorized sellers can serve ads on your behalf.

1. Go to Apps in your dashboard and click "View All Apps."
2. Select the app-ads.txt tab. You'll see a small code snippet.
3. Copy this snippet and create a file named app-ads.txt at the root of your developer website (e.g., yourdeveloperwebsite.com/app-ads.txt).

Google will automatically crawl this file and verify your account. It can take up to 24 hours to be processed.

Completing Your Payment Profile

Don't forget this! To actually receive payments, you need to provide your tax information and verify your address. AdMob will walk you through the process, which usually involves receiving a PIN via postal mail to confirm your physical address. Make sure everything in your "Payments" section is filled out and verified.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations, you now know how to set up an AdMob app, create ad units, and integrate the Mobile Ads SDK. By carefully selecting your ad formats and placing them thoughtfully, you can build a sustainable revenue stream without compromising the user experience of your app.

Once your ads are running, monitoring their performance alongside all your other app and business data is key to understanding what's working. For that, we built Graphed. It allows you to connect dozens of data sources and ask questions in plain English to build real-time monitoring dashboards in just seconds. See the full story of your growth by asking things like, "Show me my AdMob revenue and Google Analytics 4 active users on a single chart," without writing a single line of code.