Privacy

Session cookies#

VAST, ad tracking, SSAI and configuration requests use a session-only cookie jar that lives in memory. It is not written to disk and it is gone when your app's process ends. This lets ad servers that rely on session cookies work as they do on the web. In 3.1.26 the cookie store did not work, so no cookies were sent.

License and usage requests never send cookies. With the IMA engine, Google IMA makes its own ad and tracking requests.

Media requests go through a process-wide, in-memory CookieManager that the SDK installs only when your app has not set a CookieHandler of its own. The setting below does not change it.

Turning cookies off#

To send no cookies on those requests, as in 3.1.26, call this before init():

APSMediaPlayer.setSessionCookiesEnabled(false);

APSMediaPlayer.isSessionCookiesEnabled() returns the current setting. The method is static, so you can call it from your Application class.

To send no cookies on media requests either, set your own handler before init():

CookieHandler.setDefault(new CookieManager(null, CookiePolicy.ACCEPT_NONE));

The SDK installs a process-wide CookieHandler only if your app has not set one. It no longer replaces yours.

Advertising identifier#

If you want ad requests to carry an advertising identifier, pass it with setAdvertisingIdentifier() (and setAdvertisingIdentifierType()) on APSMediaPlayer. Whether and when you obtain and pass it is your app's decision.

Permissions added by the player's dependencies#

The Google IMA SDK 3.40 is part of the player. It adds these permissions to your merged manifest:

android.permission.INTERNET
com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID
android.permission.ACCESS_ADSERVICES_ATTRIBUTION
android.permission.ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID
android.permission.AD_SERVICES_CONFIG

Media3 ExoPlayer adds android.permission.WAKE_LOCK.

Apps that use the Google Mobile Ads or Next-Gen Ads SDK already declare AD_ID. If you do not want the advertising permissions, remove them in your manifest:

<uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID" tools:node="remove" />

Add a matching line for each of the other permissions you want to drop, and declare the tools namespace (xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools") on your <manifest> element. Removing AD_ID means that on Android 13 and higher the advertising ID reads as zeros, so IMA ad requests carry no ID. Check your advertising ID declaration in the Play Console so that it matches what your app does.