[📚] Feature Request: Banner Ad Preloading / Pre-warm Manager

[ifarhanpatel]

Summary

Enable preloading of banner ads (GADBannerView / AdView) so they can be loaded off-screen and attached instantly when required—reducing latency and improving user experience.

Motivation

Developers often experience noticeable delays when rendering banners, especially adaptive or MREC units. The ability to preload banners ahead of time can make ad displays feel instant while maintaining compliance.

[ifarhanpatel]

I'll be happy to contribute this feature if we have consensus after discussion.

[mikehardy]

I'm not sure what the request is here? If I recall correctly, any of the ads can be loaded any time, and it is separate - as an API - from showing them. I take that to mean that you can already do what you want. load when you like (in background) and show when you like (whenever it makes sense).

[ifarhanpatel]

This request is specifically about banner ads. When using the component, there doesn’t seem to be a way to preload it — it starts loading automatically on mount and doesn’t expose any separate API for preloading.

[mikehardy]

react-native-google-mobile-ads/src/ads/BannerAd.tsx

Lines 28 to 32 in deee2a1

	load() {
	if (this.ref.current) {
	Commands.load(this.ref.current);
	}
	}

I appear to be missing something, but this seems to be a load method on BannerAd ?

[ifarhanpatel]

@mikehardy yeah, I saw that too. From what I understand, that load() method is part of the internal BannerAdRef, so you can call it after the component mounts via a ref.

But it still requires the to be rendered in the tree — so it’s effectively re-loading an already mounted ad, not preloading it ahead of time like we can do with InterstitialAd or AppOpenAd.

Just wanted to confirm if that’s what you meant — or if there’s actually a way to trigger that load before render (offscreen / cached), similar to other ad types?

[mikehardy]

@ifarhanpatel have you tried instrumenting the code with some native System.err prints on the java side (or similar on ios if you want to try there) to see if your understanding matches observations?

It really does seem if you call load, it will go native as a "load" command tied to a view ref (rendered and mounted or not?) and load the ad...

react-native-google-mobile-ads/android/src/main/java/io/invertase/googlemobileads/ReactNativeGoogleMobileAdsBannerAdViewManager.java

Lines 91 to 105 in deee2a1

	public void receiveCommand(
	@NonNull ReactNativeAdView reactViewGroup, String commandId, @Nullable ReadableArray args) {
	super.receiveCommand(reactViewGroup, commandId, args);
	if (commandId.equals(COMMAND_ID_RECORD_MANUAL_IMPRESSION)) {
	BaseAdView adView = getAdView(reactViewGroup);
	if (adView instanceof AdManagerAdView) {
	((AdManagerAdView) adView).recordManualImpression();
	}
	} else if (commandId.equals(COMMAND_ID_LOAD)) {
	BaseAdView adView = getAdView(reactViewGroup);
	AdRequest request = reactViewGroup.getRequest();
	adView.loadAd(request);
	}
	}

https://developers.google.com/admob/android/reference/com/google/android/gms/ads/BaseAdView#loadAd(com.google.android.gms.ads.AdRequest)