We recently announced SDK-less mediation - a new way for DFP and AdMob publishers to use mediation to access additional
ad networks without having to integrate and maintain multiple third-party SDKs
and adapters. Today, we would like to go into more detail on how you can
integrate SDK-less in your project.
With SDK-less mediation, everything is done through a single SDK, the Google
Mobile Ads SDK. It is now possible to add additional ad networks server-side
without having to update your apps. Also, SDK-less supports all existing mediation features including ad network optimization , live eCPM , and country-specific CPM values , so you won’t lose any of the features that you get with standard mediation.
An SDK-less network looks and feels like any other third-party mediation network in AdMob. It
includes an ‘SDK-less’ suffix (see screenshot below) and has its own settings.
Supporting SDK-less Mediation
To support SDK-less ad networks , Android apps require v7.8 or higher of the Google Mobile Ads SDK for both AdMob and DFP. However, devices that have an up-to-date Google Play
services already support SDK-less.
For iOS apps, v7.2.1 or higher of the Google Mobile Ads SDK is required for AdMob and v7.6.0 or higher is required for DFP. If a
publisher’s app is not updated to the minimum SDK version required to support
SDK-less networks, then the mediated request excludes all SDK-less networks.
In many cases, even after you migrate to the latest version of the Google
Mobile Ads SDK, there may be apps that still reference older SDKs. To
accommodate this, AdMob allows publishers to place both SDK adapters and
SDK-less sources in a single mediation chain. Apps that don’t meet the minimum
SDK requirements will ignore the SDK-less mediation sources automatically.
Ad Networks Supporting SDK-less Mediation
There are currently four ad networks that support SDK-less mediation for both
banner ads and interstitial ads. The AdMob developer site for Android and iOS provides a table that lists all the AdMob mediation networks including the
type of mediation and ad formats that they support. Please keep an eye on this
table as there will be more ad networks supporting SDK-less in the near future.
If you have any questions regarding SDK-less mediation, feel free to contact us
through our forum .
Tristan Emrich , Mobile Ads Developer Relations
