Why does Ads (Rewarded Video or Intersititals) in games skips when you press home and tap on games icon in Android?

Question

I have stumbled upon an issue wherein Android when I play rewarded video or any interstitial and do following steps:

1. In the middle of a video Ad I press the home button
2. Resume back from background tray the ad plays where I left off.

BUT if,

1. In the middle of a video Ad I press the home button
2. Tap on the game icon to resume back then it skips the ad and game continues without getting any reward.

I thought this might be anything specific to my code but then I tried playing many other games including Mr. Bullet, Hospital Inc, Idle LumberJack, Super Salon and the list goes on and all had the same issue.

Is this some android thing? As for iOS, this doesn't happen. I would like to have some information on why this happens and can we prevent it from happening. I am using Unity 3D for my game development and AppLovin MAX for ads.

Answer 1

I can only begin to guess as to the cause, but I think what you’re really looking for is a solution. I would recommend going through AppLovin’s support guide, which recommends enabling verbose logging to see if there’s anything amiss:

https://monetization-support.applovin.com/hc/en-us/articles/236114328-How-do-I-enable-verbose-logging-in-AppLovin-s-SDK-

Unity (MAX Plugin)

If you are on the AppLovin MAX Unity Plugin, verbose logging can be toggled directly on the MaxSdk class.

MaxSdk.SetVerboseLogging(true);

Then check your logcat to find out what’s going on.

They also have a contact form:

https://monetization-support.applovin.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

As for the cause, my first guess is maybe the icon is bound specifically to launch the Unity activity, not whatever activity was in the foreground.