AppLovin Max Banner related automatic ad direction(click) issue

fuatcoskun commented 3 months ago

MAX Plugin Version

6.5.2

Unity Version

2022.3.21f1

Device/Platform Info

Android

Current Behavior

After integrating banners, we face weird automatic ad direction issue on some devices which is explaining unexpected user churns. We initialize banners after Max SDK is initialized as we did for interstitials and rewardeds :

public void InitializeBanners()
{
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdLoadedEvent                      += OnBannerLoadedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdLoadFailedEvent                  += OnBannerLoadFailedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdClickedEvent                     += OnBannerClickedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdCollapsedEvent                   += OnBannerCollapsedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdExpandedEvent                    += OnBannerExpandedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdReviewCreativeIdGeneratedEvent   += OnAdReviewCreativeIdGeneratedEvent;
    MaxSdkCallbacks.Banner.OnAdRevenuePaidEvent                 += OnBannerAdRevenuePaidEvent;

    MaxSdk.CreateBanner(Constants.BannerTopCenterAdUnitId, MaxSdkBase.BannerPosition.TopCenter);
    MaxSdk.CreateBanner(Constants.BannerBottomCenterAdUnitId, MaxSdkBase.BannerPosition.BottomCenter);

    MaxSdk.SetBannerWidth(Constants.BannerTopCenterAdUnitId, GetBannerWidth());
    MaxSdk.SetBannerWidth(nConstants.BannerBottomCenterAdUnitId, GetBannerWidth());

    MaxSdk.SetBannerExtraParameter(Constants.BannerTopCenterAdUnitId, "ad_refresh_seconds", "5");
    MaxSdk.SetBannerExtraParameter(Constants.BannerBottomCenterAdUnitId, "ad_refresh_seconds", "5");
}

In our player log, we saw that app goes to pause state with no reason and we see it on the device that AliExpress app is launched. 3-4 seconds before that, OnAdLoadedEvent and OnAdRevenuePaidEvent are invoked we suspect as the reason. Following logs show the timing :

[20240812 11:15:47.572] --> OnBannerLoadedEvent : XXX-TopAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:47.594] --> OnAdReviewCreativeIdGeneratedEvent : XXX-TopAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:48.438] --> OnBannerAdRevenuePaidEvent : XXX-TopAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:48.551] --> OnBannerLoadedEvent : XXX-BottomAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:48.568] --> OnAdReviewCreativeIdGeneratedEvent : XXX-BottomAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:49.713] --> OnBannerAdRevenuePaidEvent : XXX-BottomAdUnit-YYY
[20240812 11:15:52.472] --> [AppState] IN BACKGROUND

In the adb logcat logs, we saw that our app is launching an activity via an intent as follows :

08-12 11:15:52.281 18307 21170 I ActivityTaskManager: START u0 {act=android.intent.action.VIEW dat=https://www.aliexpress.com/... flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.alibaba.aliexpresshd/com.aliexpress.module.navigation.HttpDispatcherActivity} from uid 11588 from pid 2496 callingPackage com.our.app

You can see that timing match perfectly and we are %100 sure that no callbacks are triggered from Max SDK. An we don't call

MaxSdk.ShowBanner("XXX-TopAdUnit-YYY") 
MaxSdk.ShowBanner("XXX-BottomAdUnit-YYY")

in this scenario. We think that this ad direction is triggered inside the SDK or somehow from the ad itself maybe. Do you have an idea about what is going on here? We will have to remove the integration completely if we can not prevent that behavior.

Expected Behavior

We expect no ad direction without showing a banner ad and also without getting an ad click callback.

How to Reproduce

All the details are explained in the "Current Behavior" part. You most probably won't be able to reproduce it but all you should do is :

Initialize banners as shown above.
Wait for banner ad loaded and revenue paid callbacks called.
After a random time, an intent will be fired and app will be paused to launch the app coming from and invisible ad or the store page if it is not installed on the device.

Additional Info

No response

tiandrew commented 3 months ago

Hey @fuatcoskun, we have a zero-tolerance policy on ads that auto-redirect, thank you for reporting this. Is this reproducible with other ads or is it only with the aliexpress.com ad? Also were you able to obtain the full session's logs or info for the offending ad such as its creative ID and network that the ad was served from so that we can investigate?

fuatcoskun commented 3 months ago

Ok @tiandrew, we saw that click action in the auto redirect report analyze dashboard and it is coming Liftoff Monetize only. We will disable the ad network for now. On the other side, do you have a plan to make a development to prevent such actions?

tiandrew commented 3 months ago

Hey @fuatcoskun, yes we monitor all network auto-redirects internally and reach out to respective offending partners when detected as well. Please feel free to let me know if this domain from LiftOff or any other partners are detected again.

tiandrew commented 3 months ago

Hey @fuatcoskun, aliexpress.com has been blocked for Liftoff internally, you should be able to unblock them now.

AppLovin / AppLovin-MAX-Unity-Plugin