Tag Archives: ima_sdk

Register now for the April 2017 Display Ads API Workshops

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 Googlersgeared 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:

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.

 - , DFP API Team

Register now for the April 2017 Display Ads API Workshops

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 Googlersgeared 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:

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.

 - , DFP API Team

Latency best practices in the IMA SDKs

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:

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

 - , IMA SDK Team

Deprecating Flash in the IMA SDKs

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.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Announcing a deprecation policy for older versions of the iOS and Android IMA SDKs

On February 1, 2017, we will implement a new deprecation policy for the IMA SDKs for iOS and Android. The Flash and HTML5 SDKs are unaffected by this policy because they are downloaded at runtime, so all developers are always using the latest version.

Each release will be deprecated 12 months after its successor is released.

As of February 1, 2017, the following SDK versions will no longer be supported:

  • IMA Android prior to version 3.1.3
  • IMA iOS prior to version 3.1.0

If you are currently on one of these versions, we strongly suggest upgrading to the latest version before the new policy takes effect.

Once an SDK version is deprecated, we cannot guarantee that version will continue to work. If we receive reports of crashes related to a deprecated version of the IMA SDK, we may discontinue serving ads to that version. We will also no longer field support requests for these versions on the IMA SDK support forum.

To maintain support, publishers on the latest version of an SDK will have 12 months to move to a new version once its successor is released. To "support" an SDK means we will investigate bugs in that SDK version and work on fixes. If a bug fix requires a change to the library itself, the fix will be applied to the newest version.

For a list of supported SDK versions and their deprecation dates, see the new deprecation schedule pages for iOSand Android. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

IMA SDK-owned ad playback for Android is here

Integrating with the IMA SDK for Android has historically meant implementing the VideoAdPlayerinterface and playing video ads in your content player. While this approach offers maximum flexibility, it also requires a lot of extra work to get up and running. In our mission to make developers' lives easier, we are proud to offer an alternative: SDK-owned ad playback, added in our newest release, v3.5.2.

Using SDK-owned ad playback, the SDK takes care of playing ads in its own player, allowing you to focus on content playback and the normal ad request flow in your player. With SDK-owned playback, you no longer have to implement a VideoAdPlayer, or worry about VideoAdPlayerCallbacks. Enabling SDK-owned playback is straightforward: simply omit the setAdPlayer call on your AdDisplayContainer.

With the new, simplified integration flow using SDK-owned playback, integrating with the IMA SDK for Android is easier than ever! For a step-by-step guide, head over to our revamped Get Started guide or download the BasicExampleproject from GitHub and try it out.

SDK-owned ad playback allows publishers to simplify their IMA implementation, but using it is not required. If you already have a VideoAdPlayerimplementation or want to use a single video player for both ads and content, you can keep using custom playback. SDK-owned playback merely gives you the option to let the SDK handle some of the implementation complexity for you.

If you have any questions about SDK-owned playback, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Introducing IMA SDK and Google Cast examples

Have you ever asked yourself, Can I use the IMA SDK and Google Cast together to display videos with ads on a cast-enabled device? The answer is, yes you can!

We’ve put together a new section of guides and examples that show you how to add cast support to your IMA SDK implementation. They also explain the logic behind requesting ads on the sender and receiver devices. We’ve included both Androidand iOSexample sender apps, and an example HTML5receiver.

We recommend familiarizing yourself with the Google Cast SDK as well as the IMA SDKs for Android, iOSand HTML5before diving into these examples.

If you have any questions about these examples, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Fatal versus non-fatal errors in the IMA SDKs

We’ve seen an increase in support questions recently on fatal and non-fatal errors in the IMA SDKs, so we’re here to explain when and why each is fired, and how you should handle one versus the other.

When are fatal and non-fatal errors fired?

Simply put, a fatal error is fired by the SDK when there is no chance for the SDK to play an ad for the remainder of the current video. There are two common scenarios for fatal ad errors. The first is when the SDK itself fails to load. The second (and more common) is when you are requesting one and only one ad, and that ad request fails to return a valid ad.

A non-fatal error is fired by the SDK when something goes wrong with an ad, but the SDK could potentially play other ads. The most common scenario for a non-fatal error occurs when you’re requesting a pod or playlist of ads, and one ad fails to load. Because it could still play other ads in that pod or playlist, the SDK fires a non-fatal error and moves on to attempt the next ad.

How can I tell the difference between a fatal and a non-fatal error?

Fatal errors are what we call “top-level” errors. They trigger one of the following events, depending on your particular SDK:

SDK Triggered event or delegates
HTML5 onAdError(AdErrorEvent)
Android AdErrorEvent.AdErrorListener.onAdError(AdErrorEvent)
iOS adsLoader:failedWithErrorData
adsManager:didReceiveAdError
Flash adsLoadErrorHandler(AdErrorEvent)
adsManagerPlayErrorHandler(AdErrorEvent)

Non-fatal errors are wrapped in a LOG type AdEvent. That event is sent to your AdsManager event listener or delegate. You can access the error message from the LOG event as follows:

SDK Error Data
HTML5 AdEvent.getAdData()[‘adError’].getMessage()
Android AdEvent.getAdData()[‘errorMessage’]
iOS IMAAdEvent.adData[@”logData”]
Flash Error(Event.adData.error).message

How should I handle fatal and non-fatal errors?

When you get a fatal error, you should destroy your AdsManager and play your content video. When you get a non-fatal error, you are not obliged to do anything for video and ad playback to continue - you can log the error message using the snippets shown in the table above for informational purposes.

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

 - , IMA SDK Team

IMA SDK for Android now available on JCenter

In our ongoing efforts to make developing with the IMA SDK easier, we’re pleased to announce that as of version 3.2.1, the IMA SDK for Android is now available on JCenter.

With this release, it's now quicker than ever to integrate with the IMA SDK. Simply make sure you include JCenter in your list of repositories:


repositories {
   jcenter()
}

Then, in your build.gradle's dependencies, include the following compile directive:


compile 'com.google.ads.interactivemedia.v3:interactivemedia:3.2.1'

If you're modifying an existing sample, make sure to remove the IMA SDK JAR file from your libs folder. This directive includes the SDK, and if you already have the SDK JAR in libs, you’ll get errors for having two copies of the same library.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

IMA SDK for iOS now supports bitcode

We’re pleased to announce that the latest version of the IMA SDK for iOS, 3.2.0, supports compiling with bitcode enabled.

To enable/disable bitcode, go into Build Settings in your XCode project and toggle the 'Enable Bitcode' build option. For more information on bitcode, please see the developer documentation.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team