So I got a 30 day suspension from Admob..
Here’s the wall of text email I got:
Hello,
We recently detected invalid activity in your AdMob account. As a result, we’ve temporarily suspended your account for 30 days. During this time, no ads will be served on your mobile applications.
Why was my account suspended?
We found that you have clicked on your own AdMob ads in a non test-mode setting, which is prohibited by the AdMob Program Policies.
We understand that you may want to know more about the invalid activity we’ve detected. Because this information could be used to circumvent our proprietary detection system, we’re unable to provide our publishers with information about specific account activity, including any apps or users that may have been involved.
This is a one-time, non-appealable suspension. After 30 days, we’ll automatically re-enable ad-serving on your account.
If you need more time to identify and stop the invalid activity, please remove your AdMob ad code from your apps to prevent ads from being displayed.
Please note that if any additional issues are found in your AdMob account in the interim period of suspension, your account may be permanently disabled even before the suspension period ends. Please review our list of top reasons for account closure to help you understand the possible reasons that publishers may have their accounts disabled.
If your account is found to have invalid activity in the future, it will be subject to additional penalties, and may be permanently disabled.
How does the suspension affect my payments?
You will be eligible to begin receiving payments again once your account generates sufficient valid traffic.
As a result of the suspension, we are withholding the unpaid revenue in your account and refunding the balance, along with Google’s share, to affected advertisers. In addition, once ad-serving resumes on your apps, we will hold any future payments for 30 days—you will earn revenue during this time, and, provided your account remains in good standing, that revenue will be paid in the next payment period.
Fair enough, I guess I did click on them a few times while testing and I’m only losing out on about $20. I didn’t get any warning though and the email is saying I can get BANNED at any time with absolutely no warning. I’ve read horror stories from people saying they lost their account with much more money than I had. I think what I should of done would have been to have test ads enabled. I think I had them disabled because I thought that it would enable test ads on every device, but I think you can put in your device ID and it will show test ads only on that device. I switched from AdMob to AdColony which was easy enough. It’s not like I was putting in thousands of clicks a day and making thousands of dollars. It’s was only a couple clicks while testing. It seems harsh.
I think even having someone play on the same network as you on their device count against you because it’s on the same IP.
I switched to AdColony because it was the first ad network I found besides AdMob that Gamemaker has an extension for heh. I haven’t seen anything about people getting suspended from AdColony. They seem less closed off compared to AdMob( from the tiny amount of experience I have with them) I probably won’t hit the threshold($100) for getting a payout for a while anyway.
So what I learned is:
Don’t click your own ads
Read the terms of service
Set up test devices with test ads
Don’t even have friends click on ads