User Messaging Platform don't show ads!

[Robot Android]

Hi.

If user off checkbox in consent ads don't show!

Is it possible for the minimum set of checkboxes to always be enabled for the minimum display of ads?

Is it possible for the checkboxes in the menu settings to be enabled by default? They are always disabled in the settings.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

Thank you for raising this to us.

Could you confirm if you've properly setup the UMP SDK using the steps found here (Android | iOS)? Also, with regard to the checkboxes found on the consent form, please note that all configurations related to this can be handled on the Funding Choices UI. If you have further questions related to that, we would suggest that you reach out via this forum instead.

As an aside, could you provide your App ID and Ad Unit IDs via Reply privately to author option so we could further check on our end?

Regards,
Mark Albios
Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Robot Android]

Form works correct. But user con off all checbox and ads not show.

The user can use the form to completely disable the display of ads.

Admob error:

1.1

Google, as a vendor, is not allowed under consent or legitimate interest.
Confirm whether the user intentionally rejected Google as a vendor, CMP implementation errors have occurred, or there are publisher restrictions.  

You need to make changes to the form:

1. It is necessary that the checkboxes be enabled in the default settings.

2. It is necessary that the minimum set of checkboxes be always enabled to display ads.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

Thank you for your response.

Could you share with us your App ID and Ad Unit IDs as well as those consent screenshots via Reply privately to author option so we could further check on our end? Once provided, we'll be raising this with the rest of the team to gather their insights on this.

Regards,
Mark Albios
Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q23KgpG:ref

[Robot Android]

"you do not have permission to post to the author in this group"

понедельник, 17 августа 2020 г. в 14:49:17 UTC+7, mobileadssdkforumadvisor:

[Eric Bruyère]

Hello,

It's not a problem with the implementation of the UMP, but it's a problem with the GDPR reglementation.

For me too,  it's a very, very big problem because if the user don't accept : Store and/or access information on a device, the Admob cookie cannot be installed.

With only 2 clicks the user cuts all personalized and non-personalized ads!

It is enough for him to click on "Manage options" and "Submit" to not have any more advertisements.

He doesn't even have to click the switches.

It is difficult to set up this consent message knowing that users will very easily be able to mute all ads.

Non-personalized advertisements should still be displayed.

Because otherwise it will be more profitable to deactivate personalization for all European users on the Admob website, rather than to activate the personalization of the advertisements and display a consent message which makes it very easy to cut all the advertisements...

Eric

[Robot Android]

This is what I'm trying to explain, the checkboxes in the settings are always off!

[AndreasB]

This has also been mentioned in

https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/ZFzCvTwrxI8

where the response has been that this is "by design". I still think that, at least if some type of consent has been given before, this should be reflected in the initial state of the UI if the dialog is opened again later.

If this will not be the case, the whole UMP solution is more or less dead-on-arrival for me.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your responses.

Would you be able to with us your App ID and Ad Unit IDs as well as those consent screenshots (indicating those checkboxes) via this email address (mobileads...@gmail.com). We're asking this to further visualize the issue as we're unable to replicate this on our end. Once shared, we'll be raising this with the rest of the team to have their insights on this.

Regards,
Mark Albios
Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q23KgpG:ref

[Andreas Bartels]

Here are two screenshots, I'm basically doing the following:

a) Display consent dialog and tap the button [1] to consent to everything ("Einwilligen" in german translation)

b) After that, when I read the binary string IABTCF_PurposeConsents from SharedPreferences, it is "1111111011", meaning that the user actually did opt in to most of the purposes.

c) Then, I open the consent dialog again, but this time tap button [2] ("Optionen verwalten") to see detailed options.

d) There, I see that all of the consent options default to "off" (for example switches [3] and [4], which should be purpose IDs 1 and 2), although the user already opted in to all of these purposes in step (a).

e) If I then tap "Send" and have a look at the binary string in SharedPreferences again, it is now set to "0", meaning that the user opted out of everything they opted in to before, even if they just wanted to opt out of a single option (or, worse, just opened the details out of curiousity).

I don't know if sending my App and Ad Unit IDs is really necessary - but I have to say that the mail address given looks a bit suspicious. Isn't there an @google.com address to use?

[Robot Android]

Correct mail  mobileadstesting99 @ gmail .com  

[Eric Bruyère]

For me it's exactly the same problem as Andreas. See attachments, this behavior has no relation to the Admob account. It's like that for all publishers ...

There are a lot of things the user needs to approve for ads to display as explained here : https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/9805023?hl=en&ref_topic=9760861

Consent policies: Personalized & Non-Personalized Ads

As communicated in August 2019, our interoperability guidance is intended to reflect Google's existing policy requirements, in particular the requirements of Google's EU User Consent policy and our policies against fingerprinting for identification (for example, those contained in our Requirements for Third-party Ad Serving). Google’s policies continue to apply and are more restrictive than TCF v2.0 in some cases.

Publishers should review the registration settings for the vendors they choose to work with via the TCF v2.0. The following requirements apply specifically when Google is a vendor in the publishers’ CMP.

Google will serve personalized ads when all of the following criteria are met:

• The end user grants Google consent to:
  • Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1)
  • Create a personalized ads profile (Purposes 3)
  • Select personalized ads (Purposes 4)
• Legitimate interest (or consent, where a publisher configures their CMP to request it) is established for Google to:
  • Select basic ads (Purpose 2)
  • Measure ad performance (Purpose 7)
  • Apply market research to generate audience insights (Purpose 9)
  • Develop and improve products (Purpose 10)

If the consent requirements for personalized ads are not met, Google will serve non-personalized ads when all of the following criteria are met:

• The end user grants Google consent to:
  • Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1)
• Legitimate interest (or consent, where a publisher configures their CMP to request it) is established for Google to:
  • Select basic ads (Purpose 2)
  • Measure ad performance (Purpose 7)
  • Apply market research to generate audience insights (Purpose 9)
  • Develop and improve products (Purpose 10)

And this is a problem from the first request for consent because if the user simply wants to see the options then click on "Submit" without touching anything else, no advertising will be displayed.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi everyone,

I work with Mark and will assist. Thank you all for your suggestions, for the visualization of the problem and for airing your concerns. I will bring your concerns and requests up with the rest of my team:

1. Can there be any default checked off boxes in the "Manage Consent" screen - even to allow non personalized adds?
2. Can prior consent be reflected in the "Manage Consent" form? User still has the option to opt out of what they already gave consent to.
3. By defaulting the "Manage Consent" form to all no, users won't get ads even though that wasn't their original intention when opening the dialog - there will be many curious users who will open the form and then just press "submit" inadvertently turning off consent.
4. Could there be buttons that populate consent check boxes in the "Manage Consent" form based on amount of free app functionality desired?

Prior consent handling has been brought up to the team already and is being looked in to.

In the meantime, to manage user's expectations of how much consent gives how much access to app functionality, the manage consent screen can be edited to reflect what your app will allow based on the amount of consent offered. To implement access controls to your app based on different amounts of consent, you can read user consent decisions from Shared Preferences in Android and NSUserDefaults in iOS just like vendors do as described here. 

Regards,
Aryeh Baker

[mydevelo...@gmail.com]

I want to try  User Messaging Platform . When I show form and choise Consent or do not consent our ads does not show. What is the problem? I think this SDK is doesn't work true.  

My code is;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {





private AdView mAdView;
private Context context = this;
private ConsentInformation consentInformation;
private ConsentForm consentForm;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);


MobileAds.initialize(this,
"xxxxxxxx");
mAdView = findViewById(R.id.adView);

ConsentDebugSettings debugSettings = new ConsentDebugSettings.Builder(this)
.setDebugGeography(ConsentDebugSettings
.DebugGeography
.DEBUG_GEOGRAPHY_EEA)
.addTestDeviceHashedId("XXXXXXXX")
.build();

ConsentRequestParameters params = new ConsentRequestParameters
.Builder()
.setConsentDebugSettings(debugSettings)
.build();


consentInformation = UserMessagingPlatform.getConsentInformation(this);
consentInformation.requestConsentInfoUpdate(
this,
params,
new ConsentInformation.OnConsentInfoUpdateSuccessListener() {
@Override
public void onConsentInfoUpdateSuccess() {
// The consent information state was updated.
// You are now ready to check if a form is available.
if (consentInformation.isConsentFormAvailable()) {
loadForm();
}
}
},
new ConsentInformation.OnConsentInfoUpdateFailureListener() {
@Override
public void onConsentInfoUpdateFailure(FormError formError) {
// Handle the error.
}
});

AdRequest adRequest = new AdRequest.Builder().build();
mAdView.loadAd(adRequest);



}

public void loadForm(){
UserMessagingPlatform.loadConsentForm(
this,
new UserMessagingPlatform.OnConsentFormLoadSuccessListener() {
@Override
public void onConsentFormLoadSuccess(ConsentForm consentForm) {
MainActivity.this.consentForm = consentForm;
if(consentInformation.getConsentStatus() == ConsentInformation.ConsentStatus.REQUIRED) {
consentForm.show(
MainActivity.this,
new ConsentForm.OnConsentFormDismissedListener() {
@Override
public void onConsentFormDismissed(@Nullable FormError formError) {
// Handle dismissal by reloading form.
loadForm();
}
});

}

}
},
new UserMessagingPlatform.OnConsentFormLoadFailureListener() {
@Override
public void onConsentFormLoadFailure(FormError formError) {
/// Handle Error.
}
}
);
}

17 Ağustos 2020 Pazartesi tarihinde saat 15:11:13 UTC+3 itibarıyla eric.b...@gmail.com şunları yazdı:

[Robot Android]

You add "Google Advertising Products" in Funding Choices?

понедельник, 17 августа 2020 г. в 21:01:57 UTC+7, mydevelo...@gmail.com:

[Eric Bruyère]

Google Advertising Products is Admob ?

[Robot Android]

Yes!

понедельник, 17 августа 2020 г. в 21:13:05 UTC+7

[Eric Bruyère]

Thanks,

Is it possible to also request that we can activate consent messages in several languages at the same time on Funding Choice ?

And that the message which is in the user's language is displayed to him (with a default language if there is no message available in his language) ?

 

Because currently you can only publish one message in one language at the same time on Funding Choice.

And so all European users have the same message.

Showing a consent message that is not in the user's language is likely to cause a lot of frustration and denial.

Eric

[Eric Bruyère]

Thanks a lot,

[mydevelo...@gmail.com]

Yes I added

17 Ağustos 2020 Pazartesi tarihinde saat 17:10:33 UTC+3 itibarıyla Robot Android şunları yazdı:

[mydevelo...@gmail.com]

I will continue to use the old eu consent library until this sdk is fixed.

17 Ağustos 2020 Pazartesi tarihinde saat 17:38:56 UTC+3 itibarıyla mydevelo...@gmail.com şunları yazdı:

[fran...@gmail.com]

Hi Admob Team 

So you are aware of all the problems which developers have mentioned here ?  Will there be any fixes /improvements soon ?

I cannot use the new sdk if the user does not agree or he hits the sending button in options. 

Then even no non personalized ads will be shown.  

At this state it is impossible to integrate the new ump sdk because no ads will be shown anymore 

We must have an option to finish the app or to show at least "non personalized ads" 

to make sure that we do not have to offer our apps for free still have our income with ads. 

Frank

[luis...@gmail.com]

I manage to show the forms as expected but if an EEA user clicks the "manage options" button and then "submit" no ads will be shown at all.

All the switches in the form are OFF by default (I really can't understand why)

I would expect that if a user clicks the "manage options" button and the "submit" non personalized ads would be shown but that is not the case.

UMPConsentInformation.sharedInstance.consentType will always be .unknown

I can't use UMP until this gets fixed

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

Would it be possible for you to provide a project (or at least a test project) where the issue is reproducible? Kindly send the requested details via via Reply privately to author option.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[AndreasB]

Teejay, I'm amazed by the way complaints in this forum are handled with this tone deaf way of just pasting the same scripted lines repeatedly.

Luis (?; sorry, can't see the full name) didn't bring up anything new that they would need to prove with an example project, but just repeated what a whole bunch of us already stated time and again, both in this thread and in others since before UMP was even fully published in its current form.

If you like, I can create a sample project and host it on GitHub for everyone to see, but it is as easy as starting a new, empty Android project and adding nothing but this consent form to it. Open it once and accept everything, then open it another time, tap through to the second screen and save without changing anything. After the first form closes, the user will have accepted 9 out of 10 available purposes (the string stored in SharedPreferences will be "1111111011") - but after the second form closes, the user will have opted out of all of them (string will be "0"), even if they had already opted in before.

Asking your users to jump through even more hoops is not something that you should be doing if fixing existing issues is the real goal here. All of this feels more like stalling to me.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi AndreasB,

Thank you for bringing your issue to our attention. I work along with Teejay and will assisting you today.

We understand the frustration of this, but we ask for these items to look into what could be causing the issue. Not everyone is necessarily implementing the same way or has the same libraries or frameworks. We do this to look more into what could be happening and see what other people are doing. As we do not always see all the possible ways of doing something or the various combinations that could be causing the issue.

Do know that we have brought this up to our team and have been looking into this constantly.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

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[AndreasB]

William, thanks for your reply. I fully understand that, in the general case, differences in implementation might cause issues that are hard to track or understand without having access to a minimal reproducible example.

In this specific case, though, all that is necessary to do is to copy/paste from your own guide as published here: https://developers.google.com/admob/ump/android/quick-start

It's not as if any one of us is adding some arcane voodoo magic that makes things fail although they shouldn't - it fails, simply because your implementation of the consent form does not read the exact same data that it might have written before, and in consequence does not use that readily available data to toggle one or another switch from OFF to ON when presenting the form to users a second time.

This is a straight-forward fix, if you want this to be fixed. If you really consider this to work as intended for whatever reasons (and I can't think of any good ones), the honest thing to do would be to at least mention this fact in the same guide as linked to above.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi AndreasB,

Thank you for the response back, I want you to know that we have been listening to everything that everyone has been saying. Please know that we have talked with our team about this and really are doing everything we can to let them know what all the people have been saying about this issue.

I want you to know that I have brought this issue to our team and we have talked about it. I am making sure even as I speak with you now, that my team is made aware of this issue. We are doing everything we can for you.

[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I'm having the same identical problems:

 - "Manage Options" form always initialized with ALL settings disabled (regardless of what user have previously selected)

 - if we does not explicitelly set some settings (it happens if the users submit default from "manage options"), Ads is NEVER displayed.

I think that advertising supported Apps should always be able to display ads (even if not personalized). Does GDPR tell something different?

Now we are in november, is there any incoming fix?

Or the common behaviuor depends on some other reasons (maybe the App with UMP not yet released)

How other developers in this thread have managed these limitations?

I want to add another usefull request:

- I think that the ConsentInfo should be called in a way like "setCancelable( true )", because the User must be able to view again the consent dialog and the second time (with consent already granted) maybe he want to leave the dialog without doing modification, or, after having done some modification, he do not want to apply them.

Thanks,

Lear

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

Thank you for bringing these points up. Let me summarize for clarity's sake:

1. When clicking "Manage Options" the last known consent doesn't populate the form. Instead everything except for "Legitimate interests" is in the unselected position.
2. There's no way to display last known consent and make it actionable to user.
3. There's no way for a user to cancel an attempted change in consent once form is loaded.
4. Once "Manage Options" is pressed by user the big submit button is too easily pressed, causing the equivalent of no consent being given.
5. When no consent is given not even non personalized ads show.

What you are requesting is:

1. Last known consent should be accessible and actionable as much as or more than the "manage consent" option.
2. At least there should be a way to cancel changing from consent already given.
3. Non personalized ads should deliver without consent.
4. Change the "Submit" button to something more ominous - like "I'm agreeing to consent" so that users won't just press it and publishers end up with no consent.

It's possible that some mediation partners will want to deliver ads without consent.

Let me bring these requests up to my team. You may monitor our release notes (Android and iOS ) for an update.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[fran...@gmail.com]

Hi 

this is not really correct that it is not possible to read the saved values. I do not know how you did program UMP but it

should be also possible to read any maybe preset the values. 

But to be honest that going to options and hitting "Submit" without doing "anything" is resulting in 

serve no ads anymore is really the worst solution. It is pretty weird that the the settings from the agree page to 

the options page are not overtaken even if the user does not change any little value.

If i go back from options to the main page with the agree button it works again too.

Hey guys. look at my solution here to get "at least" the information if ads are served or not served with a little

class after the form is dismissed. If ads are not served then you could maybe make a dialog to explain the situation with offering to change

the mind and accept ads with loading the form again or block all important functions (make a trial version to test). Then you legally offer your 

app but maybe with 90 % restrictions.

There is no other chance i think. It is more than legal like before to offer a limited version/test version or buy a pro version or use a test app.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63464270/how-to-request-non-personalized-admob-ads-with-the-new-unified-messaging-platfor/64654352#64654352

Frank

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Frank,

Thank you for your input - although we cannot support your solutions, everything that adds to help publishers with monetizing their app is welcome. Let me bring up to my team your methods and approach to matching access to app to monetization as a request if we could support such methods. You can monitor our release notes for updates

[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello, any update?

Android version of UMP is still the 1.0 of July.

iOS version has just reached the 1.4

Hope we will get an update soon.

Lear

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

I raised your request for the prior consent to show to user up again with my team. You may monitor our release notes for an update.

[mydevelo...@gmail.com]

Hi Everybody,

Today is 8th December 2020. UMP release is still in 1.0.0. It's really hard to understand that Mobile Ads SDK team isn't doing anything about it. You say, follow the release notes continuously, until when will we follow up? No updates since July 2020.

Best Regards,

Mehmet

24 Kasım 2020 Salı tarihinde saat 18:36:53 UTC+3 itibarıyla mobileadssdkforumadvisor şunları yazdı:

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

An elaboration on how this is affecting you is welcome. The Mobile Ads SDK gets consent from the TFC string stored in Shared Preferences and any Consent Management Solution that handles the TFC string should be compatible with the Mobile Ads SDK.

[Thanh Trần Đức]

Hello there,

My earnings dropped down 25% after implementing the UMP SDK, although it is holiday season.

My admob console noticed me of something related to EEA.

I have waited 2 months for an update from admob team but it haven't been any.

Below are my concerns:

1. Ads are off by default with UMP, all settings are off. Users have to read through all the dialog and enable ad by themselves. Who will click a button to turn on ads ? I guess nobody.

2. There is no callback that tell me whether the user has turned on ads or not ? so what if user turn off ad ? In the previous Consent SDK, my app have only two options: go with personalized ads or install the PRO version. But with UMP, I am unable to do that. User just close the dialog and continue using my apps.

@mobileadssdkforumadvisor Please have a clear message to us about this UMP SDK behaviours

Thank you

Thanh Tran

[AndreasB]

Hi Thanh Tran,

I agree that the way all of this continues to be handled on Google's side is horrible!

For what it's worth, you can detect whether a user has opted in to enough of the consents by checking the stored data yourself. On Android, what I did was this - feel free to use if it is helpful for you:

https://gist.github.com/bocops/c6536715933ee3c6bb50a39172182476

[Thanh Trần Đức]

Hi AndreasB,

Thanks for your code. It is a good idea to check the shared preferences. I will consider to use it.

Best regards

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

HI Thanh,

Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention. As has been stated previously the SharedPreference is the best place to pull the information that you would be looking for from. As for the other issues that you have with the UMP. SDK, we have brought to the attention of our team. As well as have many and long discussions about. We are not able to fully answer beyond that as things are always being looking at. We are pulling in as much information as we can to decide how to help with these questions that developers have.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q25XEZq:ref

[regl...@gmail.com]

It's February 11 and still facing the same issue. The CTR of non-personalised ads is 70% less compared to personalized ads so facing huge revenue loss because of this issue as we can't release UMP with this issue.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

There are currently many CMP vendors besides UMP with Funding Choices that will work with the Mobile Ads SDK, you may want to explore to see which one fits your needs better.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q25XEZq:ref

[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I think we are in a weird situation.

Google is still proposing the use of FundingChoises but Android UMP version is still to 1.0 since last July (and, as we are experiencing, not working well)

ioS version of UMP instead has continuosly beeing developed and just reached version 2.0 (passing through 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4)

I'd just like to know if UMP for Android has been officially abbandoned or not.

Right to plan what to do with our App.

Thanks.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi there,

The reason that iOS has more versions has to do with Apple's new ATT requirements, something that Android doesn't have. We have heard of publishers successfully implementing the UMP SDK for Android seeing good results.

[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello,

so do you mean that there is someone that, when opens the "manage options" dialog, find anything else that all disabled?

If that's the case, I would have been happy to know it months ago. I thought that it was only a UMP bug.

If anyone in this thread at the end, succeded in getting the dialog working correctly, please raise the hand. I would really compare our code to understand if there is something different... maybe some library used to store the data?

Thanks

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hiu Arlab,

Thank you for posting your question. We wanted to pass along the thoughts of our team.

We hear your feedback around the user experience of the form when reopening the form and are thinking about ways to improve the UI to drive higher consent rates. However, the UMP SDK must also comply with the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework policies (more information here).

With that in mind and after having talked with my teammate, the thought that was offered is that if this is something that really concerns you. We would suggest to implement an ad check before loading up your app. How could this be done? What was discussed is creating an Interstitial ad that should be loaded after your main title screen but before the rest of the app starts. In doing this you could check to see if an ad is loaded if you call the adFailedToLoad() then this could be used as a boolean as to whether the app will continue to the main section or will be directed to something else.

While not an official workaround to handle. This is how you could potentially look at it.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK

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[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello, thank you very much for the clear answer.

I missed some info in this long thread, but I'm realizing just now that the behaviour (of having always all settings disabled) was intentional.

Now I've read your link and IAB specifications.

Let me share some my thoughts:

- I agree that the "second layer" consent configuration ("manage options") is required to be completelly disabled at the first entry, but it's really disorienting for an user to re-enter in the dialog and not finding his previuos settings. I think that if at the second opens the dialog keeps old settings, it would not be against IAB specifications. Even if it wouldn't impact consents rates.

- At the moment, I am not able to enter the "manage options" dialog and gives enought consents to get advertising. Even If I enable every single consent, Ads are not displayed, the only way to have Ads working is to give full consent from the main dialog (view video). So, a user who intends to give consent to non-personalized ads, probably would completelly disable Ads. Please correct me if I'm wrong, it may depend on our Admob configuration, or SDK version (now: com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:19.7.0')

- About the idea of creating an interstitial to check if consent is valid. Wouldn't that be against the IAB spec? In that way we would initialize Ads and send data to Google before obtaining consent. And, anyway, it would be difficult to discriminate the cause of the fail (lack of consent gives error code 3, that is the same of a no-fill or a frequency capping. I remember to have read (here in the thread or on stackoverflow) that someone suggested to read settings directly from the local storage, but that we need to know exactly what settings are needed to display ads.

- So I think that a good way could be to check if the user has given enough permission (at least to show non-personalized Ads). If not, we display a banner that invites him to give minimum consents. We need so just a way to understand which are minimum consents and a way to report to the user what minimum consents he has to permit.

Thanks,

Lear

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Arlab,

Thank you for he response back. Allow me to try to respond as best as I can to each of your points. Know that this is just opinion based on what you have stated and regarding the UMP in very general terms.
First, this is not just as simple as stated. Which we totally understand your point and would think that it should show the previous selections, UMP SDK does not, reason for that is beyond this forums scope. For this you might want to look at other 3rd party CMPs that might be able to handle that.
Second, This one is more an issue of ads and serving. Not fully the UMP SDK restricting you directly. Again while I do not disagree with you. There are reasons beyond the scope of this forum for this.
Third, yes completely valid points. My suggestion is by no means 100% correct but just a simple example of how one could possible get around it. But you are correct it is not a perfect solution. Yes you can read from the local storage, the issue though with that is reading the TCFString which we can not offer. Thats where the CMP comes in.
Finally, this would seem to be a good idea. But as even you stated above, IAB and Apple for example. Have said that anything that kind of suggests to the user to give consent is not allowed. So it is tough to balance the IAB and someone like Apple as an example. We tried to stay as neutral as possible.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi All,

I hope you're doing well.

I work with Aryeh and William and I just want to circle back on this. Would like to know if you still encountering the issue? 

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[AndreasB]

Yes, this problem still exists. I'm still seeing a "0" consent string if a user has previously opted in to everything, then opened the dialog and saved without manually changing anything.

Has there been any change or new release on your side, or why would you expect this behaviour to have changed?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello AndreasB,

Thank you for your update.

With regard to your questions, I can't give better context on that. But, I already raised this again to the rest of the team to further check why the issue still exist. We will update you once we receive from them.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Neil,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

Can you confirm if your main concern is the non personalized ads that are not showing? But doing some testing you are now able to showed it? With regard to your recommendation for consentInformation to find out if the user is in the EEA, I will bring it to the rest of the team and check if this can be added on the consent Information.

[Neil D]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

yes, my main concern is how much effort a user has to go through just to get non-personalised ads to show. My apps mainly rely on Rewarded Video Ads for users to get in app credits, so without ads my app is useless. However, I am now implementing my own consent screen as I found this document https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/about/company/user-consent-policy-help/, which has helped a little.

Also, as a user, there is very little help / explanation about what to do in order to get non-personalised adverts to be shown from admob, it has been left to us developers to sort out. The Android Java Legacy Consent was so much simpler and easier from a users point of view. The new Android Java UMP user flow is horrible, the user has to click certain boxes and then goto a new screen to find google within the list of vendors, etc, without any explanation or instructions, just to get non-personalised ads, so they will either consent to personalised ads (very unlikely) or not bother selecting the options they need for non-personlised ads.

Even though I am only showing non-personal ads from within my admob account, I still need to get the users consent to do this.

Surely, as the app store listing states that it uses ads (part of the setup when creating an app with the google play developer account is to state if it uses ads or not, see image), then this should be linked into googles terms and conditions somewhere stating that if apps are using ads then the user consents to using the basic mobile ad identifier to show non-personalised ads if they install the app. 

RE: ConsentInformation

Currently I can't find a good solution to find out if the user is within the EEA so I am having to hack some code using the UMP functionality, but it would be a lot easier if there was a simple method that could be used, something like this:

consentInformation = UserMessagingPlatform.getConsentInformation(context);

boolean isEEA = consentInformation.isUserInEEA();

At the moment I can only seem find if the user is within the EEA if I create a google consent form within admob and if it is available (then show my own form). Ideally, I need to be able to find if the user is in the EEA without using the google consent form and when it is not available (as I will be using my own).

Thank you and kind regards

Neil

[Neil D]

Hi,

After a lot of testing, the only way I am able find out if the user is in the EEA using the UMP is if I have "Personalised Ads" set in my AdMob account.

This is not the use case needed.

I need to have "Non-Personalised Ads" set in my AdMob account so that I can only show the correct adverts to my users when using my own consent form. Without being able to find the location of the user then I will have to show my own consent message to every user, regardless of which country they are in.

Please could this be looked t as a matter of urgency?

I am sure there are many developers in the same situation as myself, we need to know if the user is in the EEA or not in order to display our own consent form for non-personalised ads.

consentInformation = UserMessagingPlatform.getConsentInformation(context);

boolean isUserInEEA = consentInformation.isUserInEEA();

The above highlighted (in bold) code would be the perfect for this.

Thank you and kind regards

Neil

[Neil D]

Sorry, 1 more question

I have just read this

https://support.google.com/admob/answer/7666519#GPRP

Does this mean that if we use Rewarded Ads within our apps then we do not need to get consent from the user to show non-personalised ads?

Thank you

Neil

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Neil,

I work with Pamela and will assist you. isConsentFormAvailable () in Android and calling formStatus  and getting UMPFormStatusAvailable in iOS will give you wether user is in the EU. The edge case here is on first install of the app you may have a form available for someone not in EU if you are using the ATT request explainer message for iOS. You would also have to create a form in Funding choices and not serve it in order for a form to be available. 

I brought up with my team your request for a robust method to determine whether the user is in the EU so that you can present a custom consent form, and/or to provide a simple method to request consent for non personalized ads. You may monitor our blog for an update.

Regarding https://support.google.com/admob/answer/7666519#GPRP, unfortunately, GDPR and Google policy is out of scope of this forum for we can only assist integrating the Mobile Ads SDK into apps. The forum that addresses policy is the AdMob Forum.

With that being said, it does state there "Note: This section does not apply to AdMob."

Another useful resource from that forum that shows options for consent gathering is Publisher integration with the IAB TCF v2.0.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Lee]

Hi - there's been a lot of questions on this topic, and people have been waiting a year for an update, so I'd like to get explicit confirmation on this if possible:

" First, this is not just as simple as stated. Which we totally understand your point and would think that it should show the previous selections, UMP SDK does not, reason for that is beyond this forums scope. For this you might want to look at other 3rd party CMPs that might be able to handle that."

• Are you saying that it's intended behaviour that displaying the Consent Form clears all of the user's previous settings/choices?
• Are there no plans to allow us to redisplay the form, populated to reflect the current settings?
• Is it by design that if the user wants to make any changes, or just confirm what they've agreed to, they're required to go through the entire process again, deciding what they do and don't consent to, with no way to view their previous settings?

I understand there are legal implications around this whole business. I personally don't see the issue with what's effectively restoring the state of the form, to the exact same state it was when the user clicked OK. And I feel like preventing them from seeing what they've agreed to is at the very least not following the spirit of the law. But I'm not a lawyer, and I'd just like some clarity about the library, since there's no clear, reliable information about any of this anywhere. It makes the SDK extremely difficult to use, because nobody understands why it's behaving the way it does, and then you spend hours trying to solve the "problem".

Can I also request you update the user guide because right now it says this:

If consent is not required, you can maintain a reference to the form so that your user can change their consent status.

It would be helpful to make it more explicit that the user can't update their status, only reset it. The fact that there's a separate Reset consent state section just adds to the impression that it's unintended behaviour to show the form and see all the state cleared.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Lee,

Let me raise this with the rest of my team. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Aryeh Baker Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Lee]

I'd also say that the **Manage options** button on the consent form implies you can manage them, i.e. make adjustments and changes as required, which currently isn't the case (you lose all your settings). So if this is intended behaviour, that should probably be reworded - it's probably a frustrating experience for the user too, thinking they're able to come back and check and adjust things, but losing everything instead

[JKhab]

Hi there,

I use this thread, because there are already a lot replies here and many, including myself, seem to follow the progress here.

 

I would like to follow up arla…'s topic from Apr 7th 2021 12:49

"At the moment, I am not able to enter the "manage options" dialog and gives enought consents to get advertising. Even If I enable every single consent, Ads are not displayed, the only way to have Ads working is to give full consent from the main dialog (view video). So, a user who intends to give consent to non-personalized ads, probably would completelly disable Ads. Please correct me if I'm wrong, it may depend on our Admob configuration, or SDK version "

 

And your reply was

"Second, This one is more an issue of ads and serving. Not fully the UMP SDK restricting you directly. Again while I do not disagree with you. There are reasons beyond the scope of this forum for this."

 

I understand that this might be out of scope of this forum and the SDK itself might not be restricting, but there are simply no ads available which can be served. However, what I would like to know is where I can find any documentation what needs to be selected at minimum when the user does not chose "CONSENT" but "MANAGE OPTIONS" in order to at least see non-personalized ads. Whether there are ads available to show or not is irrelevant for me - I just want to know what the user has to select for non-personalized ads in this GDPR message via the MANAGE OPTIONS, since the CONSENT and ACCEPT ALL work fine for me. If you at least can tell me where I can look or which forum in Google is responsible for/can answer this question - that would help, as I do not find anything in this respect among the Google pages.

This topic is blocking me kind of (app is not live yet - but in testing phase), as I do not know whether I have to add something in my code or  there are just no ads available even if set up correctly in the manage options (I use my configured ad unit id, but with test ads). In the latter case, I might consider some info text for the (EU) user what he has to consent to at least see non-personalized ads - I am using rewarded ads and the user has to see ads to receive some credit points which he can use in the game - that's why it is important to me.

Best regards

[Docutain]

Any updates here? What is the purpose of being able to let the user decide to show non personalized ads and then the admob sdk shows no ads at all?

Being able to show ads only if user choses to agree all makes no sense and hurts the business of every admob user as most users won't chose agree all.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi,

The GMA SDK provides tools to help publishers comply with regulations. It's up to you to use those tools. UMP no longer provides a simple Consent/no-consent option as the IAB TCF v2 purposes are more nuanced that it can no longer be distilled into a single "YES/NO" for consent.

The most direct "request NPA" option is https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/eu-consent#forward-consent. It is up to you to consult with your legal team or decide if setting npa=1 directly is sufficient, outside of using UMP.

Best,
Jill
Google Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[arla...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I realized that now the behaviour of the UMP 2.0 is a bit better:

 - When you change settings in the options, you leave the option and enter again, the modifications are kept.

 - There are new "Legitimate interest" consent that are implicitly confirmed if the user do not consent to the privacy.

 - Admob "should" display Limited ads (LTD: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10105530) when user does not consent to use of personal data and storing info to the device.

LTD should be ads not persolized and served only by Admob not using mediation and without storing info on device.

But, after some test I've not been able to get any Ad at all without user consent.

I posted a question about this, here and here

Anyone here has been able to get Limited Ads working?

[AndreasB]

> When you change settings in the options, you leave the option and enter again, the modifications are kept.

Do you mean that you can enter "Manage options", change options and save, and still see your changed options if you enter the same dialog a second time? That's still not my experience with com.google.android.ump:user-messaging-platform:2.0.0, and I don't think there's anything else?

[arla...@gmail.com]

Not exaclty, tha answer is Yes when I enter in options, and go back and enter again. It's No, when I close the dialog and open it again.

But the better news is about that "legitimate interest" is enabled by default and that "SHOULD" be enought to get Limited Ads (not personalized Ads, displayed only by Admob, without mediation).

I sayd "should" because I've not been able to get them working.

[FraG]

Hi,

So basically two years since this topic is open, can anyone answer this simple question:

When a user does NOT press the "Authorize" button of the consent screen, no ads are loaded from AdMob (even using mediation). 

- Therefore, what is our solution to show ads to these users and monetize our apps?

- Or at least, is there a way to know the user won't get ads and prevent them from playing until he consents?

If any developer found a good workaround, feel free to share ;)

Regards

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Francois,

Thank you for following up. This has been raised to us and has been answered by my colleague. You may check it here.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

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[FreeLearning]

Hi,

I have not read all the messages (there are so many), but I think I have the same problem as you, and I am aware that, at least at the moment, there is no solution.
I state that I am not an expert on the subject of consent.

But I find all this incredible. Practically to show ads in Europe with UMP, first of all we are practically obliged not to put the reject button at the beginning otherwise we would practically never show ads, and we are also forced to hope that the user does not want to click on "Manage options "or to hope that he doesn't know the trick for not having ads.

Is it possible that a solution to this has not yet been found?
It seems absurd to have to manage marketing for half a billion users, on the hope that the user does not click the wrong button.

It seems even more absurd to do things like initialize consent at each app launch to force the exasperated user to consent (I got the feeling on the user side, it's annoying). Or another (in my opinion) nonsense, use the consent form, the user refuses, exit the form, show the message they have to accept and reopen the form.

You could perhaps make an option (?) (Perhaps optional), integrated in the module, which says to the refusal like: "You have refused the personalization of the ads. This is a free application that uses only the ads as the main form of remuneration. Therefore, if you want to continue using the app, you must agree to (certain things) to allow us to serve non-personalized ads. Otherwise, you can uninstall the app. "

Having played video games for several years, I have almost always found myself faced with requests of this type from even famous games, which decide in a very clear way, read and accept, or uninstall.
It may not be cool, but for an ad-only free app, this situation is really frustrating.

[AndreasB]

Teejay,

that link goes to a page describing an API clearly marked as "deprecated" and at least heavily implied to not be "IAB compliant".

Even assuming that this was just an error on your end and that the link should have gone to a different page describing the use of "npa=1" in the context of the current solution (UMP), isn't it clear to you that this this whole thing is pretty backwards and annoying to use for both developers and end users?

Claims about UMP are that it is supposed to "support publishers" and "simplify processes". I personally do not feel supported if

• users can accidentally opt-out of seeing ads at all by revisiting the consent form
• even if feel like they opt-in, AdMob might disagree based on some combination of toggles that are hard to understand for everyone
• the automatic fall-back when personalized ads are not allowed seems to be "no ads at all" instead of "non-personalized ads", unless some magic keyword is manually added by the developer after (equally manually) detecting a consent problem themselves, because there's just no support for any of that built into UMP.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi All,

Thank you for your response.

Let me share this to the rest of the team to provide proper guidance on this. Rest assured that one of our team will reach out to you.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello all,

Referring to the How IAB requirements affect GDPR messages article, Google and other ad serving systems may not be able to serve ads to users who don't consent to some or all of purposes. In addition, in the Publisher integration with the IAB TCF v2.0 article, you can learn about the criteria that need to be met for Google to serve non-personalized ads if the consent requirements for personalized ads are not met.

Please let us know if you have any questions.


Regards,
Joshua

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[FreeLearning]

We understand that some options are needed to show even non-personalized ads only.

The question is: can you put an option in the consent form (perhaps optional and can be activated by the developer), such as the one present here (the site is yours) (https://www.cookiechoices.org/) in which you say something like: "Ok alright we will only show non-personalized ads, these ads can: <list of criteria your needed to show non-personalized ads>, but not for personalization". With a single "Accept" button underneath, as on your site (https://www.cookiechoices.org/)

So we are sure to show at least non-personalized ads, and the user is free to choose, if he wants to accept everything in the beginning and have personalized ads, or if he doesn't want personalized ads but agrees to the minimum criteria for non-personalized ads, or otherwise, it can uninstall the application.

If we leave the ability for users to disable ads for free, it would be as if they walked into a bar, ordered a coffee and left without paying.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello FreeLearning,

Thanks for the information.

You can customize the GDPR message in the AdMob UI (see Create GDPR messages for apps) for more details, or you can add logics in your app to show users additional message once they finish filling-in the consent form.

Other than it will be a feature request that will not become available in short term.

[FreeLearning]

However, that does not solve the problem, we can also show a thousand messages to users or modify the form as we want, but the option that the user has to not view the ads remains.

I understand that as a feature request it takes some time and that you can't even be sure it's accepted, but I hope at least they will evaluate it (or this or another method that solves the problem that with one click they can delete the ads).

I don't know the others, in the meantime I will continue to use my personal form.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello there,

Thanks for the feedback, I will bring this feature request to the team.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

If you are still experiencing the problem please provide a detailed instruction on how to reproduce the issue. 

Thanks,

[AndreasB]

Jill,

I don't quite know how to respond to this request. I provided "detailed instructions on how to reproduce the issue" more than two years ago, on August 17, 2020. The steps I listed were as follows:

> I'm basically doing the following:
> a) Display consent dialog and tap the button [1] to consent to everything ("Einwilligen" in german translation)
> b) After that, when I read the binary string IABTCF_PurposeConsents from SharedPreferences, it is "1111111011", meaning that the user actually did opt in to most of the purposes.
> c) Then, I open the consent dialog again, but this time tap button [2] ("Optionen verwalten") to see detailed options.
> d) There, I see that all of the consent options default to "off" (for example switches [3] and [4], which should be purpose IDs 1 and 2), although the user already opted in to all of these purposes in step (a).
> e) If I then tap "Send" and have a look at the binary string in SharedPreferences again, it is now set to "0", meaning that the user opted out of everything they opted in to before, even if they just wanted to opt out of a single option (or, worse, just opened the details out of curiousity).

I was asked if this problem still exists nearly a year later, on June 24, 2021. My reply at the time was:

> Yes, this problem still exists. I'm still seeing a "0" consent string if a user has previously opted in to everything, then opened the dialog and saved without manually changing anything.
> Has there been any change or new release on your side, or why would you expect this behaviour to have changed?

At some point along the line I also suggested the following fix, or at least a potential doc update if you don't actually want that problem to be fixed:

> it fails, simply because your implementation of the consent form does not read the exact same data that it might have written before, and in consequence does not use that readily available data to toggle one or another switch from OFF to ON when presenting the form to users a second time. This is a straight-forward fix, if you want this to be fixed. If you really consider this to work as intended for whatever reasons (and I can't think of any good ones), the honest thing to do would be to at least mention this fact in the same guide as linked to above.

All of that is still visible in messages of this public thread. Now, another year later, and nearly two months after I last participated in this conversation, you are asking the same question and expect me to repeat the same instructions - or something else, whatever it might be?

For what it's worth: yes, this problem still exists, and it still bugs all of us that are still trying to work with your SDKs to show your ads in our apps, making money for both of us. It's not surprising that this problem still exists, either, because there has barely been any update to the SDK since its 1.0.0 release on July 7, 2020: https://developers.google.com/admob/ump/android/release-notes

Does this sufficiently answer your question, or is there anything else I can do or explain?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

The GMA SDK does not read the TC string except at ad request time, so it can't pre-populate what the user has previously consented to. It's design decision that managed options are all default to OFF.

[AndreasB]

Hi Jill,

thanks for the confirmation that this is by design on your end. It has taken over two years to at least reach this point. Designs can change, though, so please let me reiterate the full problem here, because it goes well beyond some little nuisance with an UI oddity. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe all of the following statements to be true:

1. Personalized ads are only served if specific bits in the various TC strings are set. This includes consent or at least legitimate interest for multiple of the defined types, but also relevant bits in the vendor lists.

2. Non-personalized ads, too, are only served if the above is true. The number of bits that need to be set is reduced, but still, we need the TC strings to be set properly.

3. There is no official way to circumvent this setting and subsequent reading of TC strings even if we want to just show non-personalized ads. The previous system had a "npa=1" flag, but this doesn't work in the new system, at least not as an override to TC strings.

4. There is not even an unofficial way to do this at our own (legal) risk, because these TC strings are also backed up externally and compared with what is stored locally.

Now, if all of 1.-4. is true, then that means that a user can prevent the display of ANY ad - even those specifically termed "non-personal", which should be designed to not need any specific consent in the first place - by just not consenting to anything. Fair choice, but:

5. UMP does not pre-populate the consent dialog with previous choices on subsequent visits, although:

6. The relevant IAB policies do not actually forbid pre-populating a dialog if the user previously opted-in themselves.

7. It is virtually impossible for users to manually configure the full secondary and tertiary layers of the UMP dialog so that enough consent would be given, even if they wanted to. Basically anything they will attempt to configure themselves, will fail.

8. UMP does not provide any way for developers to easily check if the consent given by a user is sufficient for ads to be shown.

If all of 5.-8. is true, then AdMob is basically dead as a dodo for small-scale developers: If I can't trust at least some ads to be shown some of the time, and I can't even detect whether some user used the loophole described above, or even just accidentally pressed the wrong buttons, to shut down costly parts of my app logic for those users, then why should I even bother with AdMob and all of its other problems?

9. Last but not least, none of the above is clearly spelled out in any of the documentation of AdMob in general, or UMP specifically. If you believe that all of the above are sensible design decisions, you should inform your developers about them instead of having them learn about those pitfalls the hard way months down the line.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

My name is Chris and I'll be assisting with your case. I'm taking a look over your statements and checking them over with our UMP engineering to ensure that they are all correct and, if not, that I let you know about any discrepancies.

Regards,

Chris

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

I spoke with the team today and they are finalizing responses for you.

[ABQ App Source]

Jill, Andreas, Others,

I can confirm I see the same behavior as Andreas (and others who have reported the same thing). If you make even the most bare-minimum test app you will see this behavior too (so please stop asking people to send you sample apps).

1. If the user clicks "Consent" the IAB strings are "1"s and personalized ads are shown

2. If the user clicks "Decline" or "Consent to None" the IAB strings are "0" and no ads are shown at all

3. If the user clicks "Manage" and selects "Storage" consent AND selects Google from the giant list of vendors (non-alphabetical) then non-personalized ads are shown

4. If the user clicks "Manage" and does anything less than what is needed in step 3 (e.g. clicks "Storage" and "Basic Ads" but doesn't select Google) then no ads are shown at all

The old consent SDK had three primary options that were easy for users to understand and select from: "Personalized Ads", "Non-Personalized Ads", or "Pay for an Ad-Free App". There was no way around those - they had to pick one of those three. 

The primary issues with the new SDK are:

 * It is virtually impossible for a user to actually know how to select the right combination of check boxes to enable non-personalized ads even if they wanted to (the docs here tell developers which options are required, but an average user is not going to know this).

 * For ad-supported free apps, having a "Disable ads without paying" option is unacceptable and I cannot imagine why Google - which makes money from this advertising - would be ok with providing that

What would make it better?

 * A clear and easy-to-understand user-facing selection between personalized and non-personalized ads, activating whatever TCF strings are required for those in the SDK.

 * A "Pay for the ad-free app" button and/or a callback we could use to detect when they have selected options that do not allow ads of any kind to be shown to implement an appropriate fallback/demo mode/whatever.

This has been asked over and over on these groups - please, for the sake of developers who rely on AdMob, take this seriously!

https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/CGqwMNX-AZ4/

https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/etODwINGnXA/

https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/1DgFN9gfZkU/

https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/xfLEdy06pyc

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63583003/admob-tcf-error-when-using-google-ump-sdk

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63464270/how-to-request-non-personalized-admob-ads-with-the-new-unified-messaging-platfor

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65351543/how-to-implement-ump-sdk-correctly-for-eu-consent

- TV

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Here are the responses I received from engineering:

This help center article outlines the requirements for ad serving under the TCF v2 framework: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/9760862?hl=en. It is true that Google ad serving requires specific consents in order to serve either personalized or non-personalized ads. We do support the concept of limited ads (https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10105530?hl=en&ref_topic=9756841) which has looser requirements, but still requires some user consent. This limited ads mode is supported under the TCF v2 framework only.

As a developer, you do have access to the TC string created for a user via the TCF v2 API which specifies where consent data must be written within app storage (https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/GDPR-Transparency-and-Consent-Framework/blob/master/TCFv2/IAB%20Tech%20Lab%20-%20CMP%20API%20v2.md#what-is-the-cmp-in-app-internal-structure-for-the-defined-api).

It is correct that the UMP SDK currently does not support pre-populating existing choices in the dialog; as a product team, we've registered this feature request and will see how we incorporate this into our consent offerings. From the second/third screens of the dialog, we do offer users an "accept all" button that enables consent for everything configured, but users are otherwise free to make more granular consent choices.

[AndreasB]

> From the second/third screens of the dialog, we do offer users an "accept all" button that enables consent for everything configured, but users are otherwise free to make more granular consent choices.

Please acknowledge that this is technically correct, but (probably intentionally) ignoring the real problem: why would a user deliberately navigate to a secondary or tertiary screen, only to then "accept all", if they could just "consent" on the primary screen and be done with it?

The answer obviously is that they don't - the only sensible way for a user to even end up on the secondary or tertiary screen in the first place is if their intention is to not accept all, in which case we're back to our previous statements that it is virtually impossible to make those "granular consent choices" in a way that leads to any ads being shown. You didn't state that those statements were wrong, so I guess we agree on that.

The tl;dr of all of this is that your whole consent dialog is basically a giant Rube Goldberg machine that could be simplified to just two buttons: "show all ads" (if the user specifically clicks on "consent" or "accept all"), or "let me avoid all of your AdMob business" (if the user clicks anywhere else).

[ABQ App Source]

Chris,

Do you also acknowledge that this essentially removes the ability to serve non-personalized ads? And that this will be extremely frustrating to any user who actually tries to configure more granular consent options?

Even if they provide consent for all the items on the second page, ads won't be shown unless they also select vendors (including at least Google) on the third page. Any a user who makes a good-faith attempt to provide consent for non-personalized ads only to be shown a popup by the app of "you haven't provided consent for ads so you have to pay" is going to be extremely frustrated and most likely uninstall the app at that point.

From the first screen, there needs to be an option that allows a user to easily select the correct combination of options to enable non-personalized ads. There is already a "Consent to All" option so surely a "Consent to Non-Personalized Ads" option is both legally and practically possible. Without this, users will (rightly) feel like they are being forced to choose between consenting to everything or paying/using a demo version.

-TV

[FreeLearning]

Each answer you give us makes the question more and more incredibly absurd.

The more we try to simplify our requests, the more you are able to find a complicated way to say nothing.

The fact that this thread has been open since August 2020 is proof of this, and although I wish not, if this is the trend it will remain so for years to come.

Equally amazing how it is not possible to create a direct line with the authors of this system, instead of always having to switch between "I bring the request to the team" and after days "here is the answer" (always the same with different words).

Since we haven't solved anything in two years with you and the team, is there a chance to talk to someone else? Can you give us an email or something to create a direct line with someone?

An option obviously different from the "You can contact the Product Support Team" via the contact box, that box has not worked for years as written by many other people in many other threads. As for "asking the community", it's just as useless considering we're the community.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi All,

I will need some time to review the full history of this thread after getting you those previous answers from our engineering team. Once I've had time to review the full thread I'll get back to you as soon as possible with potential remedies to your issue or request additional information.

[AndreasB]

Hi Chris,

it has been three weeks now. Any idea how much longer reviewing this thread might take?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Andreas,

Thanks for reaching out.

I have reached out to Chris and he should be able to share an update shortly.



Regards,
Joshua

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

I'm afraid I'm a bit lost in the complexity, length, and duration of this thread as to the specific points I'm able to assist with. Could you please clarify exactly what your issue is so I can help?

[ABQ App Source]

Chris,

This thread is long because we keep reiterating the same issues and not getting any resolution.

The core issues are:

* The new UMP system makes it practically impossible for a user to select non-personalized ads. The second and third screens are useless because the vast majority of options a user might select result in no ads at all.

* The new UMP system should provide an easy-to-understand "pay for the ad-free app" option instead of just disabling ads if they don't select the magic combination out of hundreds of options. A "turn off ads and don't pay" option is unacceptable for ad-supported apps with real expenses.

The requests (non-exhaustive and in no particular order):

* Provide a "Consent to Non-personalized Ads" button on the main screen to pre-select the secret combination of settings to show non-personalized ads

* Provide developers a callback to know when insufficient permissions were selected to show ads

* Provide a way for a user to pre-select the options on the 2nd and 3rd screens and then *de-select* things they don't want instead of having to select them all from a blank page

- TV