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I'm struggling to understand the process of publishing an App that has AdMob ads in the Play Store.

In order to use the AdMob SDKs the app must be reviewed by AdMob. In order to review the App must be listed in a supported app store, in my case this will be the Play Store. In order to publish on the Play Store the policy declaration forms need to be filled in. For publishing within the EU, the policies require GDPR compliance one of which is to collect user consent. The problem is I'm collecting the consent using the UserMessagingPlatform SDK, which does not work unless the App is reviewed (according to UserMessagingPlatform invalid response from server)

So now there is a circular dependency:

  • I cannot (truthfully) state that my app is GDPR compliant.
  • This prevents my app from being published on the Play Store
  • Which prevents the review by AdMob
  • Which prevents the user consent form from working
  • Which prevents me from stating that the app is GDPR compliant

One way to resolve this is publish an ad-free version first, review it by AdMob, then proceed by adding the ads.

Is this the intended workflow of publishing the app?

G.G
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1 Answers1

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After a clarification by the support, they clarified that there are two steps of verification/reviews: The first is the verification of the account (more so of the account holder and the provided information). The second is the review of the app.

The SDKs can be used after the account has been verified (but will only show a limited number of ads until the app has been reviewed). There is no indication this is the case, other than the SDKs won't work.

In my case the account verification took around two months.

This is what I found to be the intended process:

  1. Create app on AdMob and Play Store
  2. If not already, wait for the AdMob account verification
  3. The SDKs will now be functional and the app can be tested, as if it were in production (i.e. ads will show up, consent dialogs will work, the amount of shown ads will limited)
  4. Publish and review the app on the Play Store
  5. Configure the store-link on AdMob
  6. Review the app on AdMob
  7. After the review the SDKs will work on full capacity (i.e. the amount of ads shown will no longer be limited)
G.G
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