Ad serving limit placed on your AdMob account

[Kevin1970]

I have a simple, free to play android game (on Google Play and Amazon store) with a single interstitial advert that displays a few seconds after the player dies, then followed by a menu display to restart the game.

It truly is ultra simple and vanilla.

Since adding the advert in October last year (7 months ago) my AdMob account has had this “Ad Serving limit” placed on it almost all the time…it normally goes like this: Ad limit applied then a couple of months later it’s lifted for a week or so, then it’s applied again, rinse and repeat.

This issue means it’s impossible for me to release any other free to play game as the ad limit is on my entire account, not just this one game and is completely debilitating.

I’ve attached an example of the email Google sends me and highlighted the phrase where they tell me it’s a security risk to tell me what the problem actually is so I’m left completely in the dark.

I’ve tried adjusting the timing for the display of the ad to make sure no one will click it by accident but nothing has worked so far.

Has anyone else experienced this and has any ideas on how to solve it?

[unity_X2mWNhy54HhGgg]

@Kevin1970

I have a simple, free to play android game (on Google Play and Amazon store) with a single interstitial advert that displays a few seconds after the player dies, then followed by a menu display to restart the game.

It truly is ultra simple and vanilla.

Since adding the advert in October last year (7 months ago) my AdMob account has had this “Ad Serving limit” placed on it almost all the time…it normally goes like this: Ad limit applied then a couple of months later it’s lifted for a week or so, then it’s applied again, rinse and repeat.

This issue means it’s impossible for me to release any other free to play game as the ad limit is on my entire account, not just this one game and is completely debilitating.

I’ve attached an example of the email Google sends me and highlighted the phrase where they tell me it’s a security risk to tell me what the problem actually is so I’m left completely in the dark. (1)

I’ve tried adjusting the timing for the display of the ad to make sure no one will click it by accident but nothing has worked so far.

Has anyone else experienced this and has any ideas on how to solve it?

This problem exists for everyone. Have you just opened your admob account?

[Kevin1970]

@unity_X2mWNhy54HhGgg

This problem exists for everyone. Have you just opened your admob account?

This is the first time I’ve used AdMob on a proper game project so I’m very new to this and don’t really know what I’m doing although the account is 7 months old or more at this point.

I’ve been looking for an answer to this for months now and from what I’ve seen there are a few things that people have said:

1. Google is looking for traffic from unverified sources. So when your game is pirated and downloaded from a 3rd party source (eg not Google Play or Amazon) then it’s detected as “suspicious” and you get shut down. Google keep saying, “It’s YOUR responsibility to make sure there is no suspicious activity” but what on earth can be done about people stealing your game and offering it for download surrounded by THEIR adverts, I don’t know…maybe some code to detect where the game was downloaded from and then blows up if it’s not from a good source? Does anyone have the code for that?

2. That this is just what Google does and the only option is to use mediation (ie, not really use AdMob at all). I have tried mediation with MoPub but revenue is not good from MoPub, not really worth the hassle and anyway it does nothing to address the underlying issue of “Why can’t I use AdMob”?

3. That it’s just my fault, I must have implemented the advert wrong or am clicking on them myself. Well, I’m absolutely not clicking them but given I’m a beginner, I can absolutely agree that I might be doing something wrong…but I have no idea whatsoever what that might be, I’ve read the docs and am trying to adhere to every guideline. I’ve tried adjusting the timings, I checked the box to say it’s on Amazon as well and the way the ad appears but nothing has worked so far (obviously).

Maybe I should implement a Youtube style “Advert countdown”, maybe I should adjust the ad so it doesn’t display so often, maybe I should only display the ad once and that’s it, maybe I should tick a box and say that a user shouldn’t see the same ad twice. Maybe…many things but given any change takes a month (or two) at least to even have a chance of “re-evaluation”, it’s a long tortuous road where I’m just pissing in the wind with no real idea. I mean I can assume it’s just my fault (in which case it’s fixable in theory) but maybe it isn’t, maybe all this is a bug with their bot? The fact I can’t even talk to a human being from Google about this makes it even worse.

I did try filling in their form designed for folks whose account has been disabled, explaining all of this but they just responded saying, “Rejected cos your account is not disabled”, which it isn’t, it’s just useless.

Like I say, it’s just debilitating not to mention depressing. If anyone has ANY ideas how to solve this, then I’m all ears.

[Envizzion]

@Kevin1970

This is the first time I’ve used AdMob on a proper game project so I’m very new to this and don’t really know what I’m doing although the account is 7 months old or more at this point.

I’ve been looking for an answer to this for months now and from what I’ve seen there are a few things that people have said:

1. Google is looking for traffic from unverified sources. So when your game is pirated and downloaded from a 3rd party source (eg not Google Play or Amazon) then it’s detected as “suspicious” and you get shut down. Google keep saying, “It’s YOUR responsibility to make sure there is no suspicious activity” but what on earth can be done about people stealing your game and offering it for download surrounded by THEIR adverts, I don’t know…maybe some code to detect where the game was downloaded from and then blows up if it’s not from a good source? Does anyone have the code for that?

2. That this is just what Google does and the only option is to use mediation (ie, not really use AdMob at all). I have tried mediation with MoPub but revenue is not good from MoPub, not really worth the hassle and anyway it does nothing to address the underlying issue of “Why can’t I use AdMob”?

3. That it’s just my fault, I must have implemented the advert wrong or am clicking on them myself. Well, I’m absolutely not clicking them but given I’m a beginner, I can absolutely agree that I might be doing something wrong…but I have no idea whatsoever what that might be, I’ve read the docs and am trying to adhere to every guideline. I’ve tried adjusting the timings, I checked the box to say it’s on Amazon as well and the way the ad appears but nothing has worked so far (obviously).

Maybe I should implement a Youtube style “Advert countdown”, maybe I should adjust the ad so it doesn’t display so often, maybe I should only display the ad once and that’s it, maybe I should tick a box and say that a user shouldn’t see the same ad twice. Maybe…many things but given any change takes a month (or two) at least to even have a chance of “re-evaluation”, it’s a long tortuous road where I’m just pissing in the wind with no real idea. I mean I can assume it’s just my fault (in which case it’s fixable in theory) but maybe it isn’t, maybe all this is a bug with their bot? The fact I can’t even talk to a human being from Google about this makes it even worse.

I did try filling in their form designed for folks whose account has been disabled, explaining all of this but they just responded saying, “Rejected cos your account is not disabled”, which it isn’t, it’s just useless.

Like I say, it’s just debilitating not to mention depressing. If anyone has ANY ideas how to solve this, then I’m all ears.

Try using AdMob mediation by setting up unity Ads as the second Ad source . That’s what i did to at least bypass the issue with AdMob since the limit is only applied on the Ad serving and not the mediation. Following is such a mediation.

[Munchy2007]

Have you set up your app-adds.txt file? Set up an app-ads.txt file for your app - Google AdMob Help

Edit: Sorry, just noticed the original post is almost a year old!

[Kevin1970]

Hey Munchy2007 & Envizzion,

No problem it’s not like any of this has been solved in the meantime.

To answer your question, yes indeed I have an app-adds.txt file and have for the last 12 months:
https://vrgamestudio.github.io/app-ads.txt

I also do have mediation setup similar to as you describe but with MoPub instead of Unity Ads (I decided on this as unity Ads didn’t seem to pay very well?). MoPub have just gone bye bye at the end of March 2022 though.

The upshot seems to be that I have to consider myself unable to have any games on Google Playstore supported by adverts, and since no one really buys games on that store anymore, barring occasional in-app purchases on an otherwise completely free (and advert free) game, the entire store is off limits to me bar for some proper income for a week or so every couple of months.

And only me, as far as I can tell since no one seems to be able to answer this one question (Stack overflow closed the question down for being of a “wrong topic”). As for Google, they simply won’t engage on this topic either, the best I can do is raise an issue about something else but then if I try to bring this up I just get told it’s another department and they don’t help with that.

I’ve had a similar thing happen on Facebook, apparently since the last year or so I’m banned for life from ever advertising on their platform. Same thing, they won’t tell me why, just that I broke their terms and conditions, apparently. It’s even more personal this time as setting up a new Facebook account is also specified as against their terms and conditions, meaning the ban is to me personally, there is no appeal so…it’s for life, a life sentence for something they won’t even tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done.

When I say I’m a beginner at this, I do mean it, just one advert in one Google Play game, advertising on Facebook for just a few months, spending as little as possible.

It’s times like this I see the wisdom in the formation of a fair and just system of government and law and order. These companies and the amount of power they wield over our lives are out of control. It’s just as well their proposed currency systems were not allowed to go forward.