Muting Unity ads does not work.

First of all, I am not a game developer, but the end user (and software engineer by profession).
The problem - I can’t mute the Unity ads and cant control the volume.
This is really really ANNOYING.
To be more preciese I have two phones with identical games installed:
On one (Xiaomi MI 9T) the ads come from Google. They are easy to mute and the muting actually works.
On the other (Xiaomi Redmi 9T) the ads come from Unity for the same game. And the are (some swearing goes here) LOUD. And the volume can’t be controlled.
I tried to complain to every single ad, the game is muted, the volume on the phone is muted. But the ads playing ON THE FULL DAMN VOLUME.
This ad behaviour is unacceptable.
Is there a way to opt-out unity ads completely and enable google ones?

P.S. If I would like to develop a game - I would never make the end user to suffer from such ads. It is some kind of anti-ads, you know? I would never download anything that uses such kind of advertising.

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Have the same problem in our game. Very loud ads despite the fact that the sound is turned off.
Xiaomi Poco M3
Android 10
Unity 2019.4.5
Advertisement package 3.5.2

Same here with a Redmi 9T as well. It shouts at max level on every Unity Ad even if my phone is muted. This is VERY annoying and could even be dangerous if I were to wear headphones.

@grozail , @kirill_unity340 , @Kodiakkb

Thanks for reporting this issue. We are working on reproducing it. So far none of the devices we have available have this behavior, but we are getting other devices to test.

Since we have only seen this reported on a few devices, it might also be worth reaching out to the device manufacturer and making a bug report there. The Unity Ads SDK is using standard functionality for playing audio on Android, so there should be no reason these devices behave differently.

I’ve got the same situation on xiaomi poco m2 (adroid 10). Unity ads are very loud, and they aren’t react on volume control.

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Same problem here. On Xiaomi poco m3.

Yes, Unity this is very disturbing. I got bleeding in my ears the candy crush games caused this. Plz try to resolve this very soon or else I will need to complain this legally.

same problem, I’m using:

  1. Poco M3
  2. Vivo Y91C
  3. Samsung J6
  4. Samsung A71
  5. Sony Xperia XZ2 Premium

every time there’s unity ads in the game the volume is extremely loud even all the phone is on DND/Silenced/mute, I have to plug earphone to circumvent unity ads from playing audio to speaker.

I will post screenshot once the unity ads played again, so far after I click on report the game doesn’t show unity ads for a while

Same here. Xiaomi Poco M3. Impossible to decrease the volume of Unity ads. Only option is to close the app.

Just wanted to give an update here. We have been able to reproduce this issue on a device and the engineering team is now working on a fix. I appreciate all of the reports (it helped us track down devices to repro this) and I understand that this is a frustrating bug to say the least. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

I have just bought a Xiaomi Redmi 9T and it plays adverts at full volume regardless of my sound settings. This is unacceptable.

The volume is maximum, the volume control of the device does not work, and the sound cannot be muted even in silent mode.
I’m using oppo a73 with android11.

Please tell us about the progress to resolve this issue.

Please tell us about the progress to resolve this issue.

Any update ? I’m facing the same issue: Ads volume is independent from system and some ads doesn’t respect:
MobileAds.SetApplicationMuted(true)

Device: Samsung S21 (Android 11)
Unity: 2018.3.14f1
GoogleMobileAds: GoogleMobileAds-v5.4.0.unitypackage

NOTE: Test Ads seems to work correctly (Ads which are displayed if device is Test device)

Facing the same problem (I think), I need to be able to play a muted ad if device’s sound is off (or game’s sound and music has been turned off). Is it possible to do so?

Thanks!

Two month already…
Still looking for solution? If you cant fix this, then just STOP your ads, until problem is fixed. This is not small bug. Seems like somebody need to sue you for 10 milions for damadge to health to start resolving this stupid bug.

1 Like

Another update about this issue. It turned out to be a much more challenging problem to solve than I originally thought.

We did find a workaround, at least for Xiaomi devices. There is a setting called Mono Audio that when set to On should prevent this from happening. There might be similar settings for other devices.

We are still working on a fix. It looks like it might be an issue of how we’re encoding the video creatives or how we’re saving them to a device.

Same problem with 2 brand new Xiaomi Redmi 9T phones. And it is REALLY annoying!

Please disable your ads if this cannot be fixed in near future. The first reports of this problem date already back to March (over 6 months ago).

Haven’t tried setting the whole phone to mono audio but that is maybe not something we like to do only to silence malfunctioning ads.

Br,
A software developer

Oppo A53 user with the same issue. It is making my health conditioned worse, and playing simple games is one of my few coping strategies. Seriously, what is the problem!?
It has only been happening since the colorOS11.1/Android 11 update on 23rd september.