MacOS High Sierraincludes 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

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

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