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iOS occasional banner display hiccups

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Emmanuel

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Jan 10, 2025, 1:31:47 PMJan 10
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
I have noticed adaptive banner ads in our iOS app are sometimes not displaying even though an ad was successful loaded and the UIView appears to be properly placed.

Without touching the view hierarchy, switching the app to background and back to foreground or toggling the light/dark mode immediately makes the banner instantly visible.

It seems the banner ads causing this issue may have transparent backgrounds and aren't using the whole available frame?

The banner in this app is at the bottom of the screen. I have seen this on iPhone 16 simulators and at least on iPhone 13 hardware running both test ads and also release builds from the App Store. When running test ads, the "test" label is visible even when the loaded ad is not rendered.

Is anyone else seeing something like this and/or do you have any tips to debug? It would be helpful to zero in on what type of ad is causing problems. When it happens it's with the same 2 or 3 ads. Other ads cycling through are fine. Things seem fine with new ads loading and displaying sometime for 1h before a problematic one finds its way into the rotation.

Thanks,
Emmanuel

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 12, 2025, 5:20:21 PMJan 12
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Hi Emmanuel,

Thank you for contacting Mobile Ads SDK Support Team.

I've tried replicating this issue by using Google Sample Project but unable to replicate by using below scenario.

Kindly provide screen recording video along with Sample project for further investigation.

If the file(s) you are looking to share are less than 25mb in total you can attach them to this case on your next reply. If you are having trouble attaching your file to this case or if your file(s) are larger than 25mb, you can share your files with me by performing the following steps:

1. Navigate to

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfkAiXMeYP-fw1W3Z-tT9uwmATEKO5X6S-th0gR2ezdKaaqfg/viewform?usp=pp_url&entry.400550049=Mobile+Ads+SDK&entry.460850823=5004Q00002vGvAUQA0&entry.80707362=00283955

2. Fill out all fields, and attach your file(s).

3. Please reply back on this thread when you have uploaded your file(s). Please do not share this link.



ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02vGvAU:ref

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 13, 2025, 3:47:21 AMJan 13
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Hi Emmanuel,

Thank you for providing the video recordings that illustrated the issue clearly.

In order to request specific adaptive banners in test mode by enabling test devices or by enabling test devices programmatically:

<Google> To get test ads on this device, set:
GADMobileAds.sharedInstance.requestConfiguration.testDeviceIdentifiers =
@[ @"2077ef9a63d2b398840261c8221a0c9b" ];

Can you confirm if the mentioned issue “Ad label visible but not Ad during light/dark mode” is replicating in our iOS objective C sample application? If yes, Kindly provide the sample project as requested earlier for further investigation since this is your own implementation.

You can provide the following details via reply privately to the author option or directly provide it to the link

This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02vGvAU:ref" (ADR-00283955)

Thanks,
 
Google Logo Mobile Ads SDK Team

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Nicolas Langheit

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Jan 13, 2025, 4:24:56 PMJan 13
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
I am having exactly the same banner ad issue and I fixed them by switching the app to the background and back to the foreground. I tested on the Google sample project with the swiftUI demo. It worked well with the test ad units, but as soon as I added my ad units it would make the same error. There must be something special in the ads that I have.

Emmanuel Ackaouy

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Jan 13, 2025, 4:24:56 PMJan 13
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Hello.

I will try and create a sample project but as this only happens with a subset of ads that the app loads, it would be helpful to know if there’s a way to request those specific banner ads in test mode.

I uploaded 4 videos of this issue reproduced in a simulator using the latest GMA SDK and iOS 18.2 in our app.

In the videos, the ad shown is one of a handful of specific ads I have seen that is causing the problem. It would be really helpful for me to be able to request this type of ad or even this specific ad in test mode so that I can more easily reproduce and debug in a sample project. At this particular moment, it’s happening all the time. At other times of the day, it takes hours before I can reproduce the problem. It seems to depend on the banner ad that is loaded.

I note that you shared the upload link on the public forum so if there’s spam there let me know and I can reupload to a different link.

Unfortunately, I am not sure when this problem started. The app has been live on the App Store and using GMA for many years. We do frequent updates with the latest GMA/firebase SDKs via cocoapods. The app itself is an objective C app that is still using the legacy explicit retain/release model.

Many thanks for your help,
Emmanuel

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 15, 2025, 12:02:42 AMJan 15
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Hi Emmanuel,

Yes, In test mode, there is a way to request one of the mentioned ads by replacing ad unit ID with the specific ad unit IDs you want to test in the GADRequest. You can refer to the our iOS objective C sample application. Can you kindly provide us with the below information privately for further investigation:
  • app ID
  • ad unit IDs of the 2 banner ads which repeatedly fail to render when first loaded
  • Sample project as requested earlier

Emmanuel Ackaouy

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Jan 16, 2025, 3:49:38 AMJan 16
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Hi.

A couple of things:

1- Most banner ads returned by google render properly in the app. Only a few exhibit the problem.

Attaching screenshots for 2 of the banner ads which repeatedly fail to render when first loaded, as described in my earlier posts.

Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 16 - 2025-01-13 at 10.58.10 copy.png

IMG_3355 copy.PNG

In test mode, is there a way to request one of these ads specifically, maybe by including an ID or URL in the GADRequest? This would be very helpful to debug the issue.



Running this out of the box on the latest iOS SDK with the latest (18.2) iPhone 16 simulator, you will get a dynamic link error at run time. I was able to get around that by increasing the target iOS version from 12.0 to 13.0. Can you please flag this to the team that maintains the example apps?

I would love to check if any of banner ads that fail to render in our app render in the test app. So far none of been loaded by the SDK.

Thanks,
Emmanuel

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 16, 2025, 7:40:45 AMJan 16
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Hi Emmanuel,

Thank you for providing the requested information.

I will check with our team about this issue and one of my team members will reach out to you once we have an update. Meanwhile, I would appreciate your patience.

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 28, 2025, 3:49:41 AMJan 28
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Hi Emmanuel,

It is verified from our team that the issue is fixed. Can you please check again and confirm the results.

Emmanuel

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Jan 28, 2025, 9:55:05 AMJan 28
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
Unfortunately, we are still seeing the problem.

Does the fix require a GoogleMobileAds SDK update? I’ve not seen one yet. We use cocoapods to stay up to date.

This morning on a device running the recently released iOS 18.3, a banner failed to render until the phone was switched to dark mode. See attached screenshot to see the banner ad creative. This particular banner ad creative has also repeatedly failed to render on iOS 18.2.1 over the last few days.

Note this started happening with iOS 18.2. I have not been able to reproduce on iOS 18.1.

Emmanuel

IMG_3414.PNG

Emmanuel

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Jan 28, 2025, 11:05:56 AMJan 28
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
Correction: the device in the screenshot in my previous message is running iOS 18.2.1. We haven't tried this on iOS 18.3 yet.

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 28, 2025, 1:38:03 PMJan 28
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Hi,

If you are still facing the issue, kindly provide us with Charles session. Once received we will be sharing it with wider team and provide further assistance.

Emmanuel

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Jan 28, 2025, 4:37:50 PMJan 28
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
Could you please let us know the version number of the iOS GoogleMobileAds SDK in which the iOS 18.2 banner ad rendering issues were fixed?
Or if this was not a GMA SDK issue, how was it fixed?

You asking me to provide a "Charles session". I don't know what that is. Can you explain?

Emmanuel

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 28, 2025, 11:56:51 PMJan 28
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Hi Emmanuel,

I will check with the team and inform here once I have an update. 

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 29, 2025, 2:17:09 AMJan 29
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Hi Emmanuel,

The fix released does not require any SDK update and is already live at 100%. Since you are still facing this issue, it would help us to investigate the issue thoroughly, this is the reason Charles log with an affected ad was requested.

Emmanuel

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Jan 30, 2025, 10:22:08 AMJan 30
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
I am still seeing the previously screenshotted "Best Buy Super Bowl" banner ad fail to render on load on both iOS 18.2.1 and 18.3 on an iPhone 13. I deleted the app and reinstalled to clear any caching issues. It's still happening.

Again, this is complicated to reproduce while recording or taking network traces because it only happens with a small subset of banner ad creatives and I cannot control which ad is returned by Google at any given time. I have shared screenshots of specific ads that fail to render over and over again on this thread and their response info/IDs privately.

In the SDK online docs, under "Tools and debugging", there is only a mention of "Charles Proxy" and "Network Tracing" for the Android SDK. There are no instructions in the iOS SDK documentation so I wouldn't even be sure what you expect from me. Has your team tried to load the aforementioned banner ads in the objective C banner ad sample application? Maybe they have a way to force a specific banner ad creative to be loaded/rendered? As far as I know, I do not.

Emmanuel

Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor

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Jan 30, 2025, 5:10:52 PM (14 days ago) Jan 30
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Hi,

I’ve checked in iPhone 13, 16 iOS 18.2 but I could not see this issue replicating again.

For Charles document, I will raise this as feature request to add guidance for setup Charles in iOS devices.

For now you can follow below steps to enable Charles if using iOS simulator or device. 

iOS Simulators
Quit your iOS Simulator. Launch Charles and go to the Help menu. Choose the "SSL Proxying > Install Charles Root Certificate in iOS Simulators" item. This will install your Charles Root Certificate into all of your iOS Simulators. Now when you start the iOS Simulator, you should be able to access SSL websites with Charles using SSL Proxying.

iOS devices
  • Set your iOS device to use Charles as its HTTP proxy in the Settings app > Wifi settings.
  • Open Safari and browse to https://chls.pro/ssl. Safari will prompt you to install the SSL certificate.
  • If you are on iOS 10.3 or later, open the Settings.app and navigate to General > About > Certificate Trust Settings, and find the Charles Proxy certificate, and switch it on to enable full trust for it (More information about this change in iOS 10).
  • Now you should be able to access SSL websites with Charles using SSL Proxying.
Charles supports App Transport Security (ATS) as of the 3.11.4 release.

After configuration if you getting this issue again in updated SDK version the. Kindly share the updated Charles with us for further investigation.

Emmanuel

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Jan 30, 2025, 5:37:43 PM (14 days ago) Jan 30
to Google Mobile Ads SDK Developers
When you say you couldn't reproduce this, was that with any of the specific banner ad creative I flagged? If so, which ones?
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