Test Ads

This guide explains how to enable test ads in your ads integration. It's important to enable test ads during development so that you can click on them without charging Google advertisers. If you click on too many ads without being in test mode, you risk your account being flagged for invalid activity.

There are two ways to get test ads:

1. Use one of Google's sample ad units.
2. Use your own ad unit and enable test devices.

Prerequisite

• Complete Get Started.

Sample ad units

The quickest way to enable testing is to use Google-provided test ad units. These ad units are not associated with your AdMob account, so there's no risk of your account generating invalid traffic when using these ad units. Here are sample ad units that point to specific test creatives for each format:

Ad format	Sample ad unit ID
Banner	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/6300978111
Interstitial	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/1033173712
Interstitial Video	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/8691691433
Rewarded Video	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/5224354917
Native Advanced	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/2247696110
Native Advanced Video	ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/1044960115

Enable test devices

If you want to do more rigorous testing with production-looking ads, you can now configure your device as a test device and use your own ad unit IDs that you've created in the AdMob UI.

Follow the steps below to add your device as a test device.

Android emulators are automatically configured as test devices.

Add your test device

1. Load your ads-integrated app and make an ad request.
2. Check the logcat output for a message that looks like the one below, which shows you your device ID and how to add it as a test device:

   I/Ads: Use AdRequest.Builder.addTestDevice("33BE2250B43518CCDA7DE426D04EE231")
   to get test ads on this device."

   Copy your test device ID to your clipboard.
3. Modify your code to call AdRequest.Builder.addTestDevice() with your test device ID. This method can be called multiple times for multiple devices.

   Java

   AdRequest request = new AdRequest.Builder()
   .addTestDevice("33BE2250B43518CCDA7DE426D04EE231")  // An example device ID
   .build();
   

   Kotlin

   val request = AdRequest.Builder()
   .addTestDevice("33BE2250B43518CCDA7DE426D04EE231")  // An example device ID
   .build()

   You can optionally check request.isTestDevice() to confirm that your device was properly added as a test device.
   Be sure to remove the code that sets these test devices before you release your app.

4. Re-run your app. If the ad is a Google ad, you'll see a Test Ad label centered at the top of the ad (banner, interstitial, or rewarded video):

   

   For native advanced ads, the headline asset is prepended with the string "Test Ad".

   

Ads with this Test Ad label are safe to click. Requests, impressions, and clicks on test ads will not show up in your account's reports.

Note: To see the Test Ad label, you need to be using an SDK version of 11.6.0 or later.

Note: Mediated ads do NOT render a Test Ad label. See the section below for details.

Testing with mediation

Google's sample ad units only show Google Ads. To test your mediation configuration, you must use the enable test devices approach.

Mediated ads do NOT render a Test Ad label. You are responsible for ensuring that test ads are enabled for each of your mediation networks so these networks don't flag your account for invalid activity. See each network's respective mediation guide for more information.

If you aren't sure whether a mediation ad network adapter supports test ads, it is safest to avoid clicking on ads from that network during development. You can use the getMediationAdapterClassName() method on any of the ad formats to figure out which ad network served the current ad.