Content mapping FAQs

Below are some answers to the most commonly asked questions about content mapping.

Overview FAQs

What is content mapping?

Content mapping enables you to deliver contextually relevant ads to your users, while ensuring ads are placed near content that’s suitable for your advertisers. Enabling more advertisers to bid safely on your inventory may help maximize your revenue.

What are the benefits of content mapping? 

For publishers, content mapping can improve revenue potential by increasing the relevance of ads to users, which may help advertisers to bid more for your inventory. It can also improve your advertisers' brand safety, which enables more advertisers to bid safely on your inventory.

For your advertisers, content mapping increases ad performance by placing more relevant ads in mobile apps and improves advertiser brand safety by preventing ads from appearing next to unsuitable content.

For your users, content mapping improves user experience by showing users ads that are more relevant to them.

How does content mapping work?

Content mapping allows you to pass one or more URLs (up to four) that correspond to what’s being shown in your app. Google crawls the corresponding webpages and uses that data to better understand the app’s content.

What ad formats are supported?

All formats are technically supported. However, some formats are easier to map than others. Ultimately, all you have to do is provide Google with content URLs that show a complete and accurate mapping of all the content surrounding an ad placement.

Check out our example implementations to understand how to map for various formats.

Does content mapping improve performance for all my ad units?

No. Content mapping only affects the performance of ad units that have been mapped. For example, if you have two identical ad units (one with Content Mapping implemented and one without), only the ad unit with content mapping enabled will experience the benefits.

What type of content is not supported with content mapping?

The following types of content are not supported by content mapping:

• Private content (example: direct messages or chat features)
• Real-time content (example: live-streaming)

Implementation FAQs

Should I have a web presence to use content mapping?

No. You don’t need a web presence to use content mapping. You just need to create URLs that can be accessed by our crawler for AdMob or Ad Manager. The content must be rendered in HTML format, but it doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, you can simply upload a screenshot of the content around the ad.

You can also password protect your passed URLs to ensure that only Google has access to the underlying web-hosted content. It doesn’t need to be available to your users.

Should URLs be aesthetically pleasing?

URLs don’t have to be aesthetically pleasing and you do not need an active, public-facing web presence. As long as the URL is in html format and crawlable by Google, you can pass images, videos, and even screenshots of your app. 

While the URLs don’t need to be aesthetically pleasing, they must completely and accurately correspond to the content in your app.

I don't want to host my content on publicly accessible URLs. What should I do?

You can use the URL password protection feature for AdMob or Ad Manager to ensure that only you and Google’s crawler have access to the underlying content.

Learn how to use web content behind login for content mapping in apps for AdMob or Ad Manager.

I have a privacy policy with my users. How does this work with content mapping?

If you have a privacy agreement with your users to not share certain portions of their information, please make sure you do not pass any such information in your content mapping URLs.

It is your responsibility to navigate and follow your user privacy agreement that’s established with your users. From Google's perspective, PII refers to information that can be used on its own to identify an individual user who is viewing the ad in question.

Content mapping requires a complete and accurate mapping of all content surrounding an ad unit. However, it’s your responsibility to ensure that the content you pass to Google complies with the privacy agreement you have with your users.

You can remove any PII (examples: full names, email addresses, geolocation parameters) within the content URLs that you send Google. We require a complete and accurate mapping of app content, but anything considered PII can be removed or replaced with a unique identifier prior to sending content URLs to Google.

Learn more about understanding PII in Google’s contracts and policies for AdMob or Ad Manager.

Can I send a third-party URL?

Yes, as long as the content passed within the URLs matches the app content (complete and accurate mapping). Note that even if you don’t own the content that’s being passed, the content must comply with Google’s Publisher Policies. If the third-party site you pass in content mapping violates policy, your app may receive a policy violation. 

Can I use XML or JSON in my URLs?

No. Our crawler currently supports HTML. Although the content has to be rendered in HTML format, it doesn’t need to be aesthetically pleasing or public-facing in any way. The most important thing is for the content displayed to be an accurate and complete representation of the actual app content. 

Does content mapping affect different versions of my app?

No. Content mapping only affects the latest version of the app where content mapping has been properly implemented. Users on older versions of the app will not see ads that have been improved by content mapping. 

I use a pre-fetching mechanism in my ad requests. Will that work with content mapping?

Our verification system is not currently able to consistently verify that the content around an ad matches content URLs when a publisher uses a pre-fetching ad mechanism. If you're unsure of what exact content will be adjacent to an ad unit due to pre-fetching, we'd recommend sending ALL of the potential content as part of your content URLs.

Ad Manager content mapping  

Can I use content mapping on my website?

We recommend content mapping for any dynamic content on websites, such as customized home feeds for logged in users.

Can I use content mapping in my mobile apps and mobile web apps?

Content mapping should be used for all ads in native mobile apps, which are built for specific platforms (such as iOS and Android), to serve the most accurate content.

Mobile web apps are accessed in the browser, and on most mobile web app pages we can scrape the surrounding content to best serve ads. While mobile web apps look and function a lot like mobile apps, they exist online only.  For dynamic mobile web app content, such as customized home feeds for logged in users, you should use content mapping.

What about progressive web apps?

If you’ve built a progressive web app, which lives in the browser but can function offline and has similar features to native apps, you should use content mapping for all ad units in the app.

How does content mapping work with targeting?

Targeting helps you best determine how and where your ads are served to best reflect the goals of advertisers and users. Content mapping helps provide more data about your app content. Effectively, targeting and content mapping work together to serve the most relevant ads to your users.

Targeting is not overridden by information found in content mapping or by targeting to the webpage URL.