How to display smart banners in applications

The smart banner size allows publishers to display an ad that fills the entire width of the screen while keeping the height constant. With this, developers no longer have to set a fixed size for their ad unit. Instead, you can specify that the ad unit fills the entire width of the screen. Smart banners fill the entire width of the screen, but they are inferior in terms of flexibility to responsive banners, so they may not be as effective.

The new version of the Google Mobile Ads SDK supports smart banners. The following rules apply when selecting creatives:

If the ads are delivered directly from Google Ad Manager, the additional banner fields will be transparent.

If the ads are delivered by Ad Exchange, the additional fields will be dimmed. For example, if a 360x50 ad appears on the screen, a 20x pixel field in gray will be added to the 320x50 ad on the left and right. Ad Manager will select line items that meet the following criteria: The amount is equal to the value specified in the ad request.

The width is determined by the following equation:

(Specified width / 2) <= Ad width <= Specified width

For example, an application for a smart banner with a width of 360 x 50 can choose ads from 180 x 50 to 360 x 50.