Send non-personalized ad requests to third-party RTB buyers

Beginning on October 21, 2021, Google will start sending bid requests for non-personalized and restricted data processing ad requests to third-party RTB bidders.

This help center will be updated periodically to ensure you have the latest information.

The information in this article only applies to AdMob bidding.

Non-personalized ads are ads that are not based on a user’s past behavior. They are targeted using contextual information, including coarse geo-targeting based on current location and content on the current site or app. Google disallows all interest-based audience targeting, including demographic targeting.

AdMob provides tools to help you respect user preferences and assist you with your compliance with local regulation:

• IAB TCF v2.0: The TC string contains information about the ad partners to which a user has granted consent. Learn more about TCF v2.0 and non-personalized ads
• GDPR: You can select non-personalized ads on the ad requests originating in the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland by tagging the ad request as non-personalized or by setting your account to non-personalized ads in the GDPR settings in Privacy & messaging. Click Privacy & messaging  GDPR Settings to access the settings. When a valid TC string is detected, Google will handle the ad request as described in Publisher integration with the IAB TCF v2.0.
• US state regulations: You can restrict data processing on the ad request by tagging the ad request as restricted data processing, or by setting your account to restrict data processing in the US state regulations settings in Privacy & messaging. Click Privacy & messaging US state regulations Settings to access the settings.

Learn more about tagging ad requests as non-personalized or restricted data processing

When a valid TC string isn’t detected, non-personalized ad requests originating from different regions may be treated differently:

• EEA, the UK, Switzerland, and applicable US states: You can use the GDPR and US state regulations settings in Privacy & messaging to select the partners that will receive these non-personalized and restricted data processing ad requests in these regions. These settings will apply for both non-personalized and personalized ad requests, if you have allowed personalized ads.
• Brazil: For ad requests originating from Brazil, all bid requests will be sent to bidders that are part of the Ad Technology Providers for the LGPD list.
• Other regions: Non-personalized ad requests outside of the previously noted regions will be sent to all bidders, subject to other protections.

Non-personalized bid requests sent to third-party RTB bidders will be labeled with appropriate privacy signals, and user identifiers (such as google_user_id, hosted_match_data, any device advertising IDs, and session_id) will be removed from bid requests for non-personalized ads. Other signals that are used for targeting or invalid traffic detection (such as user_agent or truncated IP address) will continue to be sent. Learn more about non-personalized bid requests

Exceptions

• Ads for which child-directed treatment applies are not eligible to be sent to third-party RTB bidders. Example: Ad requests tagged with childDirectedTreatment or underAgeOfConsent
• Third-party SDK collected signals will not be sent to RTB bidders on non-personalized ad requests.