Content mapping for apps enables you to deliver contextually relevant ads to your users and helps ensure ads are placed near content that’s suitable for your advertisers.
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 content mapping works
Content mapping for apps allows you to pass one or more URLs that identify a webpage which corresponds to what’s being shown in-app. Google crawls the corresponding webpages and uses that data to better understand the app’s content. This helps users receive contextually relevant ads, as well as ensures ads are suitable for advertisers.
Note: The URLs you use for content mapping don’t have to be externally available to your users, however the URLs must be accessible to our crawler. Only URLs submitted to the crawler will be crawled, and all other hidden content will remain as such.
If you don’t have matching web content already, you can set up a site for content mapping. To avoid unintentional indexing by Search, follow our best practices for crawlers for AdMob or Ad Manager.
Content mapping data is used to improve matching ads with users. This will not disrupt any existing strategies for targeting.
Types of content mapping
There are two types of content mapping:
- Content URL: Used when a single URL represents all of the content on an in-app screen that surrounds an ad.
- Multi-Content URL: Used when multiple URLs represent the content in an in-app screen that surrounds an ad.
1. Content URL
Content URL is used when a single URL can represent all the content on an in-app screen that surrounds an ad. In this case, use the setContentUrl() function. Content URL is best for static pages where the content doesn’t change regardless of who is seeing it (for example, a news article or a forum page).
How to map content URL
The example image below shows how you would map a single URL. The content surrounding the ad is accurately represented in the URL.
Example
Publisher A has a news app and website, and recently published an article about the latest shoe trends. This article is static content available on both the app and website and has three ad units.
Publisher A should use setContentUrl() on the request for each of the three ad units represented on the static page
2. Multi-content URL (Beta)
Multiple URLs represent the content in an in-app screen that surrounds an ad placement. Implement Multi-content URL mapping with setNeighboringContentUrls() and include up to 4 URLs.
Multi-content URL is best for dynamic content feeds, where the content feed is personalized for each user. Dynamic content can change at certain intervals of time or when the user refreshes the page.
How to map multi-content URL
The example image below shows how you would map two pieces of content to 2 matching URLs.
Example
Publisher A’s news app has a dynamic customized home feed that displays articles based on each user’s interests. In the home feed, there are three ad units. Publisher A uses setNeighboringContentUrls() for each of the ad units represented on the home feed page.
To accomplish this, Publisher A will include the URLs for the relevant articles around each ad unit, even though the user sees only the headline and image on the home feed. If the first ad unit has an article above for "The best sandwich is New York City" and below for "What movies should you see right now", the URLs for those specific articles should be passed to setNeighboringContentUrls().