Is Games app ID required for Admob support?

I guess I’m confused if whether or not you have to enable game services through the Google Play Console in order to get Admob to work, even though my application does NOT utilize leaderboards, events…etc. I can’t grasp the concept of generating the keystores that Google Play game services wants in the package when you need to already have the APK uploaded in order to get to that point in the linking. If someone could clarify the process I would greatly appreciate it because as things stands now, I have two drafts going in Google Play Console…one in game services, and one the all applications dashboard and don’t know how to proceed with either.