OnUserEarnedReward callback not being fired consistently

[Krzysztof Poprawa]

Hello,

I've been using AdMob SDK for well over a year now with my Unity application with additional ad networks setup for mediation. The only ad format that I'm using is rewarded video, which lets users get some extra resources/functionalities by watching a video - which was the purpose of rewarded ads as per my understanding.

Everything was working fine until just recently, when my AdMob account was hit with the dreaded "Ad Serving Limit" curse for invalid traffic apparently. For a long time now, I'v been using test ad placements for all development builds so I'm more then sure that I'm not watching live ads anywhere. So it's all the more confusing to me, what constitutes invalid traffic in terms of rewarded ads? Too many watched ads by a single user? I thought that this was the whole purpose of rewarded ads, to encourage users to watch as many of them as possible? None of the call to action buttons are misleading or underhanded mind you.

Saying that, it's not the end of the issues unfortunatelly. After getting ad limit put on my AdMob account, an underlying issue came to light. My users can still watch ads through mediation networks but for some unknown reason, they have to watch as much as 3-5 ads to get a SINGLE reward. The OnUserEarnedReward is not firing consistently for mediated ads - any idea on what might be the reason behind it? I'm positive that it worked just fine before the ad serving limit was placed and there were no changes to the application itself in-between. It's quite strange because OnAdClosed is called just fine (I'm using this callback to re-load ads). As per the  AdMob  help center, this limit should be more or less 'transparent' for mediated ads meaning it shouldn't affect them at all. But it clearly does, not only the fill rate is mediocre to say the least (AdMob reports ~50% fill rate for all mediators while the mediators themselves report 95%+ fill rate) but also this issue with callback not being fired.

I know that the interim solution would be to add more ad networks and wait for my traffic to be asses (which judging by this forum and the AdMob forum might happen... never?) but unless this issue with callbacks is fixed that won't help much and only irritate my users all the more.

So here are my questions:

1. What might be causing this randomness with OnUserEarnedReward event not being called after watching mediated ads?

2. Would it be worthwhile to create new ad placement and move all the users to this new ad placement? Or will it be considered a 'shady' practice and it's better to stick with the original one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

/Chris

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Krzysztof,

Thank you for reaching out to us. In looking over your post, it seems that your account has had some restriction placed on it that is causing the ads to limited to you. As to what could cause this? We are unable to look into that. For that you would need to contact out Product Support Team , as they have the tools to look into that.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Krzysztof Poprawa]

Hello William,

What about my second issue where the OnUserEarnedReward callback of the AdMob SDK is not being fired most of the time for mediated ads?

/Chris

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Krzysztof,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

I'm a colleague of William and will be assisting you on this. With regard to your second issue, we would like to request a copy of your sample app and steps to replicate it so that we can check your implementation on why OnUserEarnedReward callback is not being fired. You can send it via Reply privately to author option or send it directly to mobileads...@gmail.com. Kindly inform us on this thread if you sent it directly to the email provided.

Also, I see that you mentioned that you are encountering an ad serving limit? You can check this article on how you can prevent it, and as my colleague mentioned to fix this you may want to reach out to our Product Support Team.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Krzysztof Poprawa]

Hello,

The issue is not that it's not being fired - for test ad placements it works perfectly fine every single time - the issue is that it's not always being fired for mediated ads. And as you can imagine that is an issue that's very hard to reproduce on demand, sometimes it works fine and sometimes it doesn't.

Saying that, what do you mean by sample app? Do you need me to create a fully working sample unity application and send you the source code for it? Or you can do your tests on a live version of my app? As it's currently available freely on Google Play Store.

As for the ad limit, unfortunately the article you provided is not helpful at all. I'm following all the suggestions and still have the limit on my account. On top of that, the article doesn't recognize RewardedAds as  possible ad format which makes all the more confusing.

/Chris

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Krzysztof,

Thank you for the response. For the first part of this, the fact that you can get test ads to appear indicates that the SDK is implemented properly. The fact that they are not being served on a constant basis indicates a serving issue. Also the Ad serving limit is something that has nothing to do with the SDK. But it is handled by our Product Support Team . As we do not have visibility on what could be causing that.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

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