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I recently integrated the UMP SKD according to the documentation. Now I get an error report from Adbmob which states that a lot of ad requests fail because of the error "1.1". The troubleshooting page states that "Google, as a vendor, is not allowed under consent or legitimate interest.", but this is no help either. Has anyone had a similar error when using the UMP SDK and knows to resolve it?

Yannick
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    Same issue here, I asked the AdMob SDK development team https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/u7l59JvrKb4/m/cun5eGofAwAJ but did not get a response yet. Even more annoying, it seems that because of this, no ads are shown at all to users that did not consent.. – Bastiaan van den Berg Sep 16 '20 at 16:28
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    Any solution for this yet? Google is silent. – edhnb Oct 05 '20 at 18:08
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    They say they are working on it, but from the responses on the AdMob google groups forum, I get the feeling that they still don't understand our problem and keep mixing up different issues. Even if I try to ask a question as explicitly as possible, I get a completely unrelated answer. The most recent developments are here: https://groups.google.com/g/google-admob-ads-sdk/c/6YdKIuuvC0g – Bastiaan van den Berg Oct 08 '20 at 08:57
  • Thank you all for your replies! Does anyone know how much time is left until TFC becomes mandatory? – Yannick Oct 09 '20 at 09:08
  • I've found a workaround: Disable Personalized Ads for EU users in AdMob -> Blocking Controls. Then disable the consent form on FundingChoices. The users won't get a consent anymore and non-personalized ads are shown. @BastiaanvandenBerg – Nico S. Oct 10 '20 at 23:27
  • Same here, so following. The workaround seems to work, but this will cause a hit in revenue as only non-personalized ads will be presented. – The Lone Coder Oct 14 '20 at 07:58
  • @Georg only 9% of the users will consent anyways so the impact might be not that great https://medium.com/dataseries/only-9-of-visitors-give-gdpr-consent-to-be-tracked-4d8c84ed16c0 – Nico S. Oct 14 '20 at 18:45
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    Any news about this topic @BastiaanvandenBerg ? – Nico S. Oct 27 '20 at 01:12
  • I am also facing similar error. Very frustrating. – Chaitanya Karmarkar Oct 27 '20 at 07:45
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    From the link that @BastiaanvandenBerg shared, it is correct that pressing Manage consent -> Submit results in no ads loading, because users need to give permission for Purpose 1 (which is off by default) However.. even when enabling all permissions, Ads are still not loading, as if the UMP still requires vendors to be enabled manually. – ZeroStatic Oct 29 '20 at 07:29
  • Any new updates? – Chaitanya Karmarkar Nov 01 '20 at 07:36
  • Anybody knows to resolve it? – Chaitanya Karmarkar Nov 03 '20 at 11:15
  • [TCF](https://iabeurope.eu/transparency-consent-framework/) ...you may have to obtain consent. An error message without the code that causes it is useless. – Martin Zeitler Nov 11 '20 at 11:43

2 Answers2

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From my understanding, if one of your users taps on "Manage options", then, if you want him to receive personalized ads, he has to consent to :

  • Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1)
  • Create a personalized ads profile (Purposes 3)
  • Select personalized ads (Purposes 4)

And to consent / enable legitimate interest 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)

For non-personalized ads, he has to consent to :

  • Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1)

And to consent / enable legitimate interest 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)

(Source)

The "Google Advertising Products" should also be toggled on in order for AdMob to work. The thing is that NO OPTION is selected by default. So, the user should MANUALLY enable those options (and let's be honest, nobody knows that, and nobody wants to do that). The only thing we can do for the moment is to wait for Google to provide us a way to select some purposes and providers by default. Because in its current state, Funding Choice is unusable on mobile.

Skyost
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  • any update on this? I am so disappointed with admob, is it same with facebook ads do you know, I will switch if its not – cs guy Mar 08 '21 at 00:20
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For everyone that needs a workaround until Google fixes the issue:

Disable Personalized Ads for EU users in AdMob -> Blocking Controls.

https://apps.admob.com/v2/pubcontrols/eu-user-consent enter image description here

Then disable the consent form on FundingChoices.

https://fundingchoices.google.com/ enter image description here

The users won't get a consent anymore and non-personalized ads are shown.

Nico S.
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    I am no expert on this topic, so I might very well be wrong. But as far as I understood, users still need to consent to the use of cookies, even if you show them only non-personalized ads. Because Google still uses cookies in that case, and according to GDPR, you need a consent for that. See the header "Non-personalized ads" on this page: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7670013?hl=en – Bastiaan van den Berg Oct 15 '20 at 06:29
  • But AdSense is not AdMob @BastiaanvandenBerg – Nico S. Oct 15 '20 at 08:05
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    Sorry, wrong link. The exact same information is given for AdMob here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/7676680?hl=en&ref_topic=9756841 – Bastiaan van den Berg Oct 15 '20 at 08:23
  • @BastiaanvandenBerg have you had any trouble doing it this way? – SAHM Jun 26 '21 at 20:39
  • @SAHM No, I never took this approach, so I did'nt have any trouble with it. I only read that consent is also needed when you serve non-personalized ads, see also Skyost's answer for more details. – Bastiaan van den Berg Jun 30 '21 at 20:34
  • @BastiaanvandenBerg so did you end up implementing Admob’s solution for GDPR? And if so, did you ever see any revenue for the areas where the users went through this dialog? I.e. do ads ever show?? I was thinking of using your workaround because it does work with test ads, whereas I can’t see any ads ever displaying when left to users to not only allow any tracking but to magically pick the right combination. Hmmm.... – SAHM Jul 01 '21 at 22:10
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    @SAHM I am still using the legacy consent dialog. I tried the new one in one of my apps, but reverted to the legacy because it didn't work properly back then. It might have improved since, I haven't checked it for a while. – Bastiaan van den Berg Jul 03 '21 at 06:26
  • @BastiaanvandenBerg I am new to Admob consent and not sure how to use the legacy consent dialog myself. Is it still available to newcomers? I'm so sorry to bother you, I just work as a lone wolf developer with no one to really consult and I really want to get this right. – SAHM Jul 04 '21 at 17:29
  • No worries @SAHM, I am the same type of developer in the exact same position :). The documentation is still there: https://developers.google.com/admob/android/eu-consent, but it is deprecated and no longer maintained, so I wouldn't advice starting to use it. I am also going to switch to a new solution soon. – Bastiaan van den Berg Jul 05 '21 at 19:13
  • @BastiaanvandenBerg which solution are you going to switch to? I have looked at ump but for me it's useless as long as no ads are showing when choosing manage options. – Magnus G Aug 03 '21 at 12:22
  • @Magnus G I don't know yet. I can't spend much time on app development at the moment, because the daily downloads of my puzzle apps have plummeted in the last few month (I think because Google Play has messed up the puzzle category), so I haven't had the time to do some investigation into UMP alternatives. – Bastiaan van den Berg Aug 04 '21 at 19:59