UMP no way to determine opt-out?

[bott...@gmail.com]

Hello,

As others have mentioned, Admob / mobile ads sdk does not appear to serve any ads when a user opts out of all settings in the UMP form. While this technically might be correct (no consent, no ads), practically speaking this is not very useful as most apps monetise on ads or on in-app purchases to disable those ads.

What I'd expect at least is that we would be able to detect this situation, but there doesn't seem to be a mechanism to do so in UMP at present. If I create a form with a "do not consent" option, the consent status is still "obtained" when the user clicks that button and there is simply no status provided for "user did reject all options" either through clicking the "do not consent" button or by deselecting the options needed for showing ads.

So my questions are:

* Is it possible to detect that the user did not consent or did not enable all the required options to have the mobile ads sdk request non-personalised ads at the minimum?

* What's the expected response when clicking the "do not consent" button in the UMP pop up? Returning "obtained" is a very technical status that seems to reflect that the dialog was handled, not that the actual consent was obtained.

Thanks,

Hugo

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

Thank you for bringing up the possibility of detecting what the consent was. There are ways of detecting from SharedPreferences or NSUserDefaults- as described here - https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/GDPR-Transparency-and-Consent-Framework/blob/master/TCFv2/IAB%20Tech%20Lab%20-%20CMP%20API%20v2.md#what-is-the-cmp-in-app-internal-structure-for-the-defined-api.

We had an entrepreneurially minded developer claim that they implemented a way to detect non consent with a link to code they used that worked for them based on SharedPreferences access in this forum message. I will raise your request for a supported method of determining in a fine grained way what consent was given by user up with my team. You may monitor our UMP release notes(Android , iOS) for an update.

Regarding no ads when no consent is offered, there may be ad servers out there that might mediate through AdMob without need for consent.

Regarding Consent Obtained, it means that the user expressed his preference in the UMP form. The shorter version was picked.

Thank you again for your suggestions.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[bott...@gmail.com]

I doubt that the no ads situation is related to mediation or ad servers as I'm also getting this when enabling test ads.

Thanks for the reference to the SDK code. Requiring to poke into the shared preferences / NSUserDefaults (which are the implementation details of the SDK really) makes me feel this SDK is not ready for prime time yet really, which is a bit disappointing.

The entire functionality of giving managing consent resolves around knowing if the user did consent (not if the user clicked any button in the UI) and if so what the user selected. With that functionality missing, it's not a real practical or useful solution, while almost all apps using ads or analytics will need, especially under GDPR.

Hugo

[bott...@gmail.com]

Reading more through the docs I realise that UMP is just a delivery mechanism to set the IAB TC string which is then used in various SDKs. If the intention is to keep UMP/Funding choices scoped like that, then my suggestion would be to really document how this works in the UMP documentation since for users trying to use this as a "user consent framework" there's clearly a lot of things that are not handled. The forum post you linked to also pointed out those same omissions and there are various forum posts indicating that..

Hope this feedback is useful.

Hugo

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Hugo,

Thank you for the idea that it would be helpful if we documented how to determine consent - many publishers have their own fine-grained needs to know particular grants of consent that may not be covered by a simple standard method. I will raise this request and your comments to the rest of my team. You may monitor our UMP release notes (Android, iOS) for an update.

[bott...@gmail.com]

One last addition + a new related question as I determine how to go forward if you allow me :)

Another limitation seems to be that there's no way in UMP currently to express that some basic functionality is required; in my case a user would either need to opt in to non personalised ads at a minimum, or opt out entirely as an indication that that user prefers to "upgrade" for no ads for example (assuming that's the only part of my app using cookies or other identifiers that the user needs to give consent for). That model is similar to how many website present this in their cookie opt-in screens.

Currently my only option seems to be to look at the tcf string that is stored and then match that against what is needed at minimum and have some logic in the app to have the user take some kind of action, but it's far from ideal.

The question I have still is how the Admob SDK will behave without UMP? Does it assume all the proper consent is given and default to personalised ads like before? Is the npa=1 method still supported? Documentation is very sparse on this too, while all of this is very important to make sure we're compliant with GDPR.

Thanks again,

Hugo

[AndreasB]

The problem, as I see it, is that UMP/Funding Choices is not just that. It is also a mechanism that allows an app developer to inform their users about third party vendors that their data might be shared with, something that is necessary according to the GDPR.

UMP is actually very good at doing that - if I needed to create something from scratch that allowed me to swap in or out individual vendors without any need to update the app itself, I probably wouldn't bother. It's just that, while performing this functionality very well, it behaves like the proverbial elephant in the china shop in other regards, by actively destroying previously entered user consent whenever the user happens to tap on the wrong button.

Otherwise, I completely agree with your assessment that all of this doesn't really feel like a fully developed solution yet.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi all,

Thanks again for adding insights regarding this matter. Rest assured, the team actively looking into your queries and suggestions. We will get back to this thread once we have an update.


Regards,

Sherwin Diesta Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Lok Raj Kunwar]

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello, 
The methods to set npa are being removed from the SDK in upcoming version 8/20 releases. What the UMP SDK does is it sets the IAB consent string in shared settings. The GMA SDK simply looks for the IAB string and determines the appropriate request flags for the settings. Without setting the IAB string, the GMA will treat the ad requests as "unknown" meaning it can't determine if consent was given or not. Therefore personalized ads will not be served. Thanks.


Jon

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[Blue Ocean]

> The methods to set npa are being removed from the SDK in upcoming version 8/20 releases.

It seems that the method of setting the "npa" value is maintained in 20.0.0. ( https://developers.google.com/admob/android/eu-consent#forward-consent )

Does the "npa" value work the same as the previous version? ( https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/E7HYYUGBgJg/m/sF2No4TJAgAJ )

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Blue Ocean,

The previous response is incorrect. https://developers.google.com/admob/android/eu-consent#forward-consent is still valid in 8/20 releases. Yes, it works the same as in previous versions.

Thanks,
Jill
Google Mobile Ads SDK Team

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