This article describes ad podding, its benefits, and how to disable it in Google Ad Manager.
Ad podding is an optimization designed to increase competition and drive higher revenue for your mobile app inventory by allowing multiple ads to compete collectively for a single ad placement. This feature is applicable to mobile app inventory and all creative types, including image, interactive, and video creatives. By default, podding is enabled when you create a new format rule. To opt-out, configure ad podding in Ad Manager.
Configure ad podding
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Navigate to Inventory, then Inventory Rules, and then Format settings.
- Add a New format rule or select an existing one.
- Under Targeting, select the inventory where you'd like to modify.
- Within the rule, locate the Ad podding section:
- To disable: Uncheck "Enable ad podding."
- To control pod size: Choose between "Optimize how many ads shown in a pod" or "Allow only 2 ads in a pod."
- Click Save.
Reporting for ad podding
To provide more granular data, each ad within a placement is tracked as a separate impression. You might observe an increase in total revenue and impressions from these placements. However, "Ad Exchange average eCPM" and "Total average eCPM" metrics may appear lower than expected because it reflects the CPM for each individual ad within a pod, rather than the effective CPM at the pod level.
To accurately measure the performance of ad placements at the pod level, we are introducing a new reporting category for pods:
- New metrics
- Total pod views: This metric treats a pod as a single entity. For a pod of two ads, this value is 1. For single ad requests, this value equals your standard impressions.
- Total pod eCPM: This provides the combined effective CPM for the entire pod. It is calculated using the following formula: Total pod eCPM Total Revenue / Total pod views x 1000.
This metric is inclusive of both pods and non-podded traffic, so you can run this report across all your traffic. For example, with a pod of two ads earning $8 and $7, you’d see a “Total pod eCPM” of $15. - Total pod eCPM w/o CPD: This metric provides the pod eCPM averaged across the Google Ad Manager server, AdSense, Ad Exchange, and third-party mediation networks without CPD revenue. We define pod eCPM as the average CPM across both pods and single ads. For single ads, the CPM is the CPM of that individual ad. For pods, the CPM is the combined CPM of all ads in that pod.
- New dimension
- Number of ads in pod: This dimension allows publishers to break down metrics by the number of ads in the ad response for a pod. This enables a direct comparison between non-podded traffic (Number of ads in pod = 1) and podded traffic.
In addition, the "Position in pod" dimension is applicable to podded ads. The "Position in pod" dimension indicates the sequence of an ad within a pod (for example, "Position 1 in pod" for the first ad, "Position 2 in pod" for the second ad). For standard, non-podded ads, this dimension will display "Unknown position in pod."
Pricing rules for ad podding
Pricing rules apply to the pod as a whole, not to the individual ads within the pod. This may cause a reporting situation where the "Ad Exchange average eCPM" and "Total average eCPM" metrics appear to be below your pricing rule floor. This happens because the floor is met by the combined value of the pod, but the CPM is reported for each impression separately.
Billing for ad podding
Billing for podded traffic follows the same rate card as non-podded traffic, where any applicable ad serving fees are based on the impression count. Learn more about rate cards and billing.