I’m not a great fan of advertisements. They fucking suck in every way whether I browse web or using a mobile app or I’m displaying them in my own websites/mobile apps. Even fucking TV ads suck, billboards suck. We are being brainwashed by these fucking ads. If you are sensitive and any intelligent you would feel the same as I do.

We have known it all along that fucking Google is thief and it steals all your money from your AdSense earnings. Once I’ve seen it myself, I stopped displaying AdSense adverts forever.

I resisted AdMob for long time but due to demand from customers I had to implement it in my mobile app. All went good till I started to see that fucking Google has started to steal money from AdMob earnings too.

For the first month I though it may be few unknown issues, I waited for second month and saw more than half of money was stolen by Google. Third month followed the same pattern, more than half of money was stolen by Google.

What could be the reason that Google is stealing money from AdMob Earnings?

We are all aware that Google doesn’t pay us in AdSense if there are click frauds or any other deceptive methods employed by webmasters. It’s fair and I’ve no complains about that.

When it comes to the AdMob there is no click fraud as Google pays per impression/view for Interstitial/Rewarded ads.

I’ve both interstitial and Rewarded ads being served in my mobile apps both on Android and iOS.

Since the users of the app are genuine users as this app is paid app with options for users to earn some free coins by watching videos or by taking some actions, there is no way Google can classify more than half of traffic traffic as invalid traffic.

Banner ads are most likely to be clicked accidentally thus generating invalid clicks. I’m not using banner ads so this is ruled out. If you are using banner ads then you may have to think of adhering with AdMob policy to avoid accidental clicks.

So what exactly is going on?

AdMob Policy Violation?

There may be remote possibility that I may be serving ads in incorrect way which can lead them to be invalid traffic. I had checked AdMob ad serving guidelines and I can’t think of any reason why my ad serving mechanism could be violating their policy. I’ve to rule out this issue as I see no violation reported in AdMob Policy Center.

AdMob Support

Like any Google product there is no support available for AdMob. There is no contact email or chat. There are few posts on Google forum but they offer no solution to this problem.

Following is a link to forum post where you can see how Google has been stealing money from a lot of other app developers. I’m not alone who is being robbed.

https://support.google.com/admob/thread/27102241?hl=en

Following are my investigations to figure out the culprit of invalid traffic if there is any.

1. AdMob Interstitial Ads

I’ve a feeling that all my interstitial ads may have been classified by AdMob as invalid traffic. To verify my suspicion I checked the earnings from all Interstitial ads and they don’t add up. So I’ve to rule out this at this moment.

2. AdMob Rewarded Ads

Rewarded ads are safer than Interstitial Ads as there is very less chance that you can get it wrong. I’m sure that I’m not violating AdMob Rewarded ads policies. To verify this I’ve checked earnings from the Rewarded ads and they also don’t add up to make the money which Google is stealing.

3. AdMob Earnings By Countries

After ruling out first two possibilities the next stats to look for was earning from each countries. If I could find out exact match for the money being stolen by Google and map it to any country then I’ll be able to find the culprit. But as I suspected all along there is no single country to blame for Invalid traffic so I’ve to rule out this as well.

4. Self view

I, myself, don’t use the features in the app which serves AdMob ads so it’s ruled out too. Even if I may have tested it for once or twice a month it doesn’t add up to the huge amount Google is stealing from me. This possibility is also ruled out.

5. Specific users are generating invalid traffic

This is the last possibility I can think of. There may be chances that either some users are fucking very clever and have figured out how to milk money from AdMob or may be Google has identified them in one way or another to generate invalid traffic.

In either case it will be almost impossible for me to find out such users. I’ll keep this option open for further investigation.

6. Bid Type – CPC

There is a possibility that CPC bid types are generating invalid clicks. There can be few reasons why there are invalid clicks. May be the ads don’t close when user clicks on close button and then users start to click everywhere which generates invalid click.

I’ve seen few ads which don’t close when you tap on the close button.

Ads with CPM bids may not be generating invalid clicks as they are paid for impressions and not for clicks.

Again it’s not possible to find out if this is the culprit or not. I’ll keep this option open for further investigation as well.

Next Step – Disabled Interstitial ads

I’ve not given up yet in investigating the source of so called Invalid Traffic.

I’ve disabled serving interstitial ads and will monitor it for this month. I’ll update this post next month with my observations.

After a month of observation I’ve to rule this as culprit too as figures don’t add up.

The Ultimate Solution

After wasting months of time in figuring out why Google is stealing my money I’ve to finally give up on AdMob. I dumped them.

Fuck AdMob and Fuck Google.