AdMob Announcements

Similar to the Colorado Universal Opt-Out Mechanism (UOOMs) provisions, additional US States including Connecticut, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas, Minnesota, New Jersey and Maryland, have similar UOOMs provisions that require Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals opt the user out of ad targeting, sale, or share of data. For users in Colorado, Connecticut, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas, Minnesota, New Jersey and Maryland, Google will receive GPC signals directly and trigger RDP mode for those ad requests.

New comprehensive US state laws coming into effect include: the Tennessee Information Protection Act (July 1st), the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act (July 1st), the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (Oct 1st), the Indiana Consumer Data Protection Act (INCDPA), the Kentucky Consumer Data Protection Act, and the Rhode Island Data Transparency and Privacy Protection Act (Jan 2026). 

Google's approach in these states is similar to that of existing US states with active comprehensive laws. Activating RDP mode turns off ad personalization, which may assist publishers in honoring opt-outs for targeted advertising and avoiding activities that could be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of user data.

Please note that publishers should still work with their legal teams to understand if RDP is the appropriate solution for their compliance. Publishers who currently leverage the RDP should work with their legal teams to understand if they should expand their use of RDP in additional states.

Starting September 2025, AdMob will begin reducing retention of historical data in the Ads Activity and User Activity reports. Data beyond the stated retention periods for the respective reports will be deleted.

What's changing?

• Data in the Ads Activity report will be limited to the past 7 years.
• Data in the User Activity report will be limited to the past 90 days.
• Data older than these limits will be removed to comply with new data retention policies.

Next steps

• Ads Activity report: If you need to retain data older than 7 years, you can download it using the AdMob report CSV download or the AdMob API before it is removed.
• User Activity report: If you need to retain data older than 90 days, you can download it using the AdMob report CSV download before it is removed.

How to download data

• To export data from your Ads activity or User Activity reports, open a report, click the three dots in the top right corner, and then select “Download CSV.”
• To export Ads Activity report data from the AdMob API, please review the documentation for setting up and generating reports.

On June 02, 2025, we'll add a "Deprecated" label to the Additional ad technology vendors opt-out control. Then, beginning July 07, 2025, we'll remove the control from AdMob Blocking controls. 

The Additional ad technology vendors opt-out control, which enabled publishers to block additional third-party ad technology vendors used by advertisers from buying their ad slots, has become obsolete. The control no longer provides publishers with useful privacy or brand safety functionality.

No action is required from publishers. To manage ad technology vendors in regulatory regions, please continue to use your consent management platform (CMP) to collect and manage user consent as necessary.

Ad choice control ("Choosing the type of ad you want to show") is deprecated and has been removed from the European message settings in Privacy & messaging. We encourage you to use the IAB TCF framework for collecting and communicating users' consent decisions in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. If you wish to serve some users personalized ads, and other users non-personalized ads, the Google Developers documentation (iOS UMP SDK, Android UMP SDK) provides all the details on how the User Messaging Platform SDK can help your app comply with Google’s EU user consent policy.

From May 15 2025, we'll start to remove the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" sensitive category from Blocking controls. Once this happens you'll no longer be able to block ads from video games, online games, and downloadable games using the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" sensitive category.

If you don't have any existing blocks that use this category

You don't need to take any action. On May 15 2025, we'll remove the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" category from your Blocking controls.

If you do have existing blocks that use this category

On May 15 2025, we'll add a "Deprecated" label to the "Video Games (Casual & Online)" category in your Blocking controls. Then, beginning June 15 2025, your existing blocks will no longer apply. Note, you can still use the "Video Games, Consoles & Accessories" and "Online Games & Puzzles" general categories or their subcategories to block ads from video games, online games, and downloadable games if you believe these types of ads are unsuitable for your users.

We recommend that you review and update your existing general category and sensitive category blocks within your Blocking controls to ensure that your brand safety requirements continue to be met effectively.

The commonly used set of ad technology providers will be updated on or after June 2, 2025 to reflect the ad technology providers that work most closely with publishers globally, based on data we've collected from all programmatic demand sources, as well as meeting our privacy standards. After this date, the list will be periodically updated, and you will be able to find the up-to-date version of the list published at Ad technology providers. You can view the controls and the list of ad technology providers in your account on the European regulations settings page in Privacy & messaging. If you want to prevent automatic updates, select Custom ad partners. This will create a custom list pre-filled with your current selections, which you can then modify as needed.

Today, we’re announcing improvements to the Policy center to help you better understand, prioritize, and resolve your issues. We're introducing three new labels (policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference) that provide you with more clarity on the source of your issue. The new labels give you a clearer understanding of the cause and priority of your active issues, and help you identify which issues are policy, regulatory, or advertiser preference.

What's changed

We've made the following improvements to the Policy center:

• Replaced "Must fix" with three new issue labels: policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference.
• Added new filters so you can filter by policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference.
  
• Updated the "Issue details" page to include the new issue labels and renamed the "Screenshots" column to "View issue".
  
• Updated the review process so you can now let Google know if you believe your site or app has been incorrectly labelled with an issue.