Do I need a GDPR consent form to show ads in my app?
Yes — if your app serves ads to users in the European Economic Area or the UK, Google requires you to gather consent through a Google-certified Consent Management Platform. In practice that means integrating Google's User Messaging Platform (UMP) SDK, or another certified CMP, and showing the consent form before requesting ads. The requirement came into force in January 2024 and is enforced at the ad-serving level: without a valid consent signal, ad requests from EEA and UK users are limited to non-personalised inventory or refused outright, which shows up as a sharp eCPM drop for European traffic. Setting it up is a one-off job — configure a GDPR message in the AdMob privacy and messaging section, add the UMP SDK, and request consent at app start before initialising the ads SDK. Apps aimed only at non-European markets still benefit from having it, because traffic mix changes.
Related questions
- What is app-ads.txt and do I need one?
- How long does AdMob account approval take, and why do applications get rejected?
- Why do AdMob accounts get disabled for invalid traffic?
- When does AdMob pay, and what is the payment threshold?
- Can I click my own ads to test that they work?
- Why did my app's ad revenue suddenly drop?
- AdMob vs Unity Ads vs AppLovin: which pays more?
- What is the difference between eCPM, CPM and RPM?