Bug: MobileAds.initialize can take 30 seconds (!), without giving us any control

[Liran Barsisa]

Ad mediation is a feature by Admob, allowing us to use multiple ad-sources to compete for getting the best ad with the best revenue for out apps.

However, sometimes, some ad-networks (reported here and here) seem to take a huge amount of time to initialize, so much so that the Admob mediation just stops them with "Timeout" in the description, but this happens after 30 seconds...

Till all are initialized, we can't load any ads and show them. This means we could lose potential ads being shown in the first 30 seconds of users using the apps, not to mention bad experience all this time...

This affects Admob ads too, of course, as they can't start till everything is ready...

Please fix this issue.

What I suggest is:
1. Before publishing a new version, test it
2. Communicate with the ad-networks you support and tell them about issues, to solve together
3. Allow us to disable specific ad-networks in code, so that we could do it using remote-configs, for example.
4. Allow us to have a timeout of our own for `MobileAds.initialize` , so that the mediation will use what was initialized so far, and ignore those that didn't finish yet. No reason that one issue of some ad-network would punish all the rest...

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Thank you for contacting the Mobile Ads SDK Support team.

I will check with our team regarding your query and one of my team members will reach out to you once we have an update on this. Meanwhile, your patience is highly appreciated. 

This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02vH0OM:ref" (ADR-00287269)

Thanks,
 

Mobile Ads SDK Team

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