[iOS] Does the npa flag on GADExtras still work?

[electric...@gmail.com]

Hi there,

I use Admob, Firebase and the legacy Personalized Ad Consent in one of my apps.

Recently Apple wrote to me and said I need to show the App Tracking Transparency prompt in my app even though I have no wish to use personalised data going forward. So I will do this - Apple makes the rules.

I want to do this as quickly and easily as possible, so I will follow the steps on this page - https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/ios14

I won't implement UMP, Funding Choices etc. Instead I will remove the legacy Personalized Ad Consent prompts and just use the standard Apple ATT prompt.

I would still like to be sure that the requests I send to Admob are requests for non personalized ads. So I would still like to set the "npa" flag in GADExtras to "1" to request non personalized ads if the user says No on the ATT prompt.

However I can't find any documentation for this npa flag any more, so I don't know if this flag is still supported or has been silently deprecated. Does the npa flag still work in Admob requests, does it do anything or is it just ignored now? The Admob API has now advanced on and this flag is undocumented,  I want to be sure that if I set npa to 1 in a GADExtras object and attach it to the request then the ad returned will be non personalised.

Does this flag still work?

Thank you in advance,

Peter Smith.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

With regard to your concern, I've seen in our documentation that you used the Forward consent to the Google Mobile Ads SDK for npa flag that you are mentioning from Requesting Consent from European Users. I'm afraid that the Legacy version of the iOS consent SDK is now deprecated and is no longer maintained. It is recommended to used the latest consent with UMP, which is IAB compliant.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[electric...@gmail.com]

Hi Princess,

Thank you for taking the time to reply :)

The Personalized Ad Consent SDK is certainly deprecated, and I will be removing it. However the npa flag itself is not actually part of the Personalized Ad Consent SDK. The npa flag itself is actually part of the admob SDK. The way the old Personalised Ad Consent SDK worked is the app used it to gather consent, and that is where the function of the Consent SDK finished. The app would then check to see if consent had been given, and if not, then during a fetch of an ad with Admob it would set the npa flag to "1"  inside the GADExtras part of the admob SDK which would be attached to a GADRequest in the standard admob way. This is nothing to do with the Personalised Ad Consent, this is a part of Admob. 

So this is why I am checking to see if it still works. I hope this clarifies things - the npa flag is not a part of the old consent SDK which I understand is not supported, it is a part of Admob, and I do want to know if this still working inside Admob.

Thanks again :)

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Peter,

I work with Pamela and will assist you. The "npa=1" will be honored by our SDK until further notice. It is still recommended to upgrade to the  UMP SDK. Please note that this forum can only provide support for integrating the SDK into apps and GDPR compliance is supported by the AdMob Forum -  they have Publisher integration with the IAB TCF v2.0  which explains what consent is necessary to obtain to serve non personalized ads.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[electric...@gmail.com]

Thank you both for your replies - I will look further into the links you have provided.

Regards,

Peter Smith.