AdMob Campaign not working on Android 9+

[Lucas Paul]

Hello everyone, I hope you are safe in these tough times.

My company is running an AdMob campaign which should be served in both our apps (iOS and Android) at a particular unit ID (two, one for each platform).

iOS works perfectly, we can see the campaign being served to us, internally, and our users.
On Android, the campaign works fine on all Android versions, up to Android 8. On Android 9 and 10 devices we get the usual google ads instead of our own campaign, both internally, and our external testers. (All of these on our public release build).

The AdRequest sent by our app is the same on all Android versions, so we don't know why this behaviour happens. 

We've tested our app and the served ads on Android 5 up to 10, and the ones that don't serve our campaign is Android 9 and 10. 

The affected devices that I've personally tested were:

Samsung Galaxy S8, Android 10 - Serves Google Ads
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro, Android 9 - Serves Google Ads

MLS iQ1568, Android 8 - Serves our campaign

Motorola Moto X Play, Android 5 - Serves our campaign

As for the AdMob and google play versions, we are using:

classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.3.3' 

and

implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-core:17.4.0'

implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ads:19.1.0'

implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:19.1.0'

I can provide any other required information (ad unit ID, charles logs, etc), but in private since its our companies information, so let me know if anything else is needed. Is anyone else facing this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

I was wondering if you could share via "Reply privately to author" button the following information so that we can look further into this for you.

• App id and Ad unit id
• Any error codes or charles logs that display the issue.
• A sample app that you can share for us to test against, and a link to the live app also
• Steps to reproduce to get the issue
• Admob SDK Version
• Seems to be related to  the 4 phones you mentioned below

As always also please make sure to keep any information private and do not post on the thread.

Regards,
William Pescherine
Mobile Ads SDK Team
 

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q1zLT5t:ref

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

I work along with William. Thank you for providing the requested information privately. However, I wasn't able to download it due to access restriction. With this, could you please provide the shareable link instead in order for us to proceed with our investigation? Kindly provide the requested details via "Reply privately to author" option.

Regards,
Teejay Pimentel

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you providing the requested details privately. Please refer to my investigation summary below using Google Pixel 3 XL Android 10 device.

• I tried the sample app that you provided, I'm consistently getting a Ad failed to load : 3 or no fill error on my end.
• I'm also getting a no fill error using your Ad Unit ID.
• I've checked the Charles log Android_8_Success and Android_8_Success_2; I could see that there is a data returned on its response, which signifies that there is an ad returned upon an ad request.
• On the other hand, the Android_9_Failed contains an empty response, which signifies a no fill error.

With that said, could you confirm of you are also getting the said error on your end when ads failed to load? If so, this is an ad serving issue. Please do note that a no fill error means that there was no ads as of the moment and this behavior isn't controlled by the Mobile Ads SDK. I would recommend reaching out to the Product Support Team as the product specialists there can better assist you with this.

[Lucas Paul]

Thank you Teejay for your very fast response and for taking the time to investigate my issue.

I can confirm that I'm also getting the "No fill error" on my Sample app, on the Android 9 device, while running the Charles proxy.

However, on live apps, this behaviour is not happening. We are seeing google ads being served (so no "no fill" error there) but not our own campaign. I'm not sure why the ad serving behaves differently on debug and release builds, and while a proxy is running or not. Is it possible for you to also check the live app from the Play Store, or should we forward this request on the Product Support Team as suggested?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for the updated information and your patience as we try to resolve this for you.

If you have a link to the live app we would definitely take that and will test on that to see what we are getting.

Also as far as the difference between a debug and release build? Yes there can be slight behavioral differences. Not huge but for example the no fill error that you are seeing. You might not see in testing. But would see in live.

And would also probably be good to definitely check with the Product Support Team since they are more equipped to handle server issues.

Regards,
William Pescherine

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for getting back to us. 

Since you mentioned that the behavior is not happening in your live app, then this is clearly an ad serving concern. Please do note that requesting an ads on unpublished/debug app affects the fill rate of the ads. Our recommendation is to use test ads if you're testing the ads on your app. This is also to avoid your account being flagged for invalid activity.

If you have further clarification regards to ad serving, I would recommend reaching out to our Product Support Team. The product specialist there would be able to provide a better insight regarding this.

Regards,
Teejay Pimentel

[Lucas Paul]

Thank you for your reply Teejay.
I've already opened a question on the Product Support before posting on the SDK forum.

When I mentioned that the behaviour is not happening in our live apps, I meant the "No ad to show" error. On our live apps we are getting google ads instead of our custom Campaign on devices above Android 9, and we are trying to figure out if it's an SDK issue, or a server/serving issue on the Android side of things (since all iOS version show our campaign as expected).

In the meantime, I wanted to ask you, how is it possible to test AdMob campaigns using test ads? The testing we've been doing now is download the release builds on our devices and check if the campaigns are being served correctly, as well as consult our external testers to see what ads they are getting.

P.S.: In case you download and try our ads on the live app I've sent you via a private message, the ad unit is being displayed in the article lists, between every 10-15 articles, so you should get an ad after the homepage loads if you scroll down a bit.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for all the help and information that you have been giving us.

For the fact that you are getting the wrong ads. And should be getting the campaign ads. Would be more a server issue as it woud seem that they are not distributing the correct content. Could be account related, which I would say just to double check. But I suspect thats fine and is more of a serving issue.

I believe that you can try to use our Mediation Test Suite which I believe would allow you to test out an ad campaign. But yes as you stated the only other way would be to just test it manually. With your team or outside testers that you use.

Regards,
William Pescherine