AdMob : After May 18, 2016, AdMob will begin using location data to target ads and...

Today I received this notification in AdMob

After May 18, 2016, AdMob will begin using location data to target ads and improve monetization for users who have granted this permission to the app. To turn off location data for an app, visit Monetize > App > Settings tab.

Just to make it clear, Should we update our apps by including location permission ?

By the way none of my apps have nothing to do with location & Of course location based ads will give higher performance !

What you guys think ?

Well i did not receive any such mail yet.

I might be wrong, i think this is related to the admob mediation. So this is just a setting in admob mediation console than making any code or permission change in the app.

Nope, it was admob itself.

Unless you have location permission in your app, then you might need to include something about this on your privacy policy.

For those who didn’t have location permission, maybe you can consider to add it now since location based ads usually have higher Ecpm.

If you click the “Learn more” link there is a heading that says you should never include the location permission just for advertising.

They don’t need location permission for it. Like Adwords, it base on user IP. I think they do this very long time ago.
If you run admob/adwords campaign, you can select devices, OS, language and location (city, country)

I think that’s coarse location and they will now support fine location.

Just now i cheched my admob and i too good this message. I was thinking of receiving of earlier.

By default this option is ticked for all of my games and apps.
But they said this option effect is only for those apps/games which has Location Permissions.

I think they are talking about below permissions in the app Manifest file

<meta-data
android:name=“ADMOB_ALLOW_LOCATION_FOR_ADS”
android:value=“true” />

I think it is this permission which will request user for Location Permission

<uses-permission android:name=“android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION” />

None of my apps needs location permission, So its irrelevant for developers like me.
Though on similar side, it will be worth to add this permission and get high eCPM.

But they warned in there that You should never request location permissions from users for the sole purpose of advertising.

Have any of you used it without its need in the manifest file?

I think location permission is already in play services… We just need to modify it in admob console…

I wonder if they talk about COARSE or FINE locations or both

NokiaDev, What to modify ?

I think its not for those developers who have apps which need location permission.

If if its for developers whoes apps need location permission, they need to tick the option in admob.

Hey guys

I wanted to jump in here, this is a great discussion on location. No big surprise that google is doing this. Location can increase eCPM as you know and advertisers will pay more for the opportunity to target their customers in the “right place at the right time.”

The problem is that only about 10% of data in the market is accurate. So, the advertiser isn’t actually targeting their customer effectively. We’ve been looking at networks and others in the market that are providing location data via SDK. One example submitted data up to 20 min old and it had to be within 1000m accuracy. This is not effective targeting.

If you want to read more about data accuracy, check out the paper by the Mobile Marketing Association on our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adabouts

AdAbouts is tackling the accuracy issue with our patent pending technology.
It will be included as part of our SDK when we launch. We are building a premium location marketplace that advertisers can trust.

This will take some time to build a critical mass of users, but advertisers are hungry for it b/c of all the problems with location data and will pay significantly higher eCPMs for truly accurate data. Also, most research these days finds that people don’t mind providing location if it means more relevant advertising for them.

Let us know if we can answer any questions about our platform or any other location questions in general. We’ve been looking at this market for a long time… :wink:

cheers,
whit

Will your SDK require Location permissions?
I think with new permission system in Android N we will need to move away from this as most Apps will never be granted a Location permission (as most Apps wouldn’t require it other than for Ads)

Great question Tacchan23,

The permission system you speak of is the Runtime Permissions actually implemented in Android 6.0+.

Anyone running 6.0+ must request specific permissions at run time, location being one of them. In order to conform and fit within Google Play policies for these specific devices we will also utilize the Coarse Location permission as we do not need the Fine grained level for our system.

With this being said you must also note that it is possible to publish an app and not require Coarse Location permissions in 6.0+ if you simply target SDK version 22 and below when building. Anything that targets 23 and above will be required to use the Runtime Permissions model for specific permissions.

By targeting version 22 and below, running on devices that actually use 23 and up the Coarse Location will automatically be granted at install time to allow for backwards compatibility of apps (this may change by manufacturer but our findings on Nexus devices). While this is not a perfect solution it is a way to avoid this.

Wether or not we release with this “workaround” for our SDK is yet to be decided. We make every effort to conform to Google Play policies so this is dependent on a re-review of them before launch. If we do “conform” then this will of course pose a problem for “some” users but the same problem exists for “all” ad networks etc. For those that we can track we can guarantee we will have an unparalleled level of targeting for advertisers (in turn making devs more money).

Our decision to conform stems on the this particular viewpoint: as a user I want to know if I’m being tracked and have the capability to not be tracked at any time.
Either way user tracking has to have the option to opt-out, this simply makes it easier (maybe too easy you might argue but remember, everyone has this limitation).
We could simply not conform and target SDK 22 but we find it’s better and safer for our customers if we do :wink: