[Android] Programmatic skipping broken on IMA Android SDK

[Lukas Knoch-Girstmair]

Today we noticed a regression with the Android SDK: the AdsManager.skip no longer seems to work. Two days ago when calling the function on the AdsManager of a skippable ad, an AdEvent with type `AdEventType.SKIPPED` was emitted and the ad was skipped without problems. 

WITHOUT updating the IMA SDK version this suddenly stopped working. Looking into this it seems that this also stopped working on older IMA SDK versions (tested with 3.29.0 and 3.31.0)

A similar regression was observed and reported for the HTML5 SDK, is this related? 

Not sure if it makes a difference but this function is also used by other Google products such as the official Google media3 here. 

It also doesn't work for background audio only ads which do not have any UI available and hence can not be skipped at all now.

[IMA SDK]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting the IMA SDK support Team.

The use of 'AdsManager.skip()' is exclusively for skippable ads, when the IMA ad UI (including the skip button) has been hidden. Disabling the IMA ad UI is part of an old beta for custom UI. The allow-list for this feature is closed. 

This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02r2M4D:ref"

Thanks,
 

IMA SDK Team

 

[Lukas Knoch-Girstmair]

Is there any public documentation around this? When looking at the `AdsManager.skip` there is nothing indicating that this should not be used. Maybe I am missing something obvious here.

[IMA SDK]

Hi,

Thank you for getting back to us.

I will check with our team regarding your issue and one of my team members will reach out to you once we have an update on this. Meanwhile, your patience is highly appreciated. 

[Sebastian Gansca]

Hi, 

We also noticed that skip is no longer working. 

It was reported by our  clients 15.12.2023 

Our setup is Android STB with Exo + Ima and it was working properly before. 

Any update will be highly appreciated ! 

Thanks! 

[IMA SDK]

Hello Sebastian,

This is Jackson from the IMA SDK team to help with your issue. IMA FAQ states that we do no support changing the UI elements. This includes the 'Skip ad' button. My recommendation would be to let IMA render the skip ad button, and users can skip the ad that way.

We are looking into updating documentation around this. The change to .skip() behavior was not documented, because we did not think it would affect any supported IMA use-cases.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you,
Jackson
IMA SDK team

ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02r2M4D:ref