Integrating Vungle with Mediation

This guide is intended for publishers who want to use the Google Mobile Ads SDK to load and display ads from Vungle via mediation.

It covers how to add Vungle to an ad unit's mediation configuration, how to set up Ad Network Optimization (ANO), and how to integrate the Vungle SDK and adapter into an Android app.

Supported formats and features

The AdMob mediation adapter for Vungle has the following capabilities:

Formats
Banners
Interstitials
Rewarded video
Native Advanced
Features
Smart banners
Ad Network Optimization (ANO)

Requirements

• Android SDK 4.0 (API level 14) or later
• Google Play services 9.0.0 or later

Step 1: Set up Vungle

Sign up or log in to your Vungle account.

Add your app to the Vungle publisher dashboard by clicking the Add New Application button.

Fill out the form, entering all the necessary details, then click the Submit button at the bottom of the page to add your app to Vungle.

Once your app is created, you can obtain your App ID by navigating to Application Stage > Status under your app's Application details section. You'll need this value later when setting up your AdMob ad unit.

Adding new placements

To create a new placement to be used with AdMob mediation, click on the Add New Placement button in the Application Stage section of your app's page. We recommend creating a new placement for mediation with AdMob even if you already have one.

Details for adding new placements are included below:

Interstitial

Select your Application from the drop-down list and select Interstitial as the Type. Enter a Name for your placement. A reference ID (that can be viewed on the details page) is generated after you click Submit. This reference ID is based on the name you supply and cannot be altered.

Click the Submit button when finished to create the placement.

Rewarded Video

Select your Application from the drop-down list and select Rewarded as the Type. Enter a Name for your placement. A reference ID (that can be viewed on the details page) is generated after you click Submit. This reference ID is based on the name you supply and cannot be altered.

Click the Submit button when finished to create the placement.

Once the placement is created, you can locate your reference ID under the Application Stage Reference ID column.

In addition to the App ID and the Placement ID, you'll also need your Vungle Reporting API Key to set up your AdMob ad unit ID. Navigate to Account Stage in your Vungle publisher dashboard to locate your Reporting API Key.

Step 2: Configure mediation settings for your AdMob ad unit

You need to add Vungle to the mediation configuration for your ad unit. First, sign in to your AdMob account.

Follow the instructions for either AdMob or AdMob Beta depending on which version of the AdMob UI you're using.

AdMob

Navigate to the Monetize tab and select an app from the list of all your apps on the left-hand side. Click the link in the mediation column for the ad unit to which you want to add Vungle.

Click NEW AD NETWORK.

A list of supported ad networks will be shown. Select Vungle from the list and enter the App ID and Placement Reference ID obtained in the previous section. If you're using version 4.x or older of the Vungle SDK, the Placement Reference ID can be left blank.

For the API Key, enter the Reporting API Key obtained in the previous section to set up ANO for Vungle.

Click Continue at the bottom of the page to complete adding the network. Enter an eCPM value for Vungle and click Save.

AdMob Beta

Navigate to the Mediation tab. If you have an existing mediation group you'd like to modify, click the name of that mediation group to edit it, and skip ahead to Add Vungle as an ad source.

To create a new mediation group, select Create Mediation Group.

Enter your ad format and platform, then click Continue.

Give your mediation group a name, and select locations to target. Next, set the mediation group status to Enabled. Then click Add Ad Units.

Associate this mediation group with one or more of your existing AdMob ad units. Then click Done.

You should now see the ad units card populated with the ad units you selected, as shown below:

Add Vungle as an ad source

In the Ad Sources card, select Add Ad Network. Select Vungle and enable the Optimize switch. For API Key, enter the Reporting API Key obtained in the previous section to set up ANO for Vungle. Then enter an eCPM value for Vungle and click Continue.

Note: You only need to set up ANO once per network.

Enter the Application ID and Placement Reference ID obtained in the previous section. If you're using version 4.x or older of the Vungle SDK, the Placement Reference ID can be left blank.

Note: Ad network optimization takes a few days to gather data to accurately calculate eCPM for a mediation network. In the meantime, the ANO status will be PENDING, so you must manually set an eCPM value for the network. Once the eCPM can be calculated, ANO will automatically start updating the eCPM on your behalf.

Using rewarded video ads

In the settings for your rewarded video ad unit, check the Override reward settings from third-party ad networks when using AdMob mediation so that you provide the same reward to the user no matter which ad network is served.

If you don't override the reward, the Vungle adapter defaults to a reward of type "vungle" with value 1. The Vungle SDK does not provide specific reward values for its rewarded video ads.

For more information on setting reward values for AdMob ad units, see Create an ad unit.

Step 3: Import the Vungle SDK and adapter

Android Studio integration (recommended)

Add the following implementation dependency with the latest version of the Vungle SDK and adapter in the app-level build.gradle file:

...
dependencies {
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    implementation 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:xx.x.x'
    implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:15.0.1'
    implementation('com.vungle:publisher-sdk-android:5.3.2@aar') {
        transitive=true
    }
    implementation 'com.google.ads.mediation:vungle:5.3.2.1'
}
...

Manual integration

• Download the latest Vungle Android SDK and extract the .jar files under the libs folder and add it to your project.

• Download the latest Vungle adapter .aar file from Bintray and add it to your project.

Step 4: Add required code

Vungle requires a list of all the placements that will be used within your app to be passed to their SDK for initialization. You can provide the list of placements to the adapter using the VungleExtrasBuilder class. The following code example shows how to use this class.

JAVA

String[] placements = new String[2];
placements[0] = "example_placement_1";
placements[1] = "example_placement_2";
Bundle extras = new VungleExtrasBuilder(placements).build();
AdRequest request =  new AdRequest.Builder()
        .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleAdapter.class, extras)             // Rewarded video.
        .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleInterstitialAdapter.class, extras) // Interstitial.
        .build();

KOTLIN

var placements = arrayOfNulls<String>(2)
placements[0] = "example_placement_1"
placements[1] = "example_placement_2"
val extras = VungleExtrasBuilder(placements).build()
val request = AdRequest.Builder()
        .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleAdapter::class.java, extras)       // Rewarded video.
        .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleInterstitialAdapter.class, extras) // Interstitial.
        .build()

Step 5: Test your implementation

To enable test ads, go to your Vungle dashboard and navigate to Applications.

Select your app for which you would like to enable test ads under the Placement Reference ID section of your app. Test ads can be enabled by selecting Test Mode to Show test ads only under the Status section.

That's it! You now have a working mediation integration with Vungle.

Optional steps

Network-specific parameters

The Vungle adapter supports an additional request parameter which can be passed to the adapter using the VungleExtrasBuilder class. This class includes the following methods:

setSoundEnabled(bool)

Sets whether or not to enable sound when playing video ads.

setUserId(String)

A string representing Vungle's Incentivized User ID.

Here's a code example of how to set these ad request parameters:

JAVA

Bundle extras = new VungleExtrasBuilder(placements)
         .setSoundEnabled(false)
         .setUserId("test_user")
         .build();
AdRequest request =  new AdRequest.Builder()
         .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleAdapter.class, extras)             // Rewarded video.
         .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleInterstitialAdapter.class, extras) // Interstitial.
         .build();

KOTLIN

val extras = VungleExtrasBuilder(placements)
         .setSoundEnabled(false)
         .setUserId("test_user")
         .build()
val request = AdRequest.Builder()
         .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleAdapter::class.java, extras)       // Rewarded video.
         .addNetworkExtrasBundle(VungleInterstitialAdapter.class, extras) // Interstitial.
         .build()