Set up line items for adaptive banners

This guide provides best practices for line item setup when using adaptive banners. You can also use this guide to debug or verify the proper configuration of adaptive banners in your apps.

Adaptive banners dynamically select and serve the best banner size for performance, taking into account the user's device that will show the ad. adaptive banners can accommodate both reserved and backfill inventory. To ensure the right serving behavior for each, the following configuration is recommended in the Ad Manager UI (below) as well as in the Google Mobile Ads SDK for anchored adaptive banners (Android | iOS ) and inline adaptive banners (Android | iOS ).

Jump to:

• Create an ad unit
• Add line items for backfill inventory
• Serve reservations in adaptive banners
• Configure adaptive banners and yield groups
• Adaptive banners and unified pricing rules

Create an ad unit

Create an ad unit as you normally would and select Fixed size from the "Size mode" drop-down.

Add line items for backfill inventory

When configuring line items for backfill inventory, under "Expected Creatives," enable All requested sizes. This ensures the line item will match the widest range of high-performing available ad sizes.

Serve reservations in adaptive banners

Reservation creatives can match adaptive banner line items based on how close their size is to the adaptive ad size.

• Anchored adaptive banners match any reservation that is at least 50% of the width and height of the adaptive ad size.
• Inline adaptive banners match any reservation that is at least 50% of the width of the adaptive ad size, with any height. For example, if requesting an inline adaptive banner with an adaptive ad size of 300x250, any reservation between 150x1 and 300x250 is eligible to serve, centered, in the adaptive ad slot.

This behavior works best for reservations that have real sizes associated with them. Reservations with sizes such as 1x1 may not serve. 

If you want a specific reservation to always be matched, regardless of the device or adaptive ad size, add the size of that reservation creative to the array of:

• validAdSizes for iOS
• AdSizes for Android, using the AdManagerAdView.setAdSizes(AdSize… AdSizes) method.

We don't recommend manually adding reservation creative sizes to the validAdSizes (iOS) or AdSizes (Android) array. This can lead to reservations serving in slots that are far larger than the reservation itself.

Configure adaptive banners and yield groups

For adaptive banners to work with yield groups:

• For a mediation yield group, you must specify a size. To ensure maximum performance, 320x50 is strongly recommended. In your app code, use the publisherAdView.setAdSizes() method to add the size 320x50 as an entry in the AdSizes array.
• For an Open Bidding yield group, no specific size is required because all sizes can be targeted.

Adaptive banners and unified pricing rules

We don't recommend using size targeting in unified pricing rules when working with adaptive banner ads. This is because adaptive banner ad sizes are dynamic and can change per user device.