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Set up ad units in your app

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Warning

As of June 1, 2020, the Microsoft Ad Monetization platform for Windows UWP apps will be shut down. Learn more

Every ad control in your Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app has a corresponding ad unit that is used by our services to serve ads to the control. Each ad unit consists of an ad unit ID and application ID that you must assign to code in your app.

We provide test ad unit values that you can use during testing to confirm that your app shows test ads. These test values can only be used in a test version of your app. If you try to use test values in your app after you publish it, your live app not receive ads.

After you finish testing your UWP app and you are ready to submit it to Partner Center, you must create a live ad unit from the In-app ads page in Partner Center and update your app code to use the application ID and ad unit ID values for this ad unit.

For more information about assigning the application ID and ad unit ID values in your app's code, see the following articles:

Test ad units

While you are developing your app, use the test application ID and ad unit ID values from this section to see how your app renders ads during testing.

  • Ad unit ID: test

  • Application ID: 3f83fe91-d6be-434d-a0ae-7351c5a997f1

    Important

    For an AdControl, the size of a live ad is defined by the Width and Height properties. For best results, make sure that the Width and Height properties in your code are one of the supported ad sizes for banner ads. The Width and Height properties will not change based on the size of a live ad.

Interstitial ads and native ads

  • Ad unit ID: test
  • Application ID: d25517cb-12d4-4699-8bdc-52040c712cab

Live ad units

To get a live ad unit from Partner Center and use it in your app:

  1. Create an ad unit on the In-app ads page in Partner Center. Be sure to specify the correct type of ad unit for the ad control you are using in your app.

    Note

    You can optionally enable ad mediation for your ad unit by configuring the settings in the Mediation settings section. Ad mediation enables you to maximize your ad revenue and app promotion capabilities by displaying ads from multiple ad networks, including ads from other paid ad networks and ads for Microsoft app promotion campaigns. By default, we automatically choose the ad mediation settings for your app using machine-learning algorithms to help you maximize your ad revenue across the markets your app supports, but you can optionally manually configure your mediation settings.

  2. After you create the new ad unit, retrieve the Application ID and Ad unit ID for the ad unit in the table of available ad units in the Monetize > In-app ads page.

    Note

    The application ID values for test ad units and live UWP ad units have different formats. Test application ID values are GUIDs. When you create a live UWP ad unit in Partner Center, the application ID value for the ad unit always matches the Store ID for your app (an example Store ID value looks like 9NBLGGH4R315).

  3. Assign the application ID and ad unit ID values in your app's code. For more information, see the following articles:

Manage ad units for multiple ad controls in your app

You can use multiple banner, interstitial, and native ad controls in a single app. In this scenario, we recommend that you assign a different ad unit to each control. Using different ad units for each control enables you to separately configure the mediation settings and get discrete reporting data for each control. This also enables our services to better optimize the ads we serve to your app.

Important

You can use each ad unit in only one app. If you use an ad unit in more than one app, ads will not be served for that ad unit.