From Admob For Developers

Contents 1 Building an AdMob Request 1.1 Request Structure 1.2 Request Parameters 1.2.1 Shared Request Parameters 1.2.2 Analytics Request Parameters 1.2.3 Ad Request Parameters 1.3 Example Request 1.4 Troubleshooting

Building an AdMob Request

AdMob provides publisher code for our Ad publishers and Analytics users in a variety of languages. If we do not currently support your language, this documentation should provide enough information for you to create your own AdMob request.

Request Structure

• HTTP POST request to http://r.admob.com/ad_source.php
• The content type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• The body of the POST contains urlencoded key/value pairs separated by "&"

urlencode(key1)=urlencode(value1)&urlencode(key2)=urlencode(value2)

• Reserved characters are defined in RFC 3986

Request Parameters

Here is a list of parameters that can be used in an AdMob request.

Shared Request Parameters

Parameters used for both Ad requests and Analytics requests.

Parameter	Name	Required?	Description	Example	Source	Notes
rt	request type	Required	Determines if the request is an Ad or Analytics request (or both)	rt=1	AdMob publisher code	rt=0 is an Ad request (default if rt is not sent) rt=1 is an Analytics request rt=2 is a combined Ad and Analytics request
u	user agent	Required	The browser user agent of the device making the request	u=BlackBerry8100/4.2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100	Mobile device headers	The user agent string should be urlencoded
i	ip address	Required Always required by Analytics	The ip address of the carrier gateway over which the device is connecting	i=72.14.207.99	Mobile device headers
h[<HEADERS>]	headers	Required	headers that are available with the page request	h[Referer]=http://taptap.net/	Mobile device headers
o	cookie value	Recommended	32 character cookie value that uniquely identifies the user on a mobile site	o=de9b5e23ad4fbe48b6bf151a34d56d56	Publisher	More persistent than a session id. Click here for more information
p	page	Recommended	Url of the page where the ad request is called	p=http://m.taptap.net	Mobile device headers
v	version	Recommended	A version string identifying the language and version of the code used to make the request	v=20071126-PHP-1234567890123456	AdMob publisher code
z	timestamp	Required for Analytics Recommended for Ad requests	Timestamp associated with the request	z=1223957880.39	Publisher	Seconds since the epoc. For Analytics this must match the timestamp in the pixel url.
m	test mode	Optional	If this parameter is set, the ad response is "AdMob Test Ad".	m=test	Publisher	When you want a live ad, do not include the "m" parameter in your request
lt	latency	Optional	Allows AdMob to track its worldwide network latency.	lt=0.243	Publisher	Time passed in seconds.
to	timeout	Optional	Current timeout set in the publisher's implementation of the AdMob publisher code.	to=1	Publisher	Time passed in seconds.

Analytics Request Parameters

Parameters used when making Analytics requests.

Parameter	Name	Required?	Description	Example	Source	Notes
a	analytics site id	Required	The id of the publisher site	a=a12345678901234	AdMob
title	page title	Optional	Used to name mobile pages as they appear in the output in the Analytics interface	title=video	Publisher	Should be urlencoded
event	event	Optional	Analytics allows you to track important events	event=registration	Publisher	Should be urlencoded

Ad Request Parameters

Parameters used when making Ad requests.

Parameter	Name	Required?	Description	Example	Source	Notes
s	publisher site id	Required	The id of the publisher site	s=a12345678901234	[1]
m	test mode	Optional	If this parameter is set, the ad response is "AdMob Test Ad".	m=test	Publisher	When you want a live ad, do not include the "m" parameter in your request
ma	site markup	Optional	Mobile site markup. Where no value is present, xhtml is assumed.	ma=xhtml ma=wml	Publisher	Values: xhtml, wml, chtml
e	output encoding	Optional	The output encoding to return for an ad request. Where no value is present, encoding is returned as UTF-8.	e=UTF-8 e=SHIFT-JIS	Publisher	Values: UTF-8, SHIFT-JIS, SJIS
f	format	Optional	Format of the ad response	f=html (default) f=html_no_js (not recommended)	Publisher	Values: html, html_no_js (for publishers who do not want javascript ads returned, not recommended because iphone ads will not be displayed)
y	ad type hint	Optional	Type of ads that should be returned for this ad request	y=text	Publisher	Values: text, banner (banner is backfilled by text)
d[pc]	postal code	Optional	Visitor's postal code	d[pc]=94107	Publisher	US: zip code UK: postal code Rest of world: standard postal code
d[ac]	area code	Optional	visitor's area code	d[ac]=650	Publisher	The area code from the visitor's phone number (not the country code)
d[coord]	location coordinates	Optional	Visitor's geolocation	d[coord]=37.563657,-122.324807	Publisher	Latitude and Longitude (comma separated)
d[dob]	date of birth	Optional	Visitor's date of birth	d[dob]= YYYYMMDD	Publisher	Date of birth, formatted as YYYYMMDD
d[gender]	gender	Optional	Visitor's gender	d[gender]=m d[gender]=female	Publisher	Values: m, male, f, female
k	keywords	Optional	Space separated keywords	k=sports baseball ny mets	Publisher	If no ad is contextually matched, a highest-expected eCPM ad is returned.

Example Request

Whitespace has been added to make it more readable.

POST /ad_source.php HTTP/1.1
Host: r.admob.com
Accept: */*
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Connection: Close
Content-Length: 676

rt=2&
z=1223957880.39&
u=Mozilla%2F5.0+%28X11%3B+U%3B+Linux+x86_64%3B+es%3B+rv%3A1.9.0.3%29+Gecko%2F2008092510+Ubuntu%2F8.04+%28hardy%29+Firefox%2F3.0.3&
i=127.0.0.1&
p=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fnick%2Fcurl%2Fcurl.php&
v=20080915-PHPCURL-40209f0f2a074ed3&
s=a148868283b4b66&
a=a14888ba63c29bc&
m=test&
title=Enter+Page+Title+Here&
event=Enter+Event+Name+Here&
h%5BHTTP_HOST%5D=localhost&
h%5BHTTP_ACCEPT%5D=text%2Fhtml%2Capplication%2Fxhtml%2Bxml%2Capplication%2Fxml%3Bq%3D0.9%2C%2A%2F%2A%3Bq%3D0.8&
h%5BHTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE%5D=en-us%2Cen%3Bq%3D0.5&
h%5BHTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING%5D=gzip%2Cdeflate&
h%5BHTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET%5D=ISO-8859-1%2Cutf-8%3Bq%3D0.7%2C%2A%3Bq%3D0.7&
h%5BHTTP_KEEP_ALIVE%5D=300

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems with the publisher code, sometimes it is useful to determine the exact request that is being sent to AdMob servers. Wireshark is a tool that will let you capture exactly what is being sent over the wire.