At the 2016 Games Developer’s Conference, we announced a new addition to the AdMob mediation platform: rewarded video ads. This new avenue for monetization offers users the option to engage with ads in exchange for in-app rewards. Our growing list of mediation partners includes:

• Unity Ads
• Chartboost
• Vungle
• AdColony
• AppLovin
• Fyber
• Upsight

Choosing AdMob for your rewarded video mediation platform gives you access to ad content from all of these networks, and allows you to develop against a single API from AdMob.

Rewarded video ads are requested and displayed using the the new RewardedVideoAd and GADRewardBasedVideoAd classes. Here’s an example showing how to request a rewarded video ad on Android:

RewardedVideoAd mRewardedVideoAd = MobileAds.getRewardedVideoAdInstance(this);
mRewardedVideoAd.setRewardedVideoAdListener(this);
mRewardedVideoAd.loadAd(AD_UNIT_ID, new AdRequest.Builder().build());

And here’s the iOS equivalent:

GADURewardBasedVideoAd *rewardedVideo = [GADRewardBasedVideoAd sharedInstance];
rewardedVideo.delegate = self;
[rewardedVideo loadRequest:request withAdUnitID:adUnitID];

You can find additional documentation on rewarded video ads in our publishers get started guides (Android | iOS). Mediation documentation not specific to rewarded video ads can be found in the mediation get started guides (Android | iOS).

If you have any questions about rewarded video mediation, you can reach us on our forum. You can also find us on Google+, where we have updates on all of our Google Ads developer products.

 - Ram Parameswaran, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

There are only a few things I care about more than the DFP API. One is ice cream. The other is the DFP Sales Manager API (yes I'm cheating, but they're both unique enough that I consider them separately). The DFP Sales Manager API is incredibly powerful in terms of flexibility and functionality, but as a great man once said:

"With great power comes great responsibility"
        - Ben Parker

To properly use the Sales Manager API, you have to fully understand its services & objects and how they all fit together.

I'm extremely pleased to announce that we now have a full set of Sales Manager-specific guides that walk you through each component of the sales flow, from generating the inventory / products you wish to sell, creating proposals and proposal line items, approving these items through a workflow, and reconciling that data to amend any data discrepancies.

So grab a plate of cookies, pour yourself a glass of milk, and lose yourself in the riveting seven-part series we've put together:

• Base Rates, Rate Cards, Feature Premiums
• Products
• Product Packages
• Proposals
• Proposal Line Items
• Workflows
• Reconciliation

As usual, feel free to reach out to us with any questions, concerns, or if you're dying to see what happens in the next chapter of sales manager.

 - Nicholas Chen, DFP API Team

We recently announced SDK-less mediation - a new way for DFP and AdMob publishers to use mediation to access additional ad networks without having to integrate and maintain multiple third-party SDKs and adapters. Today, we would like to go into more detail on how you can integrate SDK-less in your project.

With SDK-less mediation, everything is done through a single SDK, the Google Mobile Ads SDK. It is now possible to add additional ad networks server-side without having to update your apps. Also, SDK-less supports all existing mediation features including ad network optimization, live eCPM, and country-specific CPM values, so you won’t lose any of the features that you get with standard mediation.

An SDK-less network looks and feels like any other third-party mediation network in AdMob. It includes an ‘SDK-less’ suffix (see screenshot below) and has its own settings.

Supporting SDK-less Mediation

To support SDK-less ad networks, Android apps require v7.8 or higher of the Google Mobile Ads SDK for both AdMob and DFP. However, devices that have an up-to-date Google Play services already support SDK-less.

For iOS apps, v7.2.1 or higher of the Google Mobile Ads SDK is required for AdMob and v7.6.0 or higher is required for DFP. If a publisher’s app is not updated to the minimum SDK version required to support SDK-less networks, then the mediated request excludes all SDK-less networks.

In many cases, even after you migrate to the latest version of the Google Mobile Ads SDK, there may be apps that still reference older SDKs. To accommodate this, AdMob allows publishers to place both SDK adapters and SDK-less sources in a single mediation chain. Apps that don’t meet the minimum SDK requirements will ignore the SDK-less mediation sources automatically.

Ad Networks Supporting SDK-less Mediation

There are currently four ad networks that support SDK-less mediation for both banner ads and interstitial ads. The AdMob developer site for Android and iOS provides a table that lists all the AdMob mediation networks including the type of mediation and ad formats that they support. Please keep an eye on this table as there will be more ad networks supporting SDK-less in the near future.

If you have any questions regarding SDK-less mediation, feel free to contact us through our forum.

 - Tristan Emrich, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

We are pleased to announce that the IMA SDK for HTML5 now supports VPAID Flash creatives. When Flash is available on the running platform, the SDK is able to play these creatives in addition to existing formats. This feature allows video publishers added flexibility in their adoption of the SDK as they can continue to accept advertiser VPAID Flash creatives using the HTML5 SDK.

As an example, take a look at a sample ad running in our Video Suite Inspector tool.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team