How to Make Money Using Google AdMob

If you've built a mobile app, chances are you're trying to figure out how to turn your hard work into a reliable income stream. Google AdMob is one of the most popular and straightforward ways to do just that by placing ads within your app. This guide will walk you through exactly how AdMob works, how to set it up, and the best practices for maximizing your revenue without hurting your user experience.

What is Google AdMob?

Think of Google AdMob as the app version of Google AdSense. Where AdSense helps website owners make money by displaying ads, AdMob empowers mobile app developers to do the same. It's a mobile advertising platform that allows you to integrate various ad formats directly into your iOS or Android application.

Behind the scenes, AdMob connects you to a massive network of advertisers who are all competing to show their ads to your users. You provide the ad space within your app, AdMob fills it with the highest-paying, relevant ad, and you get a share of the revenue. It's a simple way to start monetizing your user base, whether you have a casual game, a utility app, or a content-based platform.

How Does it All Work? The Basics

The core process is pretty straightforward. Once you integrate the AdMob SDK (Software Development Kit) into your app, you can create "ad units," which are specific places within your app where you want ads to appear. When a user opens that part of your app, your app sends a request to AdMob.

AdMob then holds a real-time auction among all its advertisers who want to reach an audience like yours. The advertiser willing to pay the most wins the auction, and their ad is instantly served to your user. You get paid for that impression (the ad being shown) or for a click on the ad.

To understand performance, you'll need to know a few key metrics:

• Impressions: The number of times an ad has been displayed to a user.
• eCPM (effective Cost Per Mille): This stands for "effective cost per thousand impressions." It's how much you earn for every 1,000 ad impressions served in your app. It’s a standard way to measure the performance of different ad units and formats. For example, an eCPM of $5 means you earn $5 for every 1,000 times that ad is shown.
• Fill Rate: The percentage of ad requests that result in an ad being successfully served. A fill rate of 95% means that for every 100 times your app asked for an ad, it received one 95 times. A low fill rate means you're leaving money on the table.

Getting Started: Your 5-Step Setup Guide

Setting up your AdMob account is a guided process, but it helps to know the steps upfront. Let's walk through it.

1. Create or Use Your Google Account

To use AdMob, you need a Google Account. You'll also need existing AdSense and Google Ads accounts linked to it. If you don't have them, AdMob will help you create them during the sign-up process. It’s seamless and ensures that payments can be processed correctly.

2. Sign Up for AdMob

Head to the Google AdMob site and sign up. You'll provide basic information about your country, time zone, and billing currency. Take your time here, as these details are hard to change later and affect how you get paid.

3. Add Your App

Once you're in the AdMob dashboard, you'll see a prominent "Add Your First App" button. You’ll be asked to specify the platform (iOS or Android) and whether your app is already listed on an app store. If it is, AdMob can find it and import the details. If not, you can add it manually and link it later.

4. Create Ad Units

An ad unit is a specific placement within your app where you want ads to appear. To get started, you'll navigate to your app within AdMob and click "Add Ad Unit." This is where you'll choose the ad format that best fits the spot you have in mind (more on formats in the next section).

Once you create an ad unit, AdMob provides you with an "Ad Unit ID." This unique identifier is what you or your developer will use in the app's code to call for an ad in that specific spot.

5. Add IDs to Your App's SDK

The final technical step is adding your AdMob App ID and your newly created Ad Unit IDs into your app's code using the Google Mobile Ads SDK. Google provides extensive documentation on how to do this for both Android and iOS, so even if you aren't the developer, you can pass these instructions along. Once the SDK is integrated, you are ready to start serving ads.

Choosing the Right Ad Formats for Your App

Not all ads are created equal. The format you choose dramatically impacts your revenue and your app's user experience. AdMob offers several types, each with its own pros and cons.

Banner Ads

These are the small, simple rectangular ads that typically sit at the top or bottom of the screen. They're one of the oldest and easiest formats to implement.

• Best For: Apps with static content, like news readers, utilities, or forums, where the ad can stay in view without being disruptive.
• Pros: A low-effort way to generate some revenue. They're always on screen, generating continuous impressions.
• Cons: They have low eCPMs and can suffer from "banner blindness," where users learn to ignore them. Poor placement can also lead to accidental clicks, which is a negative user experience.

Interstitial Ads

These are full-screen ads that pop up at natural transitions or pauses in the user flow. Think of them as a "commercial break" in your app.

• Best For: Mobile games (between levels), productivity apps (after a user completes a task), or content apps (before loading a new article or video).
• Pros: Their large, attention-grabbing format commands much higher eCPMs than banners.
• Cons: If shown too frequently or at the wrong moment, they can be extremely intrusive and frustrate users into leaving your app.

Rewarded Ads (or Rewarded Video)

Rewarded ads are opt-in, full-screen video ads that users choose to watch in exchange for an in-app reward. This could be extra lives in a game, premium content access, or even a hint to solve a puzzle.

• Best For: Almost any app where you can offer a tangible digital reward. They are the bread and butter of monetization for many free-to-play mobile games.
• Pros: Very high user engagement and satisfaction because the ad view is the user's choice. They also generate some of the highest eCPMs of any format.
• Cons: Your in-app economy needs to be balanced. If the reward isn't valuable enough, no one will watch it. If it's too valuable, you may lose out on other IAP (in-app purchase) revenue.

Native Ads

Native ads are designed to match the look, feel, and function of the content around them. An ad for a product in an article list might appear styled just like the other articles. They are a bit more work to implement, as you have control over the ad’s presentation to match your app design.

• Best For: Content-heavy feeds like news aggregators, social media, or product listings.
• Pros: Because they blend in, they feel much less disruptive to the user, leading to a better overall experience and higher engagement rates.
• Cons: They require more development effort to customize their appearance to match your app’s UI.

Best Practices for Maximizing AdMob Revenue

Flipping the switch on ads is just the beginning. The real profits come from strategic optimization.

1. Place Ads at Natural Pauses

The golden rule is to enhance, not interrupt, the user experience. You never want a user to feel "tricked" into clicking an ad or frustrated by an unexpected full-screen popup. Map out your user journey and identify logical breakpoints.

• Good: An interstitial ad after a user successfully finishes a level.
• Bad: An interstitial ad that pops up right when the user is starting a level.

2. Blend Native Ads Seamlessly

If you're using native ads, make them feel like a natural part of the app. Use the same fonts, color schemes, and layouts as your organic content. The less an ad feels like an ad, the more likely users are to engage with it positively.

3. Experiment with Ad Frequency Capping

With high-impact ads like interstitials, showing them too often can lead to user churn. AdMob lets you set frequency caps, limiting how many times these ads can be shown to a single user in a set period (e.g., no more than one per two minutes). Start with a conservative cap and test its impact on user session length and your ad revenue.

4. Enable Ad Mediation

AdMob may not always have the highest-paying ad available. Ad Mediation is a feature that turns AdMob into a conductor for other ad networks too. You can add sources like Meta Audience Network or AppLovin, and AdMob will automatically serve the ad from whichever network bids the most for that impression.

This increases competition and improves your fill rate, ensuring you're making the most money possible from every ad request.

5. Make Rewards in Rewarded Ads Worth it

If you're using rewarded video, the prize at the end must feel compelling. Offering one gold coin when a user needs 1,000 to buy anything will not work. A valuable reward not only encourages video views, but it also creates goodwill with your users because they feel they've gotten something useful in a fair exchange.

6. Focus on Building a Great App First

Ultimately, the single most effective way to increase your AdMob revenue is to increase your base of active, engaged users. An app that people love to use and open every day will generate far more ad impressions - and therefore revenue - than any ad placement tweak. Before you obsess over eCPMs, obsess over user retention, session length, and your app's core value.

Final Thoughts

In short, Google AdMob offers a fantastic gateway to monetizing your mobile app. By thoughtfully integrating different ad formats, respecting the user experience with smart placements and frequency caps, and using features like Mediation, you can transform your user base into a steady source of income. Remember to keep an eye on your reports to see what's working and adjust accordingly.

Analyzing that ad performance often means checking your AdMob dashboard, while your app store numbers are somewhere else and your overall marketing metrics in another platform. We built Graphed to unify all your analytics. You can connect your various data sources in seconds and ask questions in plain English - like "create a dashboard showing my weekly AdMob revenue vs. new app downloads" - to get a complete, real-time view of your app's performance without the manual reporting.