Audio Sound from Banner Ads ?

[Ying Chen]

Hi, 

Several of our users recently reported that there are audio sound coming from the banner ads which is annoying. However, we are not able to reproduce this with our testing devices. Want to see if someone else have this problem as well?

As I understand that banner ads should not have audio sound, and only interstitial ads should have audio or video, am I right? We do not have interstitial ads in our mobile apps, we only have banner ads .

Thank you in advance.

Ying

[Vu Chau (MobileAds SDK Team)]

Hi Ying,

Are you using mediation in your apps?  If so then third-party ad networks actually have control over the banner ads, so they might serve banners that have embedded audio.  Traditionally banner ads from AdMob itself are not supposed to have audio.  That is only a feature of interstitial ads. 

If in your testing you do run into this issue, be sure to check 1) if you can reproduce it in our sample app, and 2) if it's a specific ad unit ID that's causing it.  If so, feel free to send us the unit ID in private.  We'll take a look and investigate the issue.

Vu Chau

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Ying Chen]

Hi Vu, 

Thank you so much for your quick response, and confirming that AdMob banner ads should traditionally not have audio. We do have other third-party ad networks, so we not entirely sure if this is an AdMob issue. We are still unable to reproduce this in our testing network. Two of the users who reported are actually located in Australia. 

We will do more testing and let you know what we find out. 

Thanks again,

Ying

[Ying Chen]

Hi Vu, 

We have two other ads networks we use in our mediation and we have confirmed with both of them. One of them does not serve ads in Australia, and the other does not support audio ads at all. So the talking banner ads is most likely from Admob, maybe in the format of HTML 5 Template or Rich Media Banner ads. Could it be from one of the over 2 thousand ads networks in Admob? Does Admob review each ads submitted by these over 2 thousand ads networks?

More of our users in Australia reported talking banner ads recently. There is one especially annoying which is about 1 minute long, when this talking ads happens, the banner disappears or sometimes there is an icon floating on the screen. In this talking ads two male voices talk really fast about some treatment for cold symptoms such as nasal congestion or throat discomfort, but our users are not entirely sure because they say the voices talk really fast. 

Because of this we have got quite a few 1 star ratings for our mobile app recently with reviews complaining about talking banner ads. We had to block all of the over 2 thousand ads networks in Admob for now. 

Could you please look into this? So that we can find troublesome ads or ads networks who violate the traditional rule that banner ads should not have audio auto play. 

Your help and time is highly appreciated. 

Thanks a lot,

Ying

[Vu Chau (MobileAds SDK Team)]

Hi Ying,

Thanks for the details and the verification with your users.

If you are able to reproduce this issue on your test devices, I'd suggest implementing the getMediationAdapterClassName() method to return the adapter class name that was responsible for the ad request.  This is a long shot but it will help track down the network that serves the reported audio ads during mediation.  Subsequently, you might want to take appropriate action in handling this network's ad serving.

Let us know what you come up with.

Vu Chau

Mobile Ads SDK Team

[Ying Chen]

Hi Vu, 

Thanks for your reply. 

We do not have testing devices running in Australia, and we have not been able to reproduce this problem yet. We also tried a test build with setting AdRequest location to Australia longitude and latitude through AdRequest$Builder, but it does not seem to show ads in Australia. 

We will see what else we can do to reproduce this.

Thanks,

Ying