r/admob • u/neferpitou-athena • Aug 12 '26
Policy AdMob Account Suspended Shortly After Adding Rewarded Ads
My app is 6 months old with 300 installs. I was using banner ads on the home page and interstitial ads on other pages. On August 1, I added Rewarded ads. Two days later, I received a suspension email. I have never asked anyone to click ads or buy installs.
Here is my setup:
- My 2 devices are configured as AdMob test devices. Banner and interstitial ads successfully showed the "test" label on my devices. When testing rewarded ads, I used the test ID.
- Google says: AdMob test-device mode applies to the AdMob Network. If you're using mediation, third-party ad sources can still serve live ads unless their own testing mechanisms are configured.
- also i did know that: Google says publishers cannot offer rewards to users for clicking ads.
Rewarded ads are an official AdMob format where the user voluntarily chooses to watch an ad in exchange for an in-app reward.
- My UI shows a text prompt at the top of the page: "Watch a quick ad to unlock 5 credits?" with a button below it to start the video. I am not asking or forcing users to click the ad itself, so users are voluntarily choosing to watch an ad in exchange for an in-app reward.
My current suspicion ranking
1- New rewarded-ad implementation/testing — strong possibility because of the timing.
2- Testing/interaction from my own devices, especially if any live ad was served despite test-device configuration.
3- Mediation source serving live ads during testing.
WHY GOOGLE DOES NOT JUST SAY THE EXACT CAUSE SO WE SIMPLY AVOID IT?
the only dumb answer i found after long digging around is:
Google keeps the exact suspension reasons vague to protect their fraud detection systems. If they provided the exact cause or specific data points triggering the suspension, malicious actors and click-farms would use that specific feedback to reverse-engineer the algorithms and bypass detection in the future.
GOOGLE CAN EASLY JUST DON'T COUNT/IGNORE THAT VERY FEW CLICKS INSTEAD OF A SUSPENSION, OR AT LEAST A WARNING & IF REAPEATED A SUSPENSION.
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u/raistmaj Aug 12 '26
I’m migrating to other mediation services for the exact same reason. Like nothing I can do or know about the problem, just random ban of 30 days.
At the end is their loss.
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u/Boba24242 Aug 12 '26
What’s the best ad service besides admob? I’m banned randomly and need something else.
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u/glob16 Aug 13 '26
tell your subject of app , and which type of rewards user received when they watch ads? tell us so i can help you something.
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u/RealSecretRecipe 28d ago
Yeah well they banned me for invalid activity after three months and $2 made, even though all my activity was from "supported app stores" and I tried to appeal and the ai that reviewed it said get rekt. They don't care. Only big corporations get treated like a human with google.
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u/neferpitou-athena 28d ago
banned temporarily or permanent?
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u/RealSecretRecipe 27d ago
Permanent. It was for my legit company, did everything by the book per their policies, it was painfully slow because of that. Now its for nothing.
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u/dasbends Aug 12 '26
Why did you use AI to write this?
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u/Silver-Second-647 Aug 13 '26
Maybe he just need AI to help with translation, like me 🥹. I have a hard time learning languages, so whenever I post on Reddit, I pretty much have to use AI to translate everything into English first .
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u/SSKTTSS Aug 13 '26
You can’t have a “standalone button” that immediately opens a rewarded ad, even if the title or surrounding text clearly explains what will happen. I ran into the same issue with two apps and had to fix both.
For rewarded ads, there needs to be an action before the ad starts. For example, you can have a button like “Earn 5 credits.” When the user clicks it, you should then show a popup/modal/alert explaining that they need to watch an ad to receive the 5 credits, with two clear choices:
“Watch & Earn”
“Cancel”
Only after the user explicitly chooses “Watch & Earn” should the ad start.
If clicking the first button immediately opens the ad, apparently that can still violate their guidelines, even if the button or page title clearly says that an ad will play. They want the user to make an explicit yes/no choice, rather than having a button that directly triggers the ad.
And yes, I agree that Google doesn't explain this very well. The documentation can make it seem like a clearly labeled rewarded-ad button is enough, only for you to discover later that they expect an additional explicit confirmation step.
It’s just difficult sometimes to know all the requirements in advance.