Maybe this would sound weird :D, but has anyone tried to contact AdMob regarding this issue ?
Actually yes. No answer yet. This issue is something new as you can notice most of us just noticed within the last month.
May I know how to contact admob. I can’t find any email in the admob website that I can contact admob.
May I know how to contact admob. I can’t find any email in the admob website that I can contact admob.
Try with this email [email protected]
I have the same problem, CTR from “unknown” around 30%.
Same problem here. Have anybody got response from AdMob?
i have only 20% CTr from unknown for last days:)
What should I do? 
last 7 days, 1,489 impressions with 1,095 clicks ~ 73.54% CTR from Unknown Location.
I’m really afraid that my account will be suspended soon. I didn’t do anything wrong, I have another app using the same UI, banner is placed at the same position and get normal CTR.
The only thing that’s different is this app mainly targeted for kids.
So the one for kids is getting the 20% CTR vs. 2.5% CTR ?
This is a very similar story to Neelo’s admob ban:
http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/1998-admob-account-suspended-no-apparent-reason.html
Although Neelo was never told the reason, the conclusion of that thread was that his admob ban MAY have been because the nature of his apps attracted random clicks from children.
And that demographic may have led to higher or random clicks (detected by admob as excessive-clicking).
The excessive CTR being reported by admob is also discussed in this thread:
http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/1969-very-high-ctr-admob.html
From the Neelo discussion (and now your suggestion) we can reasonably conclude that apps with higher children demographics will have higher random clicking (and CTR).
The “unknown location” may also be related - as someone has suggested it might be related to COPPA … children’s privacy act etc. …
That is, it could be that google is lumping the “kids” into the “unknown location” - this could be to comply with COPPA requirements.
HOWEVER, it could ALSO benefit Google/advertisers in IDENTIFYING exactly that group of folks who were giving the high CTR.
In effect this could be for the benefit of developers also - who were earlier being banned by admob because of these high CTR reportings.
If this conjecture is correct - a high “unknown location” may in fact be GOOD for the developer - i.e. the high CTR is being ISOLATED to an identified group.
Assuming Google is the one doing this analysis - those with high unknown location CTRs should perhaps be the LEAST likely to be banned by admob then !!??
Now let’s examine COPPA and it’s impact (I’m reading this along the way):
http://www.hasoffers.com/blog/coppa-advertisers/
QUOTE:
Secondly, under the current rule, IP addresses and geolocation data are not considered personal information. And cookies or device IDs are only personal information when combined with other identifiable information.
…
Expansion of the term “persistent identifiers” and “personal information”: The new definition of “persistent identifiers” includes anything that can be used to track individual users “over time and across different websites.” IP addresses, geolocation data, device identifiers, and cookies could all fall within this definition.
…
The key exception? The parental notice and consent requirements don’t kick in if the identifier is used solely to support the “internal operations” of the site or service, which includes delivery of contextual ads, frequency capping, anti-fraud measures, compliance efforts, and authenticating users or personalizing content. And companies can still respond to a specific request from a child as long as the personal data is deleted once the request has been fulfilled. - See more at: http://www.hasoffers.com/blog/coppa-advertisers/#sthash.pJcV2INR.dpuf
This could include IP, geolocation and device IDs (!)
QUOTE:
New COPPA Requirements
The amended COPPA rules effective on July 1, 2013 apply to operators of websites and mobile apps that are directed at children under 13 that collect, use or disclose personal information from children or to operators that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information from users of sites or apps directed to children. The existing obligation requiring parental consent before collecting personal information from children has been expanded to include persistent identifiers that can enable operators and third parties to recognize users.
So while your app may not have knowledge that children are using the app - Google may have two pressures:
- satisfy requirements of COPPA
- help reduce advertiser complaints that there are high-CTR demographics they want to exclude from ads
If so, it is possible that “unknown location” is a name Google has give to this demographic.
Now it could be that this is due to a new device out there that has disabled location tracking (unlikely since the reports here have some huge percentages for the “unknown location”).
It would also help to know what the “unknown location” typical percentage was say 1-2 months ago - was it like 1/10 of what people are seeing.
In my own apps’ Admob stats I am NOT seeing such a high percentage as some have reported here.
So it could be possible that it IS directly related to how attractive the app is for very small children (who will tap all over the place - or be intruiged even by the dynamics of how the banner ad works).
Interestingly the new COPPA guidelines have come into effect July 1, 2013 - which would match the reported occurrences of these “unknown location” sightings.
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/privacy-alert-coppa-amendment-impacts-50063/
QUOTE:
The amendments, which go into effect July 1, 2013, clarify, supplement and revise the Rule issued under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in many areas, and have particularly important implications for mobile application developers, advertising networks and social networking services.
…
Under the amendment, persistent identifiers do not need to be coupled with other personal information to be considered personal information.
Perhaps a better explanation of how collecting device IDs could be a problem:
http://www.jumptap.com/home-page-news/mobile-ads-coppa-and-the-new-childrens-privacy-rule/
QUOTE:
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent major update to this law expands the definition of personal information to include persistent identifiers that can recognize users over time and across different websites or online services; things such as cookies, IP addresses and mobile device IDs (ex: Advertiser ID, Android ID and the soon to be deprecated UDID). In large part, the FTC wants to restrict behavioral advertising targeted at children and it does so by defining persistent identifiers as personal when they are used to track a user across sites or services. Once information is categorized as a child’s personal information, the COPPA requirement of parental permission becomes applicable. So sites or apps that don’t get such permission, and most do not, will not be able to use this personal information.
…
Many services aimed at children may not have previously paid much attention to COPPA because they were ad supported and did not collect personal information, as it was then defined. But with the expanded definition, a service that passes to an analytics company or an ad network a persistent identifier such as a cookie, device ID or an IP address is now subject to COPPA.
So in conclusion - as long as you are not collecting personal info in your app you are safe - and since it seems apps could be implicated if the ad networks are not compliant - it makes sense to also choose ad networks who are COPPA-aware.
And for “unknown location” - Google maybe working behind the scenes to address COPPA-concerns with the grandfathering of the kid-users into the previously-existing “unknown location” stat - maybe in time they will transition to explicitly showing it as “COPPA users” or some such designation (once they all agree with ad networks how to classify this demographic to separate from users they actually don’t know the location for etc.).
What would be interesting to see (to confirm theory proposed here) - that are there any developers who were banned AFTER seeing high CTR “unknown location” stats ? If not - then a high “unknown location” maybe a safety valve indication that such developers are probably NOT going to be banned because the high-CTR kids-demographic is being adequately recognized by Google.
This may be true, but this not my case. One of my apps on which CTR suddenly skyrocketed isn’t meant to be used by children’s. Whats is more strange when I started to check AdMob stats, then I noticed that these clicks form Unknown location with high CTR are somehow related to total ad request count. Some of my apps generate very low count of ad requests and there this anomaly was like 120/60 (total/clicks) but one app (where I noticed this anomaly) in few days generated ~100k ad requests (because of few thousands new users a day) and there high CTR from Unknown was something like 5k/3k (total/clicks). Of course I deleted affected app ad (site) accounts to stop this abuse and sent email to AdMob (haven’t received answer), because this wasn’t normal. At first I thought that it was some kind of stats glitch, because analytic stats of that apps ad click count showed no changes at all and everything was as usual.
Right now I don’t have any idea what cause this, because those clicks definitely doesn’t come from my app.
Analysis of the statistics showed, that this happens some days in row and then for some days everything is normal and then all starts again and for most apps it starts on the same day.
After I dismissed idea that this is stats glitch I thought that maybe this is some kind of sabotage from competitors (which I don’t believe because I’m to small comparing to others), but after stats analysis I dismissed this idea also, because if someone makes fake clicks then ad click count would be the same on all of my apps.
So I’m very confused now, because those ad clicks don’t come from my apps (judging by the app analytic data) and request/click count is somehow proportional to total ad request count.
QUOTE:
Unknown location with high CTR are somehow related to total ad request count. Some of my apps generate very low count of ad requests and there this anomaly was like 120/60 (total/clicks) but one app (where I noticed this anomaly) in few days generated ~100k ad requests (because of few thousands new users a day) and there high CTR from Unknown was something like 5k/3k (total/clicks).
Ok, this makes sense i.e. it is essentially a percentage of general traffic for your app.
I wonder though is the unknown location high CTR a concentration of clicks - or a really high number of clicks generally - i.e. are you getting more revenue than usual ? If not, then this is some admob internal organization issue or what ?
Could it be some other ad networks is directing traffic to admob - simulating your account (for example some other app using your APP ID ?) - however in this case it would NOT be proportional to your natural traffic (so your low download app would get high traffic also ?).
Anyway, just throwing things out there - I don’t understand the reasons behind this.
For comparison, I am getting these CTR for admob:
For last one month:
Americas - 1.89%
Europe - 1.70%
Asia - 2.34%
Africa - 1.87%
Oceania - 1.02%
Unknown - 2.52%
But I notice that the revenue from Unknown location is generally low (i.e. eCPM is around $0.05).
My Unknown CTR is not that high - but if you are seeing high CTR, is the revenue significant or near zero ? If it is near-zero then that might explain that it is being little value by admob already … (i.e. safer ?).
QUOTE:
I wonder though is the unknown location high CTR a concentration of clicks - or a really high number of clicks generally - i.e. are you getting more revenue than usual ? If not, then this is some admob internal organization issue or what ?
Yup, my revenue was more that triple what I got usual (comparing total). Before this my revenue was growing proportional to total user count (which is normal). Now I found that not only Unknown increased, but other country’s also (a little bit which also wasn’t counted in analytic data so those clicks also wasn’t coming from my app).
Stats on day when that started (for my latest app, because other apps was affected from around middle of last month, but do to very low income I wasn’t checking my account regularly to determine that and even then my overall stats was normal):
Americas - 1.49% | 12,569 / 187 (request/click)
Europe - 0.05% | 2,159 / 1 (request/click)
Asia - 0.30% | 6,561 / 20 (request/click)
Africa - 0.74% | 135 / 1 (request/click)
Unknown - 79.42% | 1,671 / 1,316 (request/click)
Revenue from Unknown was almost 4 times higher than other country’s together and total income from this app increased by almost 1000% comparing to previous day. In next day Unknown CTR jumped to 91,74% (1,948/1,611) and also Americas jumped to ~ 6% (of course none of those clicks was recorded by my app analytic data)
Quit low CTR on this app is because this app is more like tool which is used average ~1 minute per session.
QUOTE:
Could it be some other ad networks is directing traffic to admob - simulating your account (for example some other app using your APP ID ?) - however in this case it would NOT be proportional to your natural traffic (so your low download app would get high traffic also ?).
That’s right, if someone was directing traffic to my account using my APP ID, then my traffic should also grow, but traffic growth was like usual.
If this is not the artifact of some Google testing - can we conclude that this is possibly because of some ratings/rankers outfits clearing the way ahead of them - by creating fictitious “apps” - which are actually generating fake clicks on admob ads - i.e. PROGRAMMATICALLY (I assume that would be easy enough to do).
They would just have to retreive your admob APP ID from your APK - and put that into their database of apps to “attack”.
Given there is so much money in ranking - and some apps increase their revenues by multiples by climbing in the rankings - I would NOT be surprised if there are outfits running providing services like these …
Such a scam would NOT harm the app which is trying to go up in rankings - since that app is not mentioned anywhere - but it would harm the apps above that app.
However, I have not heard of such a “service” being advertised. But it is certainly possible.
In any case, ONE thing you can do IMMEDIATELY is to create a new Site/App on Admob. Use the new APP ID in your app now - either by pushing out an update that uses that new Admob APP ID - OR if you really want flexibility you could have the app query AppBrain Remote Settings and get it DYNAMICALLY.
Also in order would be informing Admob that your app is under “attack” (no point in trying to say that it could be this or that - just say that there is an attack happening because of a vulnerability in admob where admob APP IDs are stored in plain text in the APK).
On suggestion I have heard somewhere - don’t recall the reference (perhaps it was referring to hacked apps - where hackers hack the app and put THEIR own APP ID in it and push it to some alternate App Store - thereby earning revenue from YOUR APP effort).
The suggestion was to use a hashed version of the APP ID and similar ids - in plain text - then in the app you dynamically recreate the actual APP ID.
This would protect your app from CASUAL hacking - but not from them going in and changing the code.
I don’t know whether currently how much of a leeway there is in reverse-engineering APKs - most APKs (even with proguard) can be reverse engineered because the code is there in .class form for all to see - however proguard obfuscates the method names, variable names (if you have implemented it correctly) - and that makes it difficult to go in and hack whole sections of code (or at least it will cost the hacker more to do so in programming manpower costs) - while just replacing an APP ID is much simpler for them to do.
So contacting Admob to report a hacking of THEIR system of how admob works might be in order as well (!) - because after all it is not your fault - you have worked by the guidelines provided by Admob.
Do you see any correlation in this activity with ranking of your apps - i.e. is the app which is doing better in rankings the one under attack ?
QUOTE:
If this is not the artifact of some Google testing - can we conclude that this is possibly because of some ratings/rankers outfits clearing the way ahead of them - by creating fictitious “apps” - which are actually generating fake clicks on admob ads - i.e. PROGRAMMATICALLY (I assume that would be easy enough to do).
They would just have to retreive your admob APP ID from your APK - and put that into their database of apps to “attack”.
Given there is so much money in ranking - and some apps increase their revenues by multiples by climbing in the rankings - I would NOT be surprised if there are outfits running providing services like these …
Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised ether, but here is one if - there is no way that attacker can know how much ad requests my apps make. If some one is attacking my apps then request/click count should be the same on all of my apps, but it’s not.
QUOTE:
In any case, ONE thing you can do IMMEDIATELY is to create a new Site/App on Admob. Use the new APP ID in your app now - either by pushing out an update that uses that new Admob APP ID - OR if you really want flexibility you could have the app query AppBrain Remote Settings and get it DYNAMICALLY.
Also in order would be informing Admob that your app is under “attack” (no point in trying to say that it could be this or that - just say that there is an attack happening because of a vulnerability in admob where admob APP IDs are stored in plain text in the APK).
For now I’m just waiting, because there isn’t real point to generate revenue if in the end my account is closed do to this bug/attack…
When I noticed this strange behavior on my account I immediately deleted all affected Sites/Apps and reported that to AdMob, but there is very small chance that someone will read/respond or do something about this problem.
QUOTE:
The suggestion was to use a hashed version of the APP ID and similar ids - in plain text - then in the app you dynamically recreate the actual APP ID.
This would protect your app from CASUAL hacking - but not from them going in and changing the code.
Also hashing isn’t solution, because at some point this ID needs to be recreated and it’s not to hard to get real ID at this point. Only solution how to prevent ID stealing is to tie ID with app’s signing key (same as other Google API’s), but chance that someone would be willing attack others is so small and that’s why for them this isn’t issue at all. But still I don’t believe that this is attack, because my apps which got those high CTR first (last month) in good day got only ~100 new users a day.
QUOTE:
Do you see any correlation in this activity with ranking of your apps - i.e. is the app which is doing better in rankings the one under attack ?
No, only correlation is that more high CTR’ got apps with higher total ad request count. That’s only correlation I can find.
QUOTE:
Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised ether, but here is one if - there is no way that attacker can know how much ad requests my apps make. If some one is attacking my apps then request/click count should be the same on all of my apps, but it’s not.
Yes, this is the only thing which goes against the theory of a separate autonomous attacker, but rather suggests it’s linkage to your normal traffic.
It is still likely that it is just bookkeeping i.e. high CTR all conglomerated together (like for instance COPPA-linked traffic). However your indication that overall revenue was abnormally higher also suggests it is not just book-keeping or how they are grouped.
But the point remains that YOU should not be responsible for this - admob needs to look into this.
If people can be credited with Google payments 3 times (another thread on this forum) - then there maybe some goofup at admob which is causing this.
EDIT: well at least you have some well documented threads here on this forum which you can point Google to - to confirm the seriousness of your issue.
Well I think we can stop about being afraid of someone picking our apps in particular.
In my mind, the most serious approach to find out what’s behind this is another ad-company that wants to get admob users to their service.
Anyway we still gotta be afraid of getting banned cuz google can be a very very heavy diva.
Just in case it has to do with our apps… In which section are your apps displayed?
Most of mine are in Music&Audio
In the last 4 days I got 1.5 times more requests but the revenue doesn’t change a lot. Another thing I noticed is, that my apps are being “attacked” in a certain order. An app that has about 800-1200 DLs per day got 1800 - the next day another app with 180-220 DLs / day got 280 (and so on)
The numbers don’t make SUCH a huge difference to the “normal” ones, it could be a weird random event, too, but I still think there is sth out there responsible for this…
Yesterday, I’ve changed refresh rate from 120s to 40s so CTR should drop significantly, and yes, the overall CTR is dropped from 36% to 15%.
But the CTR from unknown location is worse than before, 328 impressions / 300 clicks, it increased from ~75% to ~91%.
I have no clue what happened in my app.
I think this maybe some admob issue really - since all occurrences of this seem to be in July 2013. Unless it is some new outfit doing this, it maybe some bug in Google Admob or something like that.
Here are some other threads discussing exact same issue (so you are not alone):
Unknown Country clicks in AdMob - Stack Overflow
Example of anomalous high ad requests:
android - AdMob adrequest going crazy? - Stack Overflow
AdMob is having unusual high CPC - xda-developers
AdMob is having unusual high CPC
AdMob will ban me? - xda-developers
AdMob will ban me?
Whether this high CTR is related to some of the admob bans - that linkage has not been established.
Would be interesting to see if Neelo or David saw these high CTR from unknown location issues just prior to being banned.
@adforandroidapps, thank you for your information. I feel a bit relieved that there are many people having the same problem.
However, I believe that this problem is related to accidentally click from kids because it happen to only one of my apps that mainly targeted for kids.
I think I should add additional layer over banner ad to prevent accidentally click (so it will be double click required for custom ad, and triple click required for simple ad format)
I don’t know, is it against Admob policies or not, are there anyone in this forum do this before?
In my case accidentally clicks from kids is out of question, because my app analytic data was like usual and doesn’t showed ~1k ad clicks a day. So definitely those clicks aren’t made in my app.
P.S. Most of my apps are in Photography and Brain & Puzzle.