Consuming Flash VPAID creatives with HTML5 SDK (as of 3.118)

[skr...@integralads.com]

Hi --

I'm trying out consuming a Flash VPAID creative with the HTML5 version of the SDK, as has been implemented with version 3.118 (I'm running 3.118.1). I have set my VPAID mode to INSECURE.

It _almost_ works. To be more specific, here's what's happening: I press "play" on the video player. At that point, the ad loads, but as a black panel with a Play button in the middle. It does not play until the user clicks that button -- in other words, the "play" command has to be given twice: once on the video player and once on the black flash-object panel.

Even programmatically calling startAd() on the video unit fails to start the ad. The user has to physically click. (Of course, this is on desktop web).

Any ideas on why this may be?

Thank you!

Slavko

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Slavko,

Do you have a live page where we can see the issue?

Thanks,

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team

[skr...@integralads.com]

Hey Vu --

unfortunately, only over our company VPN :(. I can show you the ad we're trying to consume: http://st.adsafecontrol.com/video/TidalVast.xml.php (it only has a Flash mediafile as you can see).

By the way, you guys should update the VAST inspector with INSECURE Vpaid mode -- otherwise this new feature doesn't work there. And now that we're on the topic, is there a way to make that conditional? Or, is there a flag that the Ad object has that can tell us whether the creative is Flash -- or do you need to make it INSECURE across the board in order for this to work?

Thanks!

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Slavko,

I have raised this issue with the rest of the team, and I have also requested for support for the INSECURE mode in the VSI.   I'll let you know once we have an update. 

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team

[skr...@integralads.com]

Thanks, you rock.

[skr...@integralads.com]

Hey @Vu -- any updates on this?  Thanks in advance

On Friday, January 22, 2016 at 11:27:29 AM UTC-5, skr...@integralads.com wrote:

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hey Slavko,

It looks like the issue went away.  I'm not able to reproduce it in our GitHub sample as of now.  If you set the INSECURE mode in the code dynamically, like below, you will see that you will only need one user action to begin ad playback:

this.adDisplayContainer_.initialize();
google.ima.settings.setVpaidMode(google.ima.ImaSdkSettings.VpaidMode.INSECURE)
this.videoPlayer_.contentPlayer.load();

If you have a live page, do send us, and we'll investigate further.

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team

[skr...@integralads.com]

Thanks @Vu. 

Unfortunately the issue still persists on our end with the new version of IMA (3.120.0). 

Also I'm trying our ad on your GitHub sample test page: http://st.adsafecontrol.com/video/TidalVast.xml.php

Ad error: AdError 901: An unexpected error occurred within the VPAID creative. Refer to the inner error for more info. Caused by: Error: Error: Flash VPAID ads need insecure VPAID mode.

It's looking like this page is also not set up with INSECURE Vpaid mode.

Slavko

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Slavko,

That GitHub sample isn't set up with INSECURE VPAID mode out of the box, but if you modify the ads.js on the fly (by adding google.ima.settings.setVpaidMode(google.ima.ImaSdkSettings.VpaidMode.INSECURE) as I suggested in my previous reply), you should be able to get the ad to play.  From what I saw, there was a long delay between the LOADED event and when the first frame of the ad actually showed, so you might want to give it some time to buffer/render.

Thanks,

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team

[skr...@integralads.com]

Thanks @Vu, you're correct. Now I need to figure out what the sample app is doing that we're not in our code.

Thanks again!

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hi Slavko,

Let us know if you have further questions or run into any issues!

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team

[skr...@integralads.com]

Hey @Vu,

we did some research on this topic. 

So, here's one way we can get the ad to play (without the second click) in our environment: tell Chrome to "Run all plugin content" (the default is "detect and run important plugin content"). If we do that, it plays.

So what about your test page? Why does that work?

The answer is most likely related to this (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch/#chromium/src/content/renderer/peripheral_content_heuristic.cc): on your test page, the content is larger than kLargeContentMinWitdh x kLargeContentMinHeight (398 x 298). On our test page, it is 350 x 200. It seems that Chrome allows Flash content to play without additional user action as long as it is larger than this threshold. Needless to say, in the real world, many ads' viewports will be smaller than 398 x 298.

Is there any way to get around this?

Thanks,

Slavko

[Vu Chau (IMA SDK Team)]

Hey Slavko,

As far as the SDK is concerned, it doesn't have a say in this kind of scenario, since Chrome ultimately makes the decision depending on the size of the Flash content relative to your video player's size.  A workaround would simply be rendering Flash larger than the rectangle that Chrome uses to check if the ad should be paused or not, and then resizing it.  However, we don't endorse this workaround.

Vu Chau

IMA SDK Team