iOS Advertising Identifier Rejection after add GoogleAds-IMA-iOS-SDK

[April Smith]

I follow iOS Quick Start step on the developer site. I add SDK by Manually, (Using the SDK Download) It works great!

However, once I submitted app to store, it was rejected by PLA 3.3.12 as below :

How can I solve this problem so far? 

PLA 3.3.12

We found your app uses the iOS Advertising Identifier but does not include ad functionality. This does not comply with the terms of the iOS Developer Program License Agreement, as required by the App Store Review Guidelines.

Specifically, section 3.3.12 of the iOS Developer Program License Agreement states:

"You and Your Applications (and any third party with whom you have contracted to serve advertising) may use the Advertising Identifier, and any information obtained through the use of the Advertising Identifier, only for the purpose of serving advertising. If a user resets the Advertising Identifier, then You agree not to combine, correlate, link or otherwise associate, either directly or indirectly, the prior Advertising Identifier and any derived information with the reset Advertising Identifier."

Note: iAd does not use the AdSupport framework, ASIdentifierManager, or the Advertising Identifier. Therefore they are not required for iAd implementations and should not be included in your app for iAd support. 

If your app is serving ads, please:

- Ensure that you have tested your app on a device, not just the simulator, and that you have removed all previous versions of your app prior to testing

- Provide us the steps to locate ads in your app

If your app does not serve ads, please check your code - including any third-party libraries - to remove any instances of:

class: ASIdentifierManager
selector: advertisingIdentifier
framework: AdSupport.framework

If you are planning to incorporate ads in a future version, please remove the Advertising Identifier from your app until you have included ad functionality.

To help locate the Advertising Identifier, use the “nm” tool. For information on the “nm” tool, please see the nm man page. 

If you do not have access to the libraries' source, you may be able to search the compiled binary using the "strings" or "otool" command line tools. The "strings" tool lists the methods that the library calls, and "otool -ov" will list the Objective-C class structures and their defined methods. These techniques can help you narrow down where the problematic code resides. 

[Shawn Busolits (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi April,

We do have a number of publishers with apps in the app store using our SDK, so I'm not sure why yours was rejected. I'd recommend taking the steps they provided (make sure you test on a device and provide steps to locate the ads in the app) and responding with that info to see if they change their mind.

Thanks,

Shawn Busolits

IMA SDK Team

[April Smith]

Thank you so much for the answer. However, the problem still exist. 

Here is what I did:

$ grep -r advertisingIdentifier .

Binary file ./Pods/GoogleAds-IMA-iOS-SDK/libGoogleIMA3.a matches
Binary file ./MyApp/Library/GoogleIMASDK3/libGoogleIMA3.a matches

and aslo

$ otool -L path/to/MyApp.app/MyApp

I saw something like this:  /System/Library/Frameworks/AdSupport.framework/AdSupport --- which mean my app is linking with AdSupport

So, I try to remove Google IMA SDK from my project, it works. no linking with AdSupport anymore, then I try to validate app before re-submit, all error gone.
(The thing is I can't just remove Google IMA because some feature in my app need IMA )

I think the problem is similar to the problem that Google Analytic use to has. Do you have any suggestion?

Sincerely,
April Smith

[Erik Price]

Make sure your app actually shows ads. I am familiar with at least one case where ads were only being shown in certain geographies (due to geo-restrictions on video content) and the App Store review team was not seeing the ads, so the app was flagged for this same reason.

e

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[Shawn Busolits (IMA SDK Team)]

Hey Erik and April,

Erik, thanks for the additional troubleshooting info.

April, as Erik said, I would check to make sure that there's not a situation in which your app *won't* display ads. The IMA SDK does use the advertising identifier, but the problem that Apple seems to have with your app is that it doesn't show ads. If you're using the SDK, I assume you're showing ads, so I would make sure that the folks at Apple are actually seeing ads when they test your app.

Thanks,

Shawn Busolits

IMA SDK Team

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[Erik Price]

Make sure your app actually shows ads. I am familiar with at least one case where ads were only being shown in certain geographies (due to geo-restrictions on video content) and the App Store review team was not seeing the ads, so the app was flagged for this same reason.

e

On Friday, August 1, 2014, April Smith <aprilfu...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[April Smith]

Heyy, Thanks you guys a lot. I follow your instruction; I provide the steps for them. Now they approve our app.

Sincerely,
April