No one likes advertisements, especially on mobile devices where screen space is limited, but they are often a necessity to pay for development and server costs. Google’s Flutter framework is becoming a popular way to build cross-platform applications, but there are fewer options for advertising compared to native apps or websites. Flutter Google Mobile Ads SDK has only been available as a public beta, but now it’s officially ready for everyone to use.
“Today, we are excited to announce the Google Mobile Ads SDK for Flutter is now generally available, after a six-month beta period. This means we’re ready for the most demanding Flutter apps to show in-app ads in production,” Google announced. The SDK supports all of Google’s mobile ad formats, including banners, interstitials, rewarded videos, native ads (which match the look and feel of the app), and app open ads. The advertisements can be set up and managed using Google AdMob and Google Ad manager.
Even though Flutter is available on desktop platforms — version 1.5 added initial Windows, Mac, and Linux compiling in 2019 — the new advertising SDK only supports Android and iOS for now. If you’re a developer creating cross-platform desktop Flutter apps, you’ll have to use another advertising framework, or embed web ads in a WebView container.
Google has brought many improvements to the Flutter framework over the past few months. Flutter 2.2 was released during Google I/O earlier this year, with null safety enabled by default in new projects, resource caching in compiled web apps with service workers, and a new payment plugin for iOS and Android. More recently, Flutter 2.5 arrived in September with new full-screen options on Android, initial support for Material You elements, an upgraded IntelliJ/Android Studio plugin, and new commands in the Visual Studio Code plugin.
More information about the Google Mobile Ads SDK can be found on the Dart packages repository.
