RE: [google-admob-ads-sdk] Ad clicks no longer reporting in IOS apps

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. First allow me to say that I needed to delete your original post as it contained personal information. I have though included in the post with the personal removed.

I have had a major issue since the begging of February where ad click for my IOS applications dropped to zero despite impressions remaining the same/growing slightly.

The main app in question is:
ca-app-pub-xxxxxxxxx~xxxxx


I have changed a few things. At the beginning of January my app became a Capacitor app with a different plugin to handle the admobskd integration and added the ATT message. Clicks remained fairly stable, but there was a drop in eCPM.

At the beginning of February I added the following to my info.plist:
<key>SKAdNetworkItems</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>SKAdNetworkIdentifier</key>
<string>cstr6suwn9.skadnetwork</string>
</dict>
</array>

It's after this release that my clicks stopped. (Although it appears that clicks are still being made, but they are then removed in firebase and admob reporting).

I have been speaking with the admob publisher support team who passed me through to you as they believe there is an issue with my admob SDK implementation.

While I couldn't find an issue with ads when testing with test ads, at the request of the admob publisher support team I recorded a charles session with real ads which I've attached.
In this session I launched the app, the first advert was for a game download, when I clicked it the ad froze but it did not launch a download page/go anywhere else. The second ad that loaded was a link to a website. When I clicked that it went to the website fine.

Please let me know what other information you need.
 

With that being said, is it also possible to get a simple sample app that is able to display this behavior. You can share it via "Reply to author" button. Also from what I can see with what was sent to us. It appears to not be all ads that are showing this issue.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me. Yes I'll package up the app for you now, but the 'reply to author' button is not available to me. Is there another way I can send it to you?

Thanks,

Kevin

[munster Munktch]

Hi, the original post still contains personal information. Kevin you are not alone. I have had the exact same problem since the 5th of Feb after updating around the 27th of Jan. The 27th of Jan is also the date I added cstr6suwn9.skadnetwork to the info.plist. It worked fine for over a week before all clicks dropping to nearly zero. Impressions remained high but recently match rate dropped to around 25% also but only for this one app on ios. The android version is unaffected. 

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the response back. You can also send it directly to us at this email address.

• mobileadssdk...@gmail.com

Also we suggest to reference this post just to make sure we have the correct file.

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Excellent, thank you.

I have created a blank ionic capacitor app with the same info.plist file as my project and the admob plugin - it displays the same behaviour. A url ad is fine, but an app download ad does nothing on click.

I will email the zip across now.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Thanks for sharing. Hopefully we can find the solution soon enough. My android apps are also unaffected.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for sending over the information. Having looked at the file. I see that Ionic Capacitor is a 3rd party IDE that does cross platform development. With that in mind we are only able to support apps developed in Android Studio, Xcode and Unity. We would though suggest that you reach out to there community . To see if any other people have seen this issue before.

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Hi, thanks for the response.

I understand that you don't support capacitor apps, and that's totally understandable. However everything was working integrating with the Admob SDK (v7.69.0) with the same setup before I added the SKAdNetworkItems item to my plist files for my IOS apps.

The project I sent you contains a valid xcode project under the IOS folder, with the plist file. I was hoping you could at least review the charles session for common SDK implementation errors and check my plist file for setup issues.

I am speaking with the capacitor community as well as it could well be an error in the plugin. However it's a community project maintained by volunteers and we are all in the dark around this at this point. Any advice you can give you would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the response back. I was able to look over the files that you sent us. There looks to be nothing wrong with the setup. From what we can tell it looks correct. The fact that you are having issues could be several reasons. On our side, the best I could suggest is to contact our Product Support Team and see if there is anything wrong with your account. Or see what might happen on the capacitor forums.

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Hi, thanks for taking the time. At least that's one less thing it can be.

I have been speaking to the product support team for the last 3 weeks. It was only when we spotted that specific ad clicks were failing that they referred me to you.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the response back. Also the additional information that Product Support gave you. the extra item that you just mentioned is something that we would consider. As we do not know that part. With that in mind, I would suggest also that if you can get a Charles log of times when you have issues with the ads. You can share that with us and we can look into that. Sometimes there are issues with creatives that we can not see here. But can bring to our team and they can look more into that.

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Thanks, I have sent the Charles session to your email address.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for getting back to us. This is to confirm that we've received the requested information. Let me raise this (including the reports and discussion thus far) to the rest of the team for further investigation, and to get their insight as well. I'll let you know the soonest they provide their findings.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Excellent,

Thank you for the help so far.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Kevin,

After taking a closer look at the Charles log, nothing catches my eye regarding incorrect SDK implementation. Figuring out where the click is can sometimes be difficult since different creatives may embed their own click URLs, but I did see https://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/pcs/click happen 9 seconds after the second ad shows, which sounds consistent with your experience where the second click worked. I was unable to verify exactly where that URL was sourced though, and that URL looks a little bit different than the URLs pinged for our Demo ad units. If you could record another Charles session against the demo ad unit, I'd be happy to check again to verify the click URL against that ad. However, I suspect things are working here and don't expect that to uncover much.

Other than that, I'm not any more closer to helping you pinpoint the culprit. I think your SDK implementation is fine based on the Charles log. Additionally, the addition of the SKAdNetwork won't impact click behavior.

My only other longshot theory (and it's a longshot) is the Capacitor plugin or some other code you included is doing something to mess with all WKWebView's or something.

I guess as a next step, share a Charles log against the demo ad unit so we can tick off that box? Unfortunately, that's the only idea I have.

Thanks,
Eric, Mobile Ads SDK team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

I have emailed over the Charles session as requested and supplied as much information as I can.

Thanks again,

Kevin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Thanks for sharing Kevin. We moved this discussion off the forum, but for posterity here, clicks are being pinged by the SDK as I mentioned in the previous post, and this specific issue looks to be account-related.

[Kevin Ainley-Walker]

Hi, I have done so.

Thanks for your time looking into this,

Kevin

[Socisoftware]

I've been experiencing a very similar issue to this.

Clicks and my CTR has significantly dropped in a single day. The app has maintained a CTR of 4% over years and has gone to a CTR of 0.08% overnight. It's also only happening on the iOS version of the app while the Android version is behaving normally. I've implemented SKAdNetworkIdentifier according to the documentation.

In the hopes of getting a simple resolution here, could you provide more detail on the cause of the problem that Kevin faced? You mentioned it was account related and I'd like to provide the support team with a bit more information and direction.

Thank you

[munster Munktch]

I have this problem currently and after speaking with Admob support via email they told me it was due to invalid activity. Some interesting points...

• In the policy center section of Admob it states " Congratulations! No issues detected."
• The android version of the same app has not been affected, yet it is exactly the same app as the ios version and has 4 or 5 times more users. 
• The SDK support here checked my implementation and said everything was fine.

I suspect that there is some relation to the SKAdNetworkIdentifier as that was implemented around 2 weeks before this happened. Its been 6 weeks now and some clicks are started to get registered again but its nowhere near what it was before.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Socisoftware,

In the off-forum debugging I did with Kevin, the insight that led me to believe it was account related is that you can split a report by app version, and see the same app versions that were getting significant traffic all of a sudden had a CTR drop to 0. This indicated that it wasn't a bad release he did with Capacitor, but the same software that was generating clicks wasn't anymore.

I'm also pretty sure SKAdNetworkIdentifier is not related. Having SKAdNetworkIdentifier in your app is helpful (and maybe necessary if IDFA is unavailable) for advertisers to track app install conversions. Without it, they will likely not buy app install ads. However, no bid would happen at request time, not click time. Another piece of the debugging in Kevin's app is that the clicks URLs were being pinged by the SDK in his app. Why they don't show up in reporting still remains a mystery, but I think it is account related.

I'd suggest the same to you @munster Munktch, try breaking down your AdMob report by app version. Perhaps particular versions of your apps were flagged for inactivity and have no clicks, and the ones that aren't have a normal click rate.

Thanks,
Eric, Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Sociosoftware]

Strangely enough I had also implemented SKAdNetworkIdentifier about two weeks before this issue. I don't want to jump to conclusions as it could just be a coincidence.

Here are my findings thus far:

• Every version up to and including 4.0.15 had a strong CTR. Usually around 4-6%.
• From 4.0.16 onwards, CTR dropped to below 0.1%.

At a glance it looks like 4.0.16 is responsible for the drop. However, if broken down into app version AND date:

• 4.0.16 was released on the 8th of March. 
• CTR dropped on the 9th of March.
• On the day of the 8th of March, 4.0.16 (old version) still maintained a strong CTR of 5%.
• On the day of the 8th of March, 4.0.16 (new version) still maintained a strong CTR of 6%. It had about 70% of impressions for that day, so there is enough data to work with.
• On the 9th of March, 4.0.15 had a low CTR of 0.1%. However, most users had updated so there is not enough data to work with here.
• On the 9th of march, 4.0.16, had a low CTR of 0.1%. Almost all impressions from that day were on 4.0.16.

My conclusion is that this is not related to code or configuration. If it was, then 4.0.16 would not have had a strong CTR on the 8th of March before the drop. It would have immediately dropped the CTR upon release.

That being said, I had updated quite a few dependencies going from 4.0.15 to 4.0.16. The app is built on Flutter and Firebase. Flutter and Dart had released a major new version, and all the associated Firebase dependencies were also updated. Although when inspecting the native iOS app bundle that gets generated I don't spot anything wrong. It's still possible that there's an issue with one of these Google Firebase dependencies. To rule out any code configuration, I'm releasing an update of the app that will run on the old dependencies, project configuration and Flutter version. I will monitor the ad performance for a few days to see if anything improves. if it jumps back to normal then we can assume it was an issue with code/config. If it stays the same, then it's not an issue with code or config, but likely an account issue.

A few other notes:

• Users have been reporting that some ads do not have a close button. I've seen this reported elsewhere on the forum.
• One user reported that some ads are blank and simply grey.

Another possibility is that the app was flagged on the SKAdNetwork due to bugs where the close button was not visible. Now it is not being selected by advertisers. I will explore this once I rule out the configuration issues.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Sociosoftware,

Thanks for confirming that it was the same app version for you too that had the click drop day/day. This again leads me to believe it's not a technical integration issue but a policy-related one.

Regarding ads not clickable, I'm not sure which thread you're referring to, but I do see we have fixed a report like that in the past few months. Even if it is a different flavor of issue, bad creatives would be more of a corner case and not result in a 99% drop in CTR.

[John Doe]

I am not from AdMob, but your description seems to fit "Confirmed click". You should probably read this article and check if it is the case.

[Sociosoftware]

The Confirmed Click system does seem to fit the problem here. However, the Google article states it is only for banner and native ads. I am using interstitial ads. It's still possible that the documentation just doesn't mention it, so I'll be sure to check with product support and see if they can at least tell me if that is being applied.

I have not ruled out the possibility of the dependency upgrades causing this issue. I've rolled back to an older version from before the issue occurred using Git and have published that to the store. I'll monitor the performance of that and will update my findings here. I'll have to give it at least a few days though.

@Eric it might also not be a specific creative that caused the problem. If something like the Confirmed Click is being applied to the app because of invalid clicks, it could explain why it has suddenly dropped to near 0. I think I was mixing issues up in my previous post. The one issue that I definitely was experiencing was this one: https://github.com/FirebaseExtended/flutterfire/issues/3090. Some users did report seeing this, though I couldn't reliably reproduce it on my test devices. I eventually got the issue on a physical iPhone and was able to fix it. Although I think this is more of an issue with the Flutter Admob dependency and not necessarily an issue with the core sdk. Anyway, an idea is that something like this could have caused invalid traffic which in turn caused a flag or system to be applied to the app's account. Even though the Android and iOS displays ads at the same times/places, because this issue only happened on iOS it could explain why only the iOS ads are affected.

Although this is looking more and more like an account or policy issue, I'll be sure to post my findings here with the older version now published to the store. If nothing else it will at least provide some certainty.

Thank you for everyone's time thus far.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

The confirmed click behavior is a good find, and could explain the drop. "Near 0", something like 0.0x% CTR still seems a bit low to me, but I would defer to product support there.

As for particular creatives showing ads in the non-safe area, creatives by default are limited to the safe area. However, advertisers can opt-out of having their creatives being limited to the safe area, to allow for a nicer full screen experience. Unfortunately, some creatives (and usually it's the 3rd party creatives coming from an Ad exchange) opt out of that safe area limitation, but then their html doesn't take that unsafe area into account, leading to screenshots you see on https://github.com/FirebaseExtended/flutterfire/issues/3090, even when not using the Flutter plugin.

I can't confirm whether the interstitial behavior of the Firebase plugin further contributes to this problem as well. I suggest refiling the issue at https://github.com/googleads/googleads-mobile-flutter for confirmation.  I did however try our test interstitial on a vanilla iOS application running iPhone X, and saw the ad being limited to safe area as expected (screenshot attached). So if that same test ad consistently has that close button behavior on Flutter integrations (as reported in https://github.com/FirebaseExtended/flutterfire/issues/3090), perhaps the Flutter plugin does have a bug.

Thanks,
Eric, Mobile Ads SDK Tam

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Sociosoftware]

An update on my findings:

I tried re-uploading an older build from before my CTR dropped. This build has now been live for about 5 days. CTR is still very low. It has slow been climbing up to 0.38%. Something is clearly still wrong as it has never been this low in the years it has been published. Android shows ads at the same time/place and is performing normally.

This, coupled with the fact that 4.0.15 also had a drop in CTR overnight without any changes (see above), confirms that the issue is not a configuration/code issue. To summarize:

• 4.0.15 was performing normally, then dropped CTR overnight.
• All subsequent versions also had extremely low CTR
• Rolling back to a version before 4.0.15, which historically performed normally, and uploading it to the store still resulted in low CTR

I contacted product support with this information. They have informed me that it is not confirmed click being applied. They also stated that there are no internal policies or limitations being applied to the app or ad unit. They've asked me to check here on the forum to see if my SKAdnetwork settings are correct. I'm pretty sure the config is fine, since the ads were performing normally before the sudden drop with the same SKAdnetwork config. Eric, could I send you my info.plist privately so that you can confirm the settings are correct?

[Sociosoftware]

Looks like I need permission to reply to author privately in this group. Please grant me permission so that I can send you the app bundle and charles logs.

On Wednesday, March 24, 2021 at 10:56:45 PM UTC+4 mobileadssdkforumadvisor wrote:

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Sociosoftware,

The group setting is to allow Reply privately to author to all members (screenshot attached), but I tested with a test account with a member-level setting and I also see that option disabled. Frustrating... That said, my responses should also be going to your email address in addition to the forum, so you may be able to reply privately from your gmail account.

I'm not sure what I'd look for in the Info.plist as a reason for clicks going down. SKAdNetworks should increase the buyer pool and also theoretically means more relevant ads being served that may result in organic higher click through rates, but I wouldn't be able to explain an instant drop. That said, I'd be happy to take a quick look. On a somewhat related note, the recommended list of SKAdNetworks was recently updated at https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/ios14#skadnetwork to include additional buyers.

Thanks,

[munster Munktch]

Did any body manage to get to the bottom of this?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi,

There is no definitive conclusion, but the latest on this thread is:

1) We have ruled out any SDK or SDK implementation issues based on manual review of Charles proxy logs sent by users with issues.
2) Clicks going straight to 0 are likely policy related, particularly if your front-end report shows sharp drops for the same app version over a certain time period. Please check the policy center in the AdMob UI for updates.
3) An app that is determined to have many accidental clicks may trigger ads to be served with the confirmed click flow to that app, which would result in less accidental clicks.


Further debugging on 2) and 3) are account/performance-specific that we aren't equipped to support on this forum. Please reach out to https://support.google.com/admob/gethelp for further help on those.

[Douglas Alves]

Same here! My earnings are becoming dust...

I am seeing CTR drop of 96% and I haven't updated my app 45 days.

It started dropping on March 28th and never got back up.

I am really looking forward to a "light at the end of the tunnel".

How about you? Any luck?

[Sociosoftware]

Unfortunately there has been no resolution for my case at all.

The SDK team has been very helpful. I've sent in my plist files and they confirmed that they are configured correctly. Eric mentioned a few changes and additional things I could insert into my info.plist, which I did. They didn't seem to make any difference to the CTR though.

This issue started on the 8th of March for me and I opened a ticket with support a week later.

Findings thus far:

• Not related to an app update, code, config (same version's performance dropped. I also re-released and older version which maintained a low CTR)
• Not related to code or config
• No policy violations (nothing in the Admob dashboard. Also confirmed by Admob support)
• Not confirmed click (confirmed by Admob support)
• Admob account, app and ad unit are in good standing (confirmed by Admob support)

Admob support has asked me for some Charles logs. I submitted them on the 30th of March and I'm still waiting for an update or any insight. Thus far the cause of the problem is still unknown, but it looks very likely to be something related to the publisher's account rather than code.

I don't really want to post here too often, especially as it doesn't look like it's related to the SDK. I'll post again should I ever find a solution or if it turns out that it is somehow related to the SDK.

[HYM]

Hi,  Sociosoftware.

i have same problem, get any solution for this case?

[Khizar Tariq]

Hi , I am facing exactly the same problem, how did you contact admob support team? For me contact form is not working

--

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-admob-ads...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-admob-ads-sdk/53deb6bc-e513-45d0-bac0-ed419af622bcn%40googlegroups.com.

[munster Munktch]

Admob support will not help you. Nobody can. You can only pray to the google admob bots.

[HYM]

i think to all pepole have problem to send "form" i have problem to contact to them too.

maybe the problem in the old version of SDK? i try in the next days to change to new SDK VERSION - 8.5.0
https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/download

if its fix the problem i update.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi all,

For the contact us page not working, there is a separate thread here where we will consolidate updates. Please follow that thread instead.

Regarding the specific issue on this thread, the evidence proved from Sociosoftware showed that in AdMob reports, click rates started dropping overnight for the same app/same app version, suggesting that it has nothing to do with your app's implementation. We also looked at charles logs and saw the the SDK pinging click URLs as expected when running manual tests.

For Sociosoftware, admob product support ruled out:

• No policy violations (nothing in the Admob dashboard. Also confirmed by Admob support)
• Not confirmed click (confirmed by Admob support)
• Admob account, app and ad unit are in good standing (confirmed by Admob support)

But product support is still in the best position to advise on what the issue may be (and for your account, some of these things ruled out for Sociosoftware may still apply to you). So my action item for now is to escalate why the help form is down, which I'll update on the other thread.

[Kevin]

Hi  Sociosoftware,

you have any soultion about that? i update to new SDK ADMOB 8.5.0 i think maybe its fix the our problem but its not fix and i stuck on 0 click for long time
and cant open case in the account admob (have error when try send form) and i open in the forum there ask for that, but dont get any answer about that.

i very happy if someone can update soultion about that, every day we lost many revneu beacuse that :(

[Sociosoftware]

Unfortunately I do not have any updates. 

CTR remains very low. I have also tried updating the SDK and changing configuration, but I don't believe that this is anything on the publisher/developer's side. I still have an open ticket with Admob support. They email me about once a week thanking me for my patience and apologizing for the lack of updates.

No resolution thus far, I will update if I ever gain clarity.

[Kevin]

Sociosoftware, 

thank for your update, i think maybe admob get ban to our banner in the account (with the robot of the system mistake from them)
i try remove the "Ad units" and create new "Ad units" i hope its soultion of the our problem.

i to do that and update if its fix the problem

[Kevin]

Hi to all.

after i update the sdk to version 8.5.0 i wait more up weeks, and its dont fix the problem.

i open before few days case in the admob and wait for answer, its take time and with lost many revnue.
maybe someone have solution?

Thanks.

[Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers]

Reposting the last inquiry (https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/CBjqRuT0VHc) from the forum as it wasn't routed to our support queue. 

Regards, 

 

Princess Pamela Pineda  

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Sociosoftware]

Update:

Admob Support has closed my ticket without "any further insights" to share. In other words: they also don't know what's happening. They have said that my clicks may  return to normal in the future. After about 3 months of them investigating this issue they don't have any insight at all and have simply closed the ticket without providing any assistance.

I still don't believe this is SDK, configuration or code related and I do hope that others have success in resolving this.

[Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers]

Reposting the last inquiry (https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/CBjqRuT0VHc) from the forum as it wasn't routed to our support queue. 

Regards, 

 

Princess Pamela Pineda  

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Kevin]

Hi

have any soultion? i to do research about that and read evry post i see about that and for any person have this problem its happen after its add the "skadnetwork" 
i sure the problem its beacuse "skadnetwork" maybe bug in the version or write not good code.

" Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers"

can please check about this? if this realy the problem? in the account admob dont give open case.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Kevin,

We've debunked that theory that it's related to SKAdNetwork because reports from other users have shown the same app version had a significant drop in clicks from one day to the next, suggesting it's not related to a new release with SKAdNetwork.

Additionally, SKAdNetworks doesn't affect the Google Mobile Ads SDK sending click pings. SKAdNetwork identifiers only affects whether an advertiser would get a conversion ping to better understand the return on investment for the clicks they are being charged for.

Unfortunately, we still don't know why the drop in clicks happened -- it's more of a question for AdMob product support - https://support.google.com/admob/community.

[Kevin]

Hi,

i have some soultion for this case, i fix crashed in my app and add new Ad untis. all the time i have just " Ad units" of banner
and now i remove the banner ads and add new ad units of "Interstitial" now click i get dont remove and the revenue its stay.

the soultion for this case? i think need create new "ad untis" + fix crashed and its help. for me its help in the next i add again the ads banner and hope the click on there stay too.

Thanks for all.

[Kevin]

Hi to all

the banner ads on my app dont get click, its stuck for few months.
(its show zero clicks)

i try remove the units ads create new and more.. i dont found and soultion for that, and the admob dont give open case.
i update all time to last sdk and its dont help

someone can please update if found any soultion for that?

[Smooth]

Hello My app has been connected to my account but when I try ads on the simulator they say test mode so I'm wondering what going on ?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

@Kevin As discussed earlier on this thread, your problem looks to be unrelated to SDK implementation, and must be diagnosed by product support at https://support.google.com/admob/community.

@Smooth, per https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/test-ads#enable_test_devices, iOS simulators is automatically configured as a test device, and so it will get that "Test mode" behavior.

[Martin]

Hello Google Team,

I have exactly the same issue as everyone else here. It happened to one of my apps in August and still hasn't improved until today. Banners still appear, impressions are still on normal level as always but clicks are suddenly not counted. CTR dropped to 0.00% from one day to another in August and stays ether until today.

Policy center of Admob states: "Congratulations! No issues detected." so it can't be a policy issue. It also can't be a SDK implementation issue as I have changed nothing in almost a year before the CTR dropped to 0.

Please SDK Team, can you escalate the issue to someone who can really help? I have already contacted AdMob support. But their replies aren't helpful at all. They are always very vague and can't solve the issue. But there are obviously quite a few developers who have made the same experience here in this threat and in others (https://groups.google.com/u/2/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/zKyyDUgrpfw + https://support.google.com/admob/thread/130625691/impressions-normal-clicks-suddenly-not-counted-no-violation?hl=en) but no one can help them. No policy violation is shown but clicks are not counted anymore suddenly. Other developers experience the same issue as well since months and no one from Google helps :-(

Thank you so much!

Kind regards,

Martin

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Martin,

Thank you for your response.

I'm sorry to hear that you're having troubles in contacting our Product Support Team. But, please do note that the SDK just requests an ad to the ad server (E.g: AdMob), and I'm afraid that it doesn't have any control on fill rate / match rate/ CTR of your app. That said, we would recommend raising this again to our Product Support team instead. The product specialist there should be able to assist you further on this, and wait for them to respond to you. We hope that you get a positive response from them the soonest time possible.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Nashir,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We would start by suggesting that you read this article which talks about new apps that have just been released. The other thing we are suggesting is that if you are seeing this issue on newer android S phones, to add in the <user-permission> for getting the AD_ID if using the current SDK, 20.0.4. After all this if the issue still persist, we suggest then to contact our Product Support Team , as they have the tools to look into the ad serving side of this.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Ettore]

Hi All,

Starting from 18 October, my Admob Ad units on IOS don't recognize clicks. sometimes one click appears in some Ad units, but after some minutes it disappears. I have the same android app counterpart and the clicks are recognized very well. I've enabled SKAdNetwork as reported in the AdMob guide for ios 14+.  One week ago I also add ATT message and EU consent for European users. All my devices are in test mode and no self-click was made. The SDK is the last 8.12.0 and no policy issue was reported.

I've read the same problem from many users but no solution is provided.

Any help please,

Regards

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Ettore,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

Can you confirm if you already reach out to the Product Support Team? If not yet, I would recommend reaching out to them as this is more related to the clicks that are being reported into your account. Kindly note that the SDK just requests an ad to the ad server (E.g: AdMob), and I'm afraid that it doesn't have any control on fill rate / match rate/ CTR of your app. We hope that you get a positive response from them the soonest time possible.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Peter Rule]

Hi

I have the same issue as of 12 January with a new release.  This new release does not record any clicks.  It used Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK 8.11.0 and was the first version of the app targeting iOS15.

The app has been in production for 4 year and always received clicks.

There are no policy violations.

This seems to be affecting a lot of developers.

regards

Peter

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

Can you confirm if you already reach out to the Product Support Team? If not yet, I would recommend reaching out to us, as they have more tools on checking the recording of clicks. We hope that you get a positive response from them the soonest time possible.

[Nadhir Boukorsi]

are you using native ads?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Nadhir,

Thank you for your response.

Can you confirm if you already reach out to the Product Support Team? If not yet, I would recommend reaching out to them as they can help you with regard to your previous concern. Then for your message for native ads, can you confirm what you mean by this?

[Peter Rule]

No. Just banner ads.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your response.

Can you confirm if you already reach out to the Product Support Team? If not yet, I would recommend reaching out to them as they can help you with regard to your previous concern.

Regards,

[Nadhir Boukorsi]

I have the same problem. Suddenly stop counting the clicks. I don't think they will help us. We can meet somewhere (like here) and try to find the common mistake we made and find a solution.

[Kevin]

Hi all can follow on this case here: https://support.google.com/admob/thread/149727097/clicks-stopped-completely-on-one-of-my-apps?hl=en

see my commend i hope its can help you

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for getting back to us.

As previously mentioned by my colleague(Princess), we suggest that you reach out to the  Product Support Team for your click-related concerns.

We hope that you receive their response the soonest time possible.

Regards,

Mark Kevin Albios Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref

[Peter Rule]

The interesting thing with my experience of this is that it only started with a new version of my app that had the AdMob SDK updated.  From the new Ads Activity report I can see that old versions of my app are still receiving clicks.

This indicates that the issue is connected to the SDK?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your response.

As one of our team members mentioned previously, this issue looks to be unrelated to SDK implementation, and must be diagnosed by product support at https://support.google.com/admob/community.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2DL4EQ:ref