Did the game ask you to share device info to show relevant ads for you? Did you reject or accept it?

No, I have had no request for change in permissions.

A while back Android users went for a few weeks without ads and there was an in game announcement. All of a sudden after an Android update we could not access ads.

It seems the same thing has happened again. We recently had an Android system update, and now again I cannot access any ads.

The only image of any use I can send is a screenshot showing the absence of the ad box for bonuses at the end of a level.

This is also the case for me. Couple days ago the game did ask me about personalized ads, where I declined everything. After that exactly one ad has been shown and after that ads stopped working.

I tried to locate the settings for ads, looking if I'd probably rejected everything, but couldn't find any useful settings. (Android)

If you reject personalized ads, there will be a high chance no ads will be shown to you. This is a modern reality, nobody wants to advertise anything which is not targeted to their audience, so there may be zero ads for you to watch.
If you want to change your mind, try to save your progress into the cloud and re-install the game - it should ask your permission again.

If you are worried about your privacy, there are two reasons not to:

1. Your "advertisement ID" will be shared and nothing else. So if you agree to share it, the advertiser will receive an unique ID that will allow him to track your reaction on the ad / other ads by interest. So, for example, if he advertises a racing game and you have completely ignored all of the ads related to racing, there's no point for the advertiser to spend money on showing that ad to you again. If you disagree to share your ID, it will be something like "0000-0000..." which means that there's no legal way for him to know if you are completely uninterested in his product. You can see where it leads to - any sane advertiser will avoid non-personalized ads and there will be almost nothing for you to watch for a reward
2. If anybody wants to track your actions and interests, they still can easily do that. I'm talking about the third party ad libraries / mediation platforms, those who were put into an app before GDPR regulation and those who simply don't mind ignoring it. You can be identified by many things, for example such ad libraries can simply generate their own user IDs and store them somewhere on your device to track your reactions for particular ads (and even across your apps if they use the same ad library / protocol). Infinitode uses only Google Admob ads and no other third party libraries, which means that ad providers can not track you and the Google's reputation is on the line in this regard.

With I2 I have never rejected personal ads and I have been playing every day for well about 8 months and on and off since the game was released.

I watch a lot of ads to help the developer as well as myself. I really must stress this point. The devs and his team are fantastic and have ethics too which is rare these days. I can't thank you enough for such a brilliant game and excellent customer service.

However, this problem seems to only exists with the Android update exactly as it did the first time. The user, me, has changed nothing nor rejected anything.

It now worries me this is going to happen every time there is an Android update until something is done your end, which is what happened the first time, including a game announcement.

You as the devs lose but so do we, a lot of resources.

I do understand this is not your fault, as in the problems are caused by the Android update. However it looks like it is going to keep happening and even I, as a long term loyal player, will be put off continuing to play if Android users alone are regularly penalised by the faults caused with the updates.

However, I DID save then reinstall as you suggest. This has NOT fixed the problem. I was not asked for any ad preferences.

In this case, I genuinely have no idea why there are no ads. The library can simply say "there are no ads" and we will never know the reason - maybe some part of the library does not work with the recent update, or maybe there are really no ads that can be shown to you.
A month or so ago we had almost zero ads on Android and it happened without any update, simply because Google Admob has decided to change something on their side. It lasted for 2 or 3 weeks and than started working again, also without any updates nor announcements. Asking Google Admob for any support is completely pointless, they usually respond with something like "your app probably is still being validated, ads will appear later" ignoring the fact that our app has been there for 2+ years and has definitely been validated already.

I have no solution for this issue

May I just ask, the last time this happened, a fix was applied your end? I had a discussion with Vadym on email about it. Is that not a possibility again?

It's also strange I've not been asked about any permissions even on reinstall.

That was me. No, last time it fixed itself and I did not change anything. Just to be sure, I 've updated ad libraries in the last update and them seemed to work just fine

Thread will stay open for other players who experiences the same issue. Please don't leave a comment if it won't help locate or resolve this issue

Well, actually, let's merge it with an old thread