The play-services-ads API has changed (again)

Question

I've just updated the play-services-ads dependency from

implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:19.6.0'

to

implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:20.1.0'

and now the ad doesn't work anymore. In fact, it doesn't compile. This is what I have:

import com.google.android.gms.ads.doubleclick.PublisherAdRequest;
import com.google.android.gms.ads.doubleclick.PublisherAdView;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    PublisherAdView ad = findViewById(R.id.adView);
    PublisherAdRequest adRq = new PublisherAdRequest.Builder().build();
    ad.loadAd(adRq);

The doubleclick package doesn't exist anymore; and thus neither do PublisherAdView and PublisherAdRequest. The documentation shows an AdView instead of a PublisherAdView. I remember vaguely that I had to deal with this before, and if I remember correctly it was an AdView before I had to change it to PublisherAdView.

Is the reason known why google keeps changing the API back and forth?

Answer 1

The migration guide seems like in your case it's luckily just renames.

Using your example:

• doubleclick.PublisherAdView -> admanager.AdManagerAdView
• doubleclick.PublisherAdRequest -> admanager.AdManagerAdRequest

Ultimately, breaking changes with a new major version have to be expected. The release notes for 20.0.0 even explicitly state this will be a large change (along with all changes made):

This release is a MAJOR version update with several breaking changes. See the prepare for SDK v20 guide for more information on how to migrate.