Ads not showing on android devices if user does not give ATT consent

[cqesol...@gmail.com]

II have several apps configured to use admob and working perfectly on android and ios. I am beginning to include the sdk to request CPM consent for the use of personal data and I have verified that if I use the consent option, the ads are shown, but by configuring the options more restrictively or not allowing this use of personal data, in the test environment I do not get ads. Is this behavior normal or should I get ads?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

This is the expected behavior when requesting CPM consent for the use of personal data. 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)

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)

This means that lack of consent for Google to store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1) will result in no ads being served. You can read more in this document: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/9760862?hl=en&sjid=2418371235660772237-AP.

Feel free to reach out to us for further concerns or inquiries.

This message is in relation to case "ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2mXsQW:ref"

Thanks,
 

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[cqesolutions]

• "ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2mXsQW:ref"
  
• On their page they indicate the following block to show basic ads, shouldn't these basic ads be shown in this case since I have configured the CMP permission request?
  
• 
  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)

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Purpose 1 (Lack of consent for Google to store and/or access information on a device), is necessary in order to display ads. If consent is missing for Google for Purpose 1 in the TC string, Google will drop the ad request and no ads will be served. This criterion has to be met in order for ads to be displayed even if all other criteria are met.

[cqesolutions]

So I have two questions:
 - In case of requesting the CMP consent if the user does not consent to this point, regardless of the ad model of my app, the ads will never be displayed. But if I do not request the CMP consent, they will continue to be displayed.

- I have tried to authorize Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1) and the app continues without showing ads. On the other hand, if on the CMP confirmation screen I indicate that I consent to everything, the ads are shown.

[Andreas]

On top of giving consent for purpose 1, you would probably need to click through to the Vendor preferences (the link is hidden at the end of the dialog's secondary screen) and also select whatever is necessary in your case - which will realistically not be done by any actual user of your app.

[cqesolutions]

Indeed it does not seem to be a good usability. What this is going to achieve is that apps that base their income on advertising or on a subscription to remove advertising, will see their income eliminated because all users will press the option to allow consent and will stop viewing advertisements.

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[Andreas]

Exactly. Many of us have been debating this exact problem with whoever runs the "Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor" account for roughly two years, across many different topics in this group. You will typically get one or another canned response for a while, eventually culminating in the claim that "this will be brought up with the team", and that you should check back for updates to the SDK eventually. The SDK hasn't been updated even once in the last two years.

[cqesolutions]

And what solution are you adopting?
I started to review this behavior because I got a notice stating: "Over this year, Google will require all publishers serving ads in the EEA and UK to use a certified Consent Management Platform (CMP). by Google."

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-admob-ads-sdk/b2fa5fb3-f1ae-456e-a206-cf41ca39b399n%40googlegroups.com.

[Andreas]

I am in the lucky position of mostly offering apps that can be reduced to basic functionality (like disabling access to online databases, paid APIs etc.) while still offering some value to users - so what I do is to check for sufficient consent manually, which includes both purposes and vendors, and then disable costly functionality while displaying an explanatory message to my users that asks for consent and/or paying to remove ads altogether if consent is not sufficient.

I've published this workaround on GitHub (for Android/Kotlin) to detect consent, feel free to grab the code from there if it is useful for you.

If that is not an option for you, you might want to check the list of Google-certified CMPs to see if one of those offers some sort of "consent check API" - I haven't, because the end result would be roughly the same.

Long-term, I hope that Google's experiments with interest targeting without using cookies eventually leads somewhere, and that we can all put this consent dialog nonsense behind us. ;)

[cqesolutions]

In this case my problem is that I also have apps published on ios. But I'll take a look anyway, because my apps also don't use online services or external databases.

What I'm going to do for now is not implement CMP consent until it's mandatory.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-admob-ads-sdk/6a3cd954-366d-4555-83a4-75a1837a54b2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Andreas]

I hope the code is documented well enough to understand the gist of it and re-implement it for iOS. Feel free to open an issue in that GitHub repository if you have any further questions. :)

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Cqesolutions,

Thank you for your response.

With regard to your concern, as per this article (https://support.google.com/admob/answer/7676680?hl=en&sjid=2418371235660772237-AP), it mentioned that for non-personalized ads, "Although non-personalized ads don’t use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for ad targeting, they do still use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse. Therefore, you must obtain consent to use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for those purposes where legally required, per the ePrivacy Directive in certain EEA countries." If this has been obtained, and the user doesn't consent, then the non-personalized ads should display. If you still encountering no ads in your implementation, kindly provide us the following information below so we can further check.

• Sample app project
• Steps to replicate
• App ID
• Ad unit id used
• SDK version used

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[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Andreas,

Thank you for always giving your insight on this. We understand that there are multiple behavior that the consent is returning, but what we can provide are the following documentations available in our Help Center (https://support.google.com/admob?sjid=2418371235660772237-AP#topic=7383088) as well as in our documentation guide (https://developers.google.com/admob). But, rest assured that if you ever encounter errors in your implementation using our SDK, we always strive to support you the best we can. If you have any other concerns related to the Mobile Ads SDK, just let us know.