Google Updates Android Ad Policy - Bans Ads Before Levels in Games, and More!

[LAwLz]

Summary

 

Google has just Updated their Google Play Developer Policy. The headline of this update is what Google calls the "Better Ads Experiences". The aim is to ban certain types of bad or annoying ads that are present in some mobile apps.

The update will go into effect september 30, 2022 which leaves developers with about 2 months to update the way they present ads to users. The updated guidelines are inspired by the Coalition for Better Ads (which Google is a part of) which has posted their own guidelines for how they feel ads in mobile apps should behave.

 

Examples of ads that are no longer allowed according to the new policy:

• Showing an ad when a user starts a new level in a game. 
• A video ad that shows up before a loading screen (splash screen).
• Ads that can't be skipped after 15+ seconds. This does NOT apply to optional ads such as "reward ads" that users choose to view themselves. Those can still be longer than 15 seconds.
• Full screen ads that shows up unexpectedly. For example an ad that appears while reading a text.

 

Examples of these types of ads are shown in the quotes below:

 

 

Quote

① Unexpected static ad appears during game play at the beginning of a level.

 

Quote

② Unexpected video ad appears during beginning of a content segment.

 

 

Quote

①  An interstitial ads appears during game play, and does not offer users an option to skip within 15 seconds.

 

 

 

My thoughts

Sounds like a very good thing to me. There are A LOT of terrible apps out there that pretty much only exists to deliver as many ads as possible to users. Those types of apps heavily rely on these tricks and I think it is a good thing to put an end to it.

I am not sure if Microsoft and Apple have similar guidelines but if they don't then I think they should adopt it.

 

 

 

 

Sources

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/12253906

[Thaldor]

Good guy Google, just like few years too late and now every more scummy game is already using mostly Unitys ad platform or some 3rd party even more scummier ad platform because better payoff. And notice Google wants to ban the ads, not the apps so, they basicly do what they seem to quite often do with the play store if someone isn't directly brewing a storm over some named and exact apps, absolutely nothing.

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Good guy Google, just like few years too late and now every more scummy game is already using mostly Unitys ad platform or some 3rd party even more scummier ad platform because better payoff. And notice Google wants to ban the ads, not the apps so, they basicly do what they seem to quite often do with the play store if someone isn't directly brewing a storm over some named and exact apps, absolutely nothing.

Why ban the app?  I mean, almost every game does that, so we lose all the games?  There has to be something for free apps, life isn't a gimme gimme gimme.

 

Good policy, I like the movement.

[BuckGup]

Ads are annoying but the hidden trackers and analytic collection in these free apps is concerning. I loaded a KetchApp game on my iPhone and watched my piHole DNS queries and there was close to 3 pages of pure data harvesting and ad serving shittery

[Quackers101]

4 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Ads are annoying but the hidden trackers and analytic collection in these free apps is concerning. I loaded a KetchApp game on my iPhone and watched my piHole DNS queries and there was close to 3 pages of pure data harvesting and ad serving shittery

nvm

[Senzelian]

I mean yeah, less annoying ads is nice.

But on the other hand I feel like this should be something that is self-regulated by simply uninstalling apps that are full of annoying ads.

But then again, people being smart by themselves without someone saving their butt? lol, no way

 

 

[Dedayog]

41 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I mean yeah, less annoying ads is nice.

But on the other hand I feel like this should be something that is self-regulated by simply uninstalling apps that are full of annoying ads.

But then again, people being smart by themselves without someone saving their butt? lol, no way

 

 

Think you took this down a personal rabbit hole.

 

It's not about needing Google to "save us".  it's about having good free content that has become so overloaded with ads for the dev to recoup some money, scaling that back a little.

 

For God's sake, we had to watch TV with commercials we couldn't fast forward through!!!!

 

Unless you give money to EVERY developer for which you have an app... ads are how this works.

[Erioch]

Ban all "pull the pin" ads.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

I was not aware such ads existed. The only ones I have experienced were the ones you watch to get an in-app cooldown reduction (or other reward) and banner ads.

Either you aren't playing on Android, or you aren't playing garbage.

 

I've never seen these ads on iPhones. Ever. I've only seen them when playing with Android emulators (MEMU/Bluestacks) and on Windows (through the Windows Store), and it's always mobile-style games.

 

My guess here is that Google has the analytic data from the ad platform itself that shows that people are running these games to farm ad revenue, regardless if there are any actual players. This is the same problem with "auto-refresh" ads on desktop browsers, where the ads just continue to refresh without any interaction by the user.

 

Like if we were serious about getting rid of bad (ad) experiences, ads would only be permitted on:

- Loading screens "billboard interstitial" where the game knows in advance it will take 15 seconds to load. This must be benchmarked by the device, and the ads must be automatically be closed when the loading completes.

- User interactions that offer additional benefits inside the game without a time penalty. eg you click a "Additional coins" button and it explicitly has a "show ad" button

 

Ads that you can't skip, or require you to interact with them to close, are bad experiences. 

[Senzelian]

27 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Think you took this down a personal rabbit hole.

 

It's not about needing Google to "save us".  it's about having good free content that has become so overloaded with ads for the dev to recoup some money, scaling that back a little.

I don't know what you mean with personal rabbit hole.

It does effect everyone if the general public isn't capeable of making decent decisions.

 

Yes that does personally annoy me if that's what you meant. 

But I also think that it is definitely about them having to save us. The wording is different from your sentence, which read "it's about having good free content", but the end result is the same. Just different wording.

 

33 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

For God's sake, we had to watch TV with commercials we couldn't fast forward through!!!!

 

Unless you give money to EVERY developer for which you have an app... ads are how this works.

Yes we did do that and some still do, but it's certainly not about getting rid of all ads. I don't think that makes any sense and no one mentioned removing all ads.

[Dedayog]

7 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I don't know what you mean with personal rabbit hole.

It does effect everyone if the general public isn't capeable of making decent decisions.

 

Yes that does personally annoy me if that's what you meant. 

But I also think that it is definitely about them having to save us. The wording is different from your sentence, which read "it's about having good free content", but the end result is the same. Just different wording.

 

Yes we did do that and some still do, but it's certainly not about getting rid of all ads. I don't think that makes any sense and no one mentioned removing all ads.

Eh, I look at it as ads are getting out of hand and so prevalent even in good fun games and apps.... we really can't just not use apps, as it would be all of them.

 

We've commented on ads and Google heard us.  Sure, if they want to pretend to be saviors, they can circle jerk all they want.

 

By rabbit hole.. I mean you reacted personally and seemingly have an issue with people lacking responsibility.   You're not wrong I guess, but I don't see this as such.  I see this as we have no recourse or power here.  We'd have to simply not download any game app on the app store, period. Not realistic.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

I mean yeah, less annoying ads is nice.

But on the other hand I feel like this should be something that is self-regulated by simply uninstalling apps that are full of annoying ads.

But then again, people being smart by themselves without someone saving their butt? lol, no way

I've briefly played a few games that has a lot of ads.

There is a Retsuko-themed match 3 game that I play from time to time. When I started playing it, there were next to no ads. Now though, there are quite a few ads, including those annoying ones that appear before a level starts (that Google seem to be banning). I still think the game is fun but I definitively play it less now that it has so many ads. But sometimes I feel like watching a 5 second ad that I can skip is worth it. I don't think that means I am dumb. It just means that sometimes I put up with annoying ads if it means I get to play a game I like. 

 

There is also just so much self regulation can do. Clearly it hasn't worked so far, and when self regulation doesn't work then I'd say it can be beneficial for the platform overlord to step in and fix an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

In the OP I said that I hope Apple and Microsoft makes similar rules. That made me curious if this was an issue on iOS too, so I looked into it.

It seems like this is less of an issue on iOS, probably because iOS has far more high quality games than Android. But there are definitely cases of it on iOS too. Here is one that I have seen described as "ad watching simulator". A lot of the reviews, even the fairly highly rated ones like 3 and 4 stars, are complaining about the amount of ads. Ads after completing every single level.

[Kisai]

58 minutes ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

This sort of reminds me of "elevator as level loading mechanic" or whatever it is called where there was a game that the elevator was used to load a level while it was going up.

What I mean by that is a fixed loading time just to show an ad.

That would not necessarily be a bad thing to implement.

Yeah, like in these cases, it's pretty much providing something to look at other than "please wait" or "now loading" type of screens.

 

With particularly large (eg not generally mobile) games built on Unity or Unreal, you typically run into the "load time hell" when it has to download the next level, which is when the game itself tries to minimize the initial download to stay under the original "store" limitation. The subsequent time the level is loaded, it's usually pretty quick.

 

Though just to spell it out, you don't want to design a game "to serve ads" or build it around serving ads, because what will happen to the game 6 months from now, or 6 years from now when people are still playing it, but the quality of the ads falls? Every ad is a potential reason to abandon the ad-supported platform.

 

You know those ugly ads that are required on cigarettes? This is pretty much what "algorithm-driven" ad serving turns into. Where the one willing to pay the most (or more likely, "the only one willing to pay to advertise on a low quality game/website that has a poor ad experience") gets to dump the grossest, shock-ads into the system. Like the toenail fungus, the trypophobia triggers, etc. Basically the garbage that is served by garbage clickbait sites.

 

The people who make asset-flip games (like nearly every match-3 game in existence) are the most guilty of this, because they don't actually care about keeping players, just getting the most ad revenue possible.

[Vishera]

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

I mean yeah, less annoying ads is nice.

But on the other hand I feel like this should be something that is self-regulated by simply uninstalling apps that are full of annoying ads.

But then again, people being smart by themselves without someone saving their butt? lol, no way

 

 

They start with the ads and in the end it will snowball to restrictions of other things.

Anyway i don't have gapps on my phone.

[Thaldor]

4 hours ago, Dedayog said:

Why ban the app?  I mean, almost every game does that, so we lose all the games?  There has to be something for free apps, life isn't a gimme gimme gimme.

 

Good policy, I like the movement.

As I said:

Quote

every more scummy game is already using mostly Unitys ad platform or some 3rd party

So, tell me how is Google going to ban an ad not on AdSense? Are they going to call Unity or the scummier company, that has even problems scaling ads served by them right, and nicely ask them to ban the ad and these companies will serve Googles good will without any questions?

 

I repeat myself but Google is about 5-10 years late with this policy because most likely every app that wants more profit from ads and don't care about user experience are already using something else than AdSense to serve ads in their apps. You can even tell does the app use AdSense from the small tap that AdSense puts on the lower left corner from which you can either report the ad or just open your Google ad settings, if that is missing, the app uses something else to serve their ads and most likely Googles policies mean nothing unless they start to really do more dramatic things than banning ads on AdSense.

[Arika]

Good, about time. But also hasn't affected me for a while since I've had my pihole.

 

Mobile ads was the entire reason I got a pihole in the first place because they are much more egregious than any other type of ad.

[soldier_ph]

Ah yes Nature is healing.

[Arika]

2 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

So, tell me how is Google going to ban an ad not on AdSense?

Ban the app until it's compliant. These are the new developer guidelines, not adsense guidelines. 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

Ban the app until it's compliant. These are the new developer guidelines, not adsense guidelines. 

And nobody uses adsense. Adsense is where you go when you don't care about anything. Ever see a google text ad? Me neither. 

 

That's because advertisers only buy inventory on sites that let them push videos and half-page ads now. They are guaranteed to be seen because they are obnoxious.

 

[wamred]

Nice! I really hope Apple follows suit and does something similar. I have to be honest though, it is easy to be skeptical about anything related to ads from Google.

[TetraSky]

Annoying ads like those and scummy "reward" ads are why I simply don't play mobile games.

Seriously, "watch an ad to get this reward!", press No to the ad... and they STILL show an ad regardless, but without the reward. Are you kidding me right now? So many times this happens in crappy mobile games...

So if they can make some of the more egregious ones to go away, I welcome it. Though they will totally just find a different way to serve you ads

[Salv8 (sam)]

bloody good, those ads damn well violated a fuck ton of advertising regulations in so many countries.

they exist for a fucking reason.

 

doesn't mean i'll disable blokada,i don't want that shit on my phone in any way.

[Senzelian]

11 hours ago, Dedayog said:

we really can't just not use apps, as it would be all of them.

I don't have a single app on my phone that shows ads, other than Instagram and Twitter. I'm fine with the ads they present.

 

11 hours ago, Dedayog said:

We'd have to simply not download any game app on the app store, period.

Or you pay the 2 bucks they usually want for an ad free experience. But again, I'm not saying that I don't want any ads and therefor don't use apps that have ads. I just don't use apps that have annoying ads, and that is something everyone should simply do. To me it's just common sense that if something annoys you, you find a way to get around it - basically take matters into your own hands.

 

[Sauron]

too little, too late... but better than nothing I guess.

[mr moose]

A good start, but there are two other things they need add to the criteria, 1. force developers to ensure the ads are all set to the same volume level as the app itself  and 2. weed out all the fraud and con ads about weight loss, crypto wealth etc.