Ads don't play on a specific (actual production) package name on Android, Android TV & Fire TV with ExoPlayer.

[Anas Azeem]

Hi,

I am getting the below error whenever I try to play ads on my Android, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV app with a particular package name which is tv.horseandcountry. If I change the package name to anything other than the actual production package name, the ads play as expected. I can't change the package name because there are apps already Live on the respective app stores.

The result is the same on my app and on the latest exoplayer demo, which I tested by changing the package name in the AndroidManifest.xml inside the demo module. None of the videos under IMA sample ad tags section play ads and the logcat shows the below error every time.

AdError [errorType: LOAD, errorCode: AdErrorCode [name: VAST_EMPTY_RESPONSE, number: 1009], message: The VAST response document is empty.]

Steps to reproduce

1. Git clone the ExoPlayer repo from here
2. Go to demos/main/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and change the line package="com.google.android.exoplayer2.demo" to package="tv.horseandcountry"
3. Gradle sync your project and run
4. Play any title under the IMA sample ad tags section.
5. Notice the ads won't play and the VAST_EMPTY_RESPONSE error would be seen in the logcat.

Other Details

• ExoPlayer version number: r2.14.2
• Android version: 7.1.2 & Android 11
• Android device: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k & Google Pixel 2 XL

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. In looking over the error that you say you are getting, the fact that you are getting VAST_EMPTY_RESPONSE  indicates that there is something wrong with the vast. For that we would suggest reaching out to your ad server and let them know that the VAST is empty, or to look into what is happening with it.

Regards,

William Pescherine Mobile Ads SDK Team

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[Anas Azeem]

Hello William, thanks for your response.

I will let the ad server team about your observations. But don't you think this is a little weird that the same ads play on one package and don't play on another?

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

I work along with william.

 

Getting an empty VAST Response could cause different errors. It would be best if you can confirm with your ad provider first that your Ad Tag is able to send a valid response, so we can dig deeply into the issue. Do not hesitate to come back to us once you get their feedback.

Regards,

Michael Angelo Legaspi IMA SDK Team

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[Anas Azeem]

Thanks for your response Micheal, I truly appreciate your interest and prompt reply.

Before I share your and William's responses to the ad server team, did you try running the ExoPlayer app and changing the package name to tv.horseandcountry? I say this because the same ad tag, which I get from our ad server, works on the package name other than tv.horseandcountry. And the sample ad tags, in the ExoPlayer's media.exolist.json, (which are not associated with our ad server),  stop working when I change the package name to tv.horseandcountry.

Any help from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

Thank you for your response.

 

I agree that it is a little unusual that changing the package name would cause such an error. However, upon testing on your shared sample app and following your instruction on how to reproduce the issue by renaming the package name under demos/main/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml, I couldn't exactly replicate the issue you are reporting as I cannot see the VAST_EMPTY_RESPONSE in the logcat. Would you be able to share with us a screen recording of the behavior starting from where you do this setup up to the error you are encountering? This will greatly help us understand the situation you are in.

Regards,

[Anas Azeem]

Hello Micheal, thank you for your response.

I am attaching the screen recording and project here. This is one of the IMA SDK samples - BasicExample - which I downloaded from here. 

After unzipping and setting up, in MyActivity.java, I added ImaAdsLoader.Builder.setDebugModeEnabled(true) and SimpleExoPlayer.setPlayWhenReady(true).

Then I ran the app with the default package name - com.google.ads.interactivemedia.v3.samples.videoplayerapp - and as expected the ads played fine.

After that, I changed the package name in build.gradle to tv.horseandcountry, then sync and run. Now when the app launches the ads don't play and the content is played directly.

Screen recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ff3trV2j0fmNdziCts68H9z3V9Tqsajd/view?usp=sharing

Project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12djtxw5KDVYQnYSbAnjrEpJ3oOll8ihP/view?usp=sharing

I hope this time you would be able to reproduce the issue.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

Thank you for getting back to us. Allow me to assist you in this.

I've checked your app, and was able to reproduce the issue on my end reliably. I also tried our advanced sample app and the same behavior occurs as well. With that all said, let me raise this (including the reports and findings thus far) to the rest of the team for further investigation, and to get their insight as well. We'll get back to you the soonest the team provide their findings.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel IMA SDK Team

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[Anas Azeem]

Hello Teejay,

Just wanted to check if we have any update on our issue.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

Thank you for coming back to us. However, I'm afraid the team haven't given their feedback yet on the issue. We will update you the soonest we have the result of the investigation.

Regards,

Michael Angelo Legaspi IMA SDK Team

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[Anas Azeem]

Hello IMA SDK team,

Do we have any updates on our issue, please? It's been 5 days since we last heard and the issue is open for almost 2 weeks now. Please let us know when can we expect the resolution of our issue.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

Our team is still investigating the issue. We will provide more information once we get a response from them. Rest assured that this is actively being look upon by our team.

Regards,

[Anas Azeem]

Hello team,

I understand that you are looking into the issue but can we at least know if there's any movement on the issue or was the team able to understand the cause let alone resolving it. You must understand that the issue is open for 21 days now and we are struggling even before that since this was previously raised on ExoPlayer and they then told us to raise this issue here on the IMA SDK team. 

You guys might not understand the gravity of the situation here, our 2 clients are losing real money because of this issue since their apps (Android, Android TV & Fire TV) are not displaying ads on their videos. 

Please let us understand the delay in the resolution of this and some tentative timeline of the resolution.

Thanks

Looking forward to hearing from you.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

We do understand the importance of this issue to you and your client's business. I do see progress on the current investigation, its just I cannot relay any information just yet as the investigation has not been finalized. This is to avoid confusion and misinformation. Rest assured that our team is doing our best in order to resolve this issue. Nonetheless, I will ask for an update to our team so we can provide any information to you. We will get back to you once they have responded.

Regards,

[Anas Azeem]

Hello team,

Do we have any updates?

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

 

I'm afraid we haven't got any feedback from the team. I will ping them once again and will let you know the soonest they have responded.

Regards,

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

This is Jackson from the IMA SDK DevRel team. I have an update on your issue:

It looks like the app name "tv.horseandcountry" is marked as a child app, and that is the reason ads are being restricted for it.

There are 2 options for moving forward:
(1) It may be possible to change the status of the app if it is incorrectly marked as child content. (2) Mark the Line Items you want served within GAM as child appropriate so that they can serve in this environment.

For (2), please see the attached screenshot. For (1) I am unsure of next steps currently, but can get more info if that is the route you want taken.

Thank you,
Jackson
IMA SDK team

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[Anas Azeem]

Hello Jackson, thank you so much for your reply,

I had a discussion internally with my team and we want to opt for option 1. Now, where do you want me to change the status of the app? If it is the Google Play Console, I have changed the app's target audience to 13+ which was previously targetted to all audiences. 

Please let us know the next steps.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Thank you for the reply. Let me look into what needs to be done on our end, and I will update this thread when I know more.

Jackson,

[Anas Azeem]

Hi Jackson, 

I recently received a communication from ima-sdk from another ticket: https://groups.google.com/g/ima-sdk/c/d_6Oc0rv3YE. It says something was fixed and pushed mid-last week on 9/14/2021, I wanted to check if it concerns me and my issue which is raised in this ticket.

 Looking forward to hearing from you.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

It looks like what you have done on your end resolved the issue. The fix for GPT (Google publisher tags) was unrelated.

Are you still not receiving ads on your 'tv.horseandcountry' app?

Jackson

[Anas Azeem]

Hi Jackson,

Actually, we are, now getting ads on the said app. Did you guys make any changes or was it due to the fact that we changed the target audience in the Google Play Console for this app to 13 and above?

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

The change made on your end fixed the issue. Nothing was done on our end.

[Anas Azeem]

Hi Jackson and team,

This is rather strange but now one of our other clients "Chorki" whose app has the package name "com.prothomalo" is showing similar behavior and is throwing the same "AdErrorCode [name: VAST_EMPTY_RESPONSE, number: 1009]" error on the Android app. This is happening only with the "com.prothomalo" package name and changing the package name to anything else, ads render just fine. 

Based on our previous experience, we checked the target audience on Google Play Console, and the target audience is already set to 18+.

Can you please help us resolve this also? 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank You

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Let me look into why this new app is being blocked. I will update you here when I have more information.

Thank you,

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

I was not able to find 'com.prothomalo.' as a play store app. However, I did find this similarly named app (com.prothomalo.english).
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prothomalo.english&hl=en_US&gl=US

Could it be that the first name is not registered with the play store?

[Anas Azeem]

The app is indeed available on Google Play Store at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prothomalo, please see the screenshot below. Also, the app is not restricted anywhere in the world.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

We are still working on determining the cause of this issue for 'com.prothomalo'. I was able to reproduce the issue using that as the App ID.

One possible cause for the issue would be using a single Cloud Project ID for multiple Android apps, and one of those apps is marked as child content. Could you confirm if multiple apps use the Cloud Project ID used by 'com.prothomalo', and also check if any of those apps are marked as child content.

[Anas Azeem]

Hello,

Just to let you know that I received a feedback from the team that we are not using single ID for multiple Android apps. 

[Anas Azeem]

Hello team, 
Do we have any updates on our issue?
Thanks

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Sorry for the delay resolving this issue. I am still working to determine the cause of the issue for 'com.prothomalo'. I will let you know once I have more info.

[Anas Azeem]

Hi, any update on this issue?

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Thank you for the follow-up. I haven't heard anything yet on this issue, but will check up on the internal issue I raised.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Thank you for your patience with this issue. Would it be possible to share the publisher code for the publisher associated with this app? Because this is private information, please feel free to reply to my email(js...@google.com).

Once I have that, I should be able to provide more information on why ads are not being served.

Thank you,

[Anas Azeem]

Hello, sorry for the late reply.

I am not exactly sure what the publisher code means and where to get it from. I have mailed you on the email above the developer account id. If that is not what you required, please let me know where can I get the publisher code from.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

I am still waiting to hear back if the information you provided is sufficient. I will be sure to update you here when I have more info.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

The Publisher Quality team could not find any association between the "tv.horseandcountry" app and the developer account ID you provided, however it did seem to be related to previous app we discussed, com.prothomalo.

We are still looking into other causes for the block on "tv.horseandcountry". I will update you with any new findings here.

[Anas Azeem]

Hello, thanks for your response.

Just wanted to let you know that the developer account ID which we shared was associated to the Chorki app (com.prothomalo) and our issue with the tv.horseandcountry app was resolved and we shared our observations in this ticket here.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

Sorry for the confusion on my part.

I had given the incorrect app name, but have now directed the team to take a look at "com.prothomalo". I will be sure to get back to you as soon as I have any information.

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anas,

I believe the issue for the "com.prothomalo" app ID has been fixed on our end. I tested it this morning by changing our sample app's ID and was able to see ads play.

Would it be possible for you to confirm this is fixed on your end?

[Anas Azeem]

Hi,
I received an update from my team that they can now see the ads on com.prothomalo. Thank you for all the efforts you put in. 
Can you please help us understand what exactly was done to make this work? This is to avoid delays in future if we happen to encounter a similar issue.

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anas,

The issue was related to a flag on the app for a violation from the Publisher Quality team. After reaching out to the team, we were able to determine there was no violation and remove the label.

Again, sorry for the delay in getting this resolved.