Picture in Picture ad support strategy?

[Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez]

iOS9 provides the ability to play Picture In Picture video. See : https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/WindowsViews/Conceptual/AdoptingMultitaskingOniPad/QuickStartForPictureInPicture.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40015145-CH14-SW1

Currently i have an app that uses AVPlayer to display video and ads using the IMA SDK. I am implementing PIP capabilities using the AVPictureInPictureController. It works well but at the moment i have no idea what a good strategy is for implementing video ad playback.

Currently i only have pre-rolls and basically while a pre-roll is playing PIP is disabled as i have no way to pass a AVPlayerLayer instance from IMA (?) .

What if i wanted to implement mid rolls? Is there a recommended strategy or best practice for this case?

Any information is appreciated.

[Tyler Sidell (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Juan Carlos,

Thank you for reaching out about your concerns with PIP.  We are currently looking into the features of iOS9 and working on IMA/iOS9 compatibility.  We will provide more information when we have it.

In the meantime, the current SDK functionality will load the mid-rolls based on the response that is received from the VAST tag.  If you would like to manually control ad break, you may look into manual ad playback.

Thanks,

Tyler Sidell

IMA SDK Team

[David Wong]

I'd also love this feature however I think it's going to be difficult to implement as GoogleIMA is using a webView to handle video playback and PiP requires user interaction when the video is embedded in a webView.

I could be completely wrong though.

[Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez]

From what i have seen from this feature, it needs the video to be implemented with AVPlayer or MPMoviePlayerController (?), and it's not compatible with a video playing in a webview (is that how IMA works?). This means that at least while PIP is active, the ads would not be interactive because they could not play in a webview. 

I could be wrong, im only judging from the code i got to play with using the Beta of XCode7. 

In the app i work on, PIP is disabled just because the ads can't play. No ads, no free video. I imagine that unless Apple allows some way to sneak in video ads using third party SDK's, PIP might have a very low adoption rate in general. Or maybe they will only allow their own ad platform to put video ads on PIP, im just speculating at this point.  

[Matthias]

Apple is not planing on letting you control the PIP window. And from what i heard from one of there engineers this won't change.

It would still be nice to display the ads while in PIP. If you change the AVPlayer thats attached to your player layer    (or use a queue player) the stream in the PIP would change

[Tyler Sidell (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi all,

Thank you for your questions and suggestions pertaining to PIP.  Currently, PIP is not supported by the IMA SDK.  We are looking into the features of PIP and will update this thread with any additional information.  Please also feel free to follow our blog for updates pertaining to new iOS9 features and support.

Thanks,

Tyler Sidell

IMA SDK Team