Google Play will soon be requiring apps to declare whether they contain ads (such as ads delivered through third party ad networks, display ads, native ads, and/or banner ads).
Our app does not - however, when I go into the Play Developer Console to declare that, I receive the following message:
"We found ad SDKs in your active APK(s): Version: xx, SDK: AdMob"
The thing is we don't have the AdMob plugin installed - or as far as I can tell, anything that contains or even makes note of it. I did find mention that Google Play Services could be triggering this, but the post didn't go into specifics.
Any thoughts on what's going on?
3 Answers, 1 is accepted
Thank you for contacting us about the issue.
Indeed, the Google Play Services framework brings the AdMob SDK with its full package. And the issue is most probably caused by the usage of a Telerik Verified plugin, like - Telerik Push Notifications or Pushwoosh, or another custom Cordova plugin, referring to the Google Play Services framework in its sources.
The good news is that we are planning to revise both the Telerik Push Notifications and the Pushwoosh plugins and check whether the whole Google Play Services framework is needed, or we can include only certain parts of it. If the second option is possible, I believe it will fix the issue in Google's Developer Console.
Until then, I see that other users experiencing the same warning have worked around it by simply confirming that despite the AdMob SDK, their applications are not showing Ads. Still, I would suggest you to check if this cannot introduce certain issues or app rejection from Google in the future.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Kaloyan
Telerik
Rank 1
Thanks for the great explanation.
Any estimates on when the mentioned Telerik Push Notifications plugin revision will be available? Google is requiring apps to declare ad status by 1/11/2016. I'd prefer that the Admob SDK was removed when I do that - if that's a possibility.
Thanks,
David
The plugins are already configured to use only the Google Cloud Messaging parts of the Play Services framework. This said, if the issue is still present for your project, we will need to investigate further what is referring to the AdMob library there.
Please, let me know if the warning in the developers console is still there.
Regards,
Kaloyan
Telerik