Recently, AdMob stopped their test ads services on IOS 6 apps. The reason is that AdMob team found an issue when test ads were serving on live apps which were built with request.testing = YES, on IOS 6. I don’t know what the critical issue is, but I just remember that there are several feedback about memory usage and app crashes on IOS6 in AdMob email list. AdMob will plan to add support for test ads on IOS6 devices in the next version of AdMob SDK.

Recommend Way to Set Test Devices

There are two ways to set test devices. One is request.testing = YES. This method is used in early AdMob SDK. But it is not recommended now. AdMob team now recommends that we can set test devices by

request.testDevices = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:GAD_SIMULATOR_ID, “MY_DEVICE_ID”, nil]

The MY_DEVICE_ID is the UIDevice’s uniqueIdentifier. This method works well for test devices running IOS5 and below. UDID is used for advertising and application user tracking in old IOS. In IOS6, Apple provides Advertising Identifier for advertisers, instead of UDIDs. Different from UDIDs, Advertising Identifier is a non-permanent, non-personal device identifier. Hence, in next version of AdMob SDK, test ads will be supported on IOS6 devices when we add advertising identifier to request.testDevices.

To test the ad click flow during app development on IOS6 devices before the next AdMob SDK released, developers can create a house ad campaign fully allocated to a test publisher ID, and use the test publisher ID into your applications to test. As terms of services of AdMob, it is not permitted to click live network ads for testing purposes.