Errors when using 'Country specific settings' on 'AdMob Network'

[Pieter]

We are trying to limit the "AdMob Network" ad source in mediation to some countries only,

or to disable it altogether.

I have added some countries in the "Country specific settings: AdMob Network" dialog

and checked "Disable ad requests to all other countries".

Unfortunately, the following error now occurs when an ad is requested:

I/Ads     (22769): Request scenario: Online server request.

E/Ads     (22769): AdLoader can't parse gWhirl server configuration.

I/Ads     (22769): The following was caught and handled:

I/Ads     (22769): org.json.JSONException: No value for ad_networks

I/Ads     (22769):      at org.json.JSONObject.get(JSONObject.java:354)

I/Ads     (22769):      at org.json.JSONObject.getJSONArray(JSONObject.java:544)

I/Ads     (22769):      at com.google.ads.c.a(SourceFile:102)

I/Ads     (22769):      at com.google.ads.internal.c.b(SourceFile:994)

I/Ads     (22769):      at com.google.ads.internal.c.run(SourceFile:902)

I/Ads     (22769):      at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)

This seems to happen all the time, not just when there are no ads available for higher ranked networks.

Unchecking "Disable ad requests to all other countries" seems to solve the issue, but that is not the

behavior we want.

Any ideas what could cause this? Are any of you trying to use mediation without using the AdMob Network

source?

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

This error means that you have 0 mediation networks configured for that request. Do you have any other networks set up in your placement, in the case that your country-specific settings don't include AdMob?

Thanks,
Eric

[Pieter]

We use our own homegrown mediation layer that is more sophisticated than your mediation support. We want to use both "admob" and "admob ecpm floor" as separate targets so we need "admob ecpm floor" without the automatic fallback to admob.

I guess we can just handle the error case as a regular "no fill" case.

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

If you've upgraded to the new AdMob UI, you're placement always has the AdMob network in the mediation flow. You can use AdMob eCPM floor and fall back to other networks first before a final fallback to AdMob, but AdMob will always be present somewhere. This gets trickier if you're using your own mediation solution though, since if your placement only has eCPM floor followed by AdMob, you don't get the no-fill callback when eCPM floor fails, only a callback for the backfill ad succeeding or all networks failing.

[Milen]

We are getting similar errors without mediation or any country specific settings. What else could be causing such errors?

We are using AdMob SDK 6.4.1 on Android and the new AdMob UI. This only happens with one of our apps even though all use identical implementation and configuration.

10-01 10:23:50.730: E/Ads(6371): AdLoader can't parse gWhirl server configuration.

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371): The following was caught and handled:

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371): org.json.JSONException: No value for ad_networks

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at org.json.JSONObject.get(JSONObject.java:354)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at org.json.JSONObject.getJSONArray(JSONObject.java:548)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at com.google.ads.c.a(SourceFile:102)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at com.google.ads.internal.c.b(SourceFile:994)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at com.google.ads.internal.c.run(SourceFile:902)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371):     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:841)

10-01 10:23:50.730: I/Ads(6371): onFailedToReceiveAd(There was an internal error.)

Please advise. 

Thanks,

Milen

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

This error means you have no mediation networks configured for your mediation ID. What do your settings look like?

Thanks,
Eric

[Milen]

Thank you for your reply, Eric.

We do not use mediation. The only Ad source selected under "Mediation" is the "AdMob Network" with "Default eCPM" of $0.01. The "Country specific settings" column shows "None".

We have several apps that use the same configuration (at least as far as I can tell) and implementation. This is the only one that shows the errors and experiences low fill rate. The drop occurred in the beginning of August.

Thanks,

Milen