Google Ads Developer Blog: ima

The Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK for Android moves to Google's Maven repository

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

With the release of version 3.16.0 of the Interactive Media Ads SDK (IMA SDK) for Android, the location where we host the SDK has changed to Google's Maven Repository. As a result of this change, your Android project should include a reference to the google() repository (Google's Maven Repository) as a dependency. Previously, the SDK was hosted on JCenter. You can now remove the jcenter() reference from your Android project’s build.gradle file, as long as none of your other dependencies are hosted there. The google() repository should be referenced in the project-level build.gradle file of your project. You should then import the IMA SDK in the app/build.gradle file. See an example in the following code snippet from the Adding the IMA Android SDK to the player app section of the Android IMA SDK getting started guide. repositories { google() } dependencies { implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.1.0' implementation 'com.google.ads.interactivemedia.v3:interactivemedia:3.16.0' } Another change that comes from this update is that the com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads-identifier target is now included as a dependency of the IMA SDK and is no longer required to be explicitly included in the app/build.gradle file. If you have questions about the IMA SDK for Android, please see the SDK documentation, or reach out to us on the IMA SDK forum.

- Jackson Sui, Interactive Media Ads Developer Relations

Subscribe to our RSS feed to get blog posts via email

Friday, February 8, 2019

(If you want to continue getting email updates about our blog posts, read on. If you don't want email updates from this blog, you can skip this post.)

For some products, the Google Ads Developer team has used Google groups as a way to allow API users to subscribe and get new relevant blog posts delivered to their email address. Starting now, the way you can get email updates about blog posts is changing. We will no longer send an email to the Google group for each new blog post. We will continue to use the Google groups for other important updates, however.

For users who still want email updates, we've introduced new FeedBurner links on the right-hand panel of our blog homepage. You can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking on the link for the product you're interested in, or subscribe by email by clicking on the [+] link to the right of the product name.

If you use any of the APIs that we discuss on this blog, make sure you subscribe to the feed to keep up with the latest news and updates:

- Mike Cloonan, Ads Developer Relations Team

Sunsetting Flash in the IMA SDKs

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

On May 15, 2018, Google will be sunsetting Flash in the IMA SDKs. This change will affect all users of the Flash IMA SDK, and a very small number of users of the HTML5 IMA SDK.

Changes to the Flash SDK

As of May 15, 2018, attempts to load the Flash IMA SDK will fire an AdErrorEvent.AD_ERROR from the AdsLoader. This is a change to the portion of the Flash SDK that is loaded at run time, and therefore will affect all Flash SDK implementations in production. If you've followed our implementation best practices, your handler for this error will play your content video:


private function initAdsLoader():void {
  ...
  adsLoader.addEventListener(AdErrorEvent.AD_ERROR, adsLoadErrorHandler);
}

private function adsLoadErrorHandler(event:AdErrorEvent):void {
  trace("warning", "Ads load error: " + event.error.errorMessage);
  videoPlayer.play();
}

We strongly encourage all publishers still using the Flash SDK to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. As part of this sunset, we will also be removing the Flash SDK documentation from developers.google.com and removing the Flash samples from GitHub.

Changes to the HTML5 SDK

As of May 15, 2018, the HTML5 IMA SDK will stop supporting all Flash ads. This includes linear, non-linear, and companion ads. If your VAST response includes only Flash media files, the IMA SDK will throw error 403 - VAST_LINEAR_ASSET_MISMATCH for linear ads, and error 503 - VAST_NONLINEAR_ASSET_MISMATCH for non-linear ads. Flash companion ads will fail silently. The HTML5 SDK stopped supporting Flash VPAID ads with the deprecation of the Flash IMA SDK last June.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Google Media Framework for Android is Deprecated

Monday, March 26, 2018

As previously announced, as of March 15th, 2018, the Google Media Framework (GMF) for Android is deprecated in favor of the IMA ExoPlayer plugin. All development and support for GMF has been halted. If you are a GMF Android user, we recommend you migrate to the IMA ExoPlayer plugin at your earliest convenience. Alternatively, to keep using GMF Android, you will have to fork and maintain it yourself.Note: We are NOT deprecating GMF for iOS.If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the IMA SDK developer forum.

- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team

Announcing the IMA SDK AMP Extension

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

We’re excited to announce that we’ve teamed up with the Accelerated Mobile Pages team to bring you amp-ima-video, an IMA-SDK-enabled video player extension for AMP pages. This extension has been an AMP experiment for the past few months, but today we’re moving from experiment to public release.amp-ima-video provides an AMP-enabled video player with the IMA SDK pre-integrated, so you can easily play and monetize content on your AMP pages. Simply provide your content URL and an ad tag, and we’ll handle playing back the video and ad(s). The extension currently supports linear in-stream single ads and VMAP playlists. To see it in action, check out the AMP by Example page for the extension.If you have any questions or issues with the extension, please file them via the AMP issue tracker on GitHub.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Ending support for iOS 8 in the IMA SDK

Monday, February 12, 2018

With the release of v3.7.0 of the IMA iOS SDK, we will stop providing forum support and bug fixes for iOS IMA SDK issues specifically related to iOS 8 and below.What does this mean if an app is currently targeting iOS 8?

There are no changes in v3.7.0 specifically designed to break compatibility, so the iOS IMA SDK will continue to work with iOS 8 in the short term. However, future releases are not guaranteed to continue to work with iOS 8.

Bugs that only affect iOS 8 will no longer be investigated.

If you are using our GoogleAds-IMA-iOS-SDK CocoaPod and want to update to v3.7.0, you'll need to start targeting iOS 9+.

What about other iOS versions?We periodically stop supporting older iOS versions when adoption levels fall below a certain level. Whenever we end support for a major iOS release, we make announcements on our blog and release notes page.As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us on our support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Changes to autoplay in Safari 11 for desktop

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

MacOS High Sierra includes a new version of Safari, Safari 11. This new version by default will remove support for auto-playing videos unless they are muted. If your desktop site currently autoplays unmuted video with the IMA SDK, your users will see the first frame of the ad, but the ad will not play. To resolve this, you can either change your implementation to click-to-play, or attempt to autoplay and revert to click-to-play if that fails. We've also added a new error that will fire if the SDK is asked to autoplay an ad but is prevented from doing so by the browser. Continue reading for more info on these solutions. Click-to-play The simple, advanced, and playlist IMA SDK samples use this click-to-play functionality. In short, you add a play button to your UI, and render that play button on page load. Your code should then delay calls to adDisplayContainer.initialize(), adsManager.init() and adsManager.start() until the user clicks that play button. Attempt to autoplay We've added a new sample to our GitHub repo, Attempt to Autoplay. This sample will autoplay ads if allowed, and if not, will follow the above click-to-play workflow. The sample starts by attempting to autoplay the content video. If autoplay succeeds, it pauses the content to play a pre-roll. This happens in an instant, so the users will not see any content actually play before the ads. If this autoplay attempt fails, the sample renders a play button and waits for the user to click that button to initialize the ad display container and play ads. New error for failed autoplay We've added AdError.ErrorCode.AUTOPLAY_DISALLOWED which the SDK will fire if it is asked to autoplay an ad but is prevented from doing so by the browser. You should not see this error if you've properly implemented one of the solutions above. This error is wrapped in a VIDEO_PLAY_ERROR; you can look for it as follows: onAdError(adErrorEvent) { if (adErrorEvent.getError().getInnerError().getErrorCode() == google.ima.AdError.ErrorCode.AUTOPLAY_DISALLOWED) { // The browser prevented the SDK from autoplaying an ad. } } If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us on our support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Deprecating GMF for Android

Friday, December 8, 2017

On March 15, 2018, we are stopping development and support for Google Media Framework (GMF) for Android in favor of the new ExoPlayer IMA extension. GMF's technology and approach are based on an older version of ExoPlayer. The new v2 version of ExoPlayer and the ExoPlayer IMA Extension make basic integration simple enough that a layer between ExoPlayer and the IMA SDK is no longer necessary. The new approach is cleaner, requires less code, and uses the most up-to-date version of ExoPlayer. Support for GMF for Android will end on March 15, 2018, after which we will no longer respond to issues or make any further releases of GMF for Android. The repository will also be shut down at this time. If you want to access the code, you can clone the repository before the March 15, 2018 shutdown date. Note: We are NOT deprecating GMF for iOS. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the IMA SDK developer forum.

- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team

ExoPlayer Releases IMA Extension

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Users of ExoPlayer, an extensible, open-source media player for Android, can now easily integrate with the IMA SDK using the new ExoPlayer IMA extension. The IMA extension, released alongside ExoPlayer 2.5, wraps the IMA SDK for Android and provides seamless ad playback. The extension ensures that ads are integrated into ExoPlayer's video timeline, and UI components are ad-aware. It also reduces buffering by eliminating the need to swap out and rebuffer the video player's source when transitioning between ads and content. You can find more details on the extension in ExoPlayer's blog post on Medium, and find the extension on GitHub. If you have any questions or issues, please file them on ExoPlayer's issue tracker.

- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team

New Custom Playback APIs for IMA HTML5 and Mobile Safari

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Fullscreen playback on iPhone Mobile Safari. The default with iOS 10+ and the only option for iOS <= 10

Inline playback on iPhone Mobile Safari. A new option in iOS 10+

How will the IMA SDK work with inline video playback on mobile Safari?

On iPhone Safari, the IMA SDK re-uses your content player to play ads. We call this "custom playback." So if you add the playsinline parameter to your content video tag, IMA ads will also play inline - it's as easy as that.

Inline video playback also opens the door for the IMA SDK to play skippable ads on iPhone Mobile Safari. Previously these ads were dropped by the SDK because we could not render a skip button on top of the fullscreen player. If your player is inline, however, we can render that skip button, but there's a catch.

So what's the catch?

IMA SDK skippable ads are not supported with the "custom playback" method. To use skippable ads, you'll need to use our new API, ImaSdkSettings.setDisableCustomPlaybackForIOS10Plus(). This will cause the IMA SDK to render the ad in its own inline player on top of your content player. That player does support skippable ads. Disabling "custom playback", however, will break your fullscreen implementation for iPhone web.

Why do I need custom playback on iOS?

The need for "custom playback" on iOS boils down to one thing - fullscreen support. Mobile Safari only supports fullscreen via videoPlayer.webkitEnterFullscreen(). In this mode, the SDK cannot render anything on top of your content player. Therefore, to support fullscreen ad playback we must use "custom playback".

What if I want skippable ads and fullscreen support?

Unfortunately, this is not possible on mobile Safari today - you must choose between support for skippable ads and support for fullscreen.

What's the deal with iOS <10?

Prior versions of iOS (<10) do not have support for playsinline, so pages in those environments will always use "custom playback" mode, with support for fullscreen but no support for skippable ads.

I'm still confused.

That's OK! This is a complicated change with a lot of moving parts. Below is a support matrix outlining what is and is not supported based on your content player's playsinline mode and the "custom playback" mode you've set for the IMA SDK. Remember, this matrix only applies to iOS 10 and above - anything running version iOS 9 or below falls into the top left quadrant of the matrix, as this is the only option.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Starting with iOS 10, Safari on iPhone and iPod supports inline video playback. This opens up some new rendering options for your video player and the IMA SDK, but also introduces some caveats. So what changed? Previously, Safari on iPhone played all video in a fullscreen player. With iOS 10, Safari now supports the playsinline parameter on a video element to play that content inline.

Fullscreen playback on iPhone Mobile Safari. The default with iOS 10+ and the only option for iOS <= 10

Inline playback on iPhone Mobile Safari. A new option in iOS 10+

How will the IMA SDK work with inline video playback on mobile Safari? On iPhone Safari, the IMA SDK re-uses your content player to play ads. We call this "custom playback." So if you add the playsinline parameter to your content video tag, IMA ads will also play inline - it's as easy as that. Inline video playback also opens the door for the IMA SDK to play skippable ads on iPhone Mobile Safari. Previously these ads were dropped by the SDK because we could not render a skip button on top of the fullscreen player. If your player is inline, however, we can render that skip button, but there's a catch. So what's the catch? IMA SDK skippable ads are not supported with the "custom playback" method. To use skippable ads, you'll need to use our new API, ImaSdkSettings.setDisableCustomPlaybackForIOS10Plus(). This will cause the IMA SDK to render the ad in its own inline player on top of your content player. That player does support skippable ads. Disabling "custom playback", however, will break your fullscreen implementation for iPhone web. Why do I need custom playback on iOS? The need for "custom playback" on iOS boils down to one thing - fullscreen support. Mobile Safari only supports fullscreen via videoPlayer.webkitEnterFullscreen(). In this mode, the SDK cannot render anything on top of your content player. Therefore, to support fullscreen ad playback we must use "custom playback". What if I want skippable ads and fullscreen support? Unfortunately, this is not possible on mobile Safari today - you must choose between support for skippable ads and support for fullscreen. What's the deal with iOS <10? Prior versions of iOS (<10) do not have support for playsinline, so pages in those environments will always use "custom playback" mode, with support for fullscreen but no support for skippable ads. I'm still confused. That's OK! This is a complicated change with a lot of moving parts. Below is a support matrix outlining what is and is not supported based on your content player's playsinline mode and the "custom playback" mode you've set for the IMA SDK. Remember, this matrix only applies to iOS 10 and above - anything running version iOS 9 or below falls into the top left quadrant of the matrix, as this is the only option.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

New VPAID Sample for the IMA HTML5 SDK

Thursday, June 15, 2017

To help developers integrate with the IMA SDK, we're always looking for ways to provide both basic and advanced examples of features supported by the SDK. Toward this end, we're pleased to release a sample JavaScript VPAID creative and sample ad tag to aid in troubleshooting JavaScript VPAID 2.0 creatives. You can check out the new sample on GitHub, and find the new ad tag in our list of IMA sample tags as 'Sample VPAID 2.0 Linear'. The VPAID sample plays a linear video ad and demonstrates the use of the video player proxy element required to run a VPAID ad in a secure iframe. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the IMA SDK developer forum.

- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team

Playing streaming ads with the IMA SDK for Android

Thursday, April 6, 2017

With the advent of video players that support streaming media formats such as HLS and DASH, publishers can now easily support these formats with the IMA SDK for Android. Here is a list of steps to make this work:

Use a video player that can play streaming video, such as ExoPlayer.

Inform the SDK of your video player's capabilities.

The latter is done via the SDK's AdsRenderingSettings API. Create a new instance of AdsRenderingSettings and then create a list of MIME types you plan to support: AdsRenderingSettings adsRenderingSettings = ImaSdkFactory.getInstance().createAdsRenderingSettings(); ArrayList arrayList = new ArrayList(); arrayList.add("application/x-mpegURL"); //HLS arrayList.add("application/dash+xml"); //DASH adsRenderingSettings.setMimeTypes(arrayList); Then initialize the AdsManager using these AdsRenderingSettings: adsManager.init(adsRenderingSettings); This will allow the SDK to choose streaming ad media to play in your video player. Make sure to add any additional MIME types you plan to support, such as MP4, as this approach assumes that any MIME types not passed in are not supported. FAQ How do I play HLS ads using the IMA SDK for iOS? The default video player used by the iOS IMA SDK supports HLS, so it is not necessary to set that in AdsRenderingSettings. Will this work with the SDK-owned player? No, currently you must use custom playback by implementing the VideoAdPlayer interface. For an example of how to do this, check out our guide on custom playback or AdvancedExample. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team

Register now for the April 2017 Display Ads API Workshops

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

We're pleased to announce that we'll be holding a series of Display Ads API Workshops in April 2017. These workshops are a half-day of tech talks, group discussions, networking activities, and one-on-one time with Googlers geared toward developers who use the DoubleClick for Publishers API, Interactive Media Ads SDK, or Mobile Ads SDKs.

These workshops offer you the following:

A great way for you to meet with the display ads API team to ask questions in person and give feedback directly to us.
A great opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with fellow developers in the community.
Previews of API and SDK roadmaps and select upcoming features.
For the first time, one-on-one office hours with ads API Googlers. Sign-ups will be available on-site on the day of the workshops.

The workshops will be held in the following cities:

New York - April 20, 2017
Register here
Location: Google New York (Chelsea Market)
San Francisco - April 25, 2017
Register here
Location: Google San Francisco

For more information on the agenda and a preview of our talks, please see our workshop page.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line on the DFP API forums, IMA SDK forums, Mobile Ads SDK forums, or the Ads Developer Google+ page.

- Vincent Tsao, DFP API Team

Latency best practices in the IMA SDKs

Thursday, February 9, 2017

One of the most important factors in keeping users on your page or in your app is latency - the lower your latency, the more likely your users are to stick around. With this in mind, we'd like to remind you about our best practices for reducing latency with the IMA SDKs. In general, you can reduce latency by doing as much IMA set-up work as possible on page or app load, before your user tries to play a video. The following can be done in all of the SDKs before the user attempts to play a video:

Creating your ads loader.

Creating your ads request.

Requesting ads.

Obtaining the ads manager.

Registering ads manager event handlers.

You can find more information on optimizing latency in each of our SDKs at the links below:

HTML5

Android

iOS

Flash

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Deprecating Flash in the IMA SDKs

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

On June 1, 2017, Google will cease development of Flash in the IMA SDKs. This will end support for the IMA SDK for Flash, as well as support for Flash VPAID ads in the HTML5 SDK. We strongly encourage all publishers still using the Flash SDK to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. We also strongly encourage advertisers still trafficking Flash VPAID ads to migrate those ads to JavaScript VPAID. What does this mean for the Flash SDK? We will not actively prevent ad serving to the Flash SDK. However, new releases will stop after June 1st and we will no longer fix bugs or answer support questions. If ad serving or playback stops working after this date for the Flash SDK, it will not be fixed. We strongly encourage you to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. What does this mean for the HTML5 SDK? We will no longer support Flash VPAID ads in the HTML5 SDK. Flash VPAID ads served to the HTML5 SDK will not be rendered and the SDK will fire an error. We strongly encourage you to migrate your Flash VPAID ads to JavaScript VPAID. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

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The Video.js-IMA plugin adds DAI support for HLS streams

Updates to Chromecast integrations with Interactive Media Ads

Changes to pause behavior in the Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK

SIMID support in the Interactive Media Ads SDK

Using SIMID with the IMA SDK

The Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDK for Android moves to Google's Maven repository

Subscribe to our RSS feed to get blog posts via email

Sunsetting Flash in the IMA SDKs

Google Media Framework for Android is Deprecated

Announcing the IMA SDK AMP Extension

Ending support for iOS 8 in the IMA SDK

Changes to autoplay in Safari 11 for desktop

Deprecating GMF for Android

ExoPlayer Releases IMA Extension

New Custom Playback APIs for IMA HTML5 and Mobile Safari

How will the IMA SDK work with inline video playback on mobile Safari?

So what's the catch?

Why do I need custom playback on iOS?

What if I want skippable ads and fullscreen support?

What's the deal with iOS <10?

I'm still confused.

New VPAID Sample for the IMA HTML5 SDK

Playing streaming ads with the IMA SDK for Android

Register now for the April 2017 Display Ads API Workshops

Latency best practices in the IMA SDKs

Deprecating Flash in the IMA SDKs

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