Debugging a 1005 HTML5 SDK error

[Cameron Church]

Hello

One of our clients has recently seen a significant rise in 1005 errors. 

Per Google's page here https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/4442429 it says the URI is malformed

And per IMA's page here https://developers.google.com/interactive-media-ads/docs/sdks/html5/v3/reference/js/ima.AdError it says "There was a problem requesting ads from the server. IMA Error code 1005"

We have checked a broad sample of ad tags (we record every one) and none have any URI encoding issues (we can load them just fine in a browser, they work in decoders/encoders and more).

So we're struggling to know where to go next.   It doesn't seem to cluster against any device type or page content type.  

Would this error be thrown for embedded 3rd party tags such as in the Fallback XML?  

Does it pertain to any tracker URIs as well?

Any guidance would be appreciated here.

CC

www.watchingthat.com

[IMA SDK]

Hi Cameron,

Thank you for reaching out to us. The SDK error code 1005 is thrown for any malformed ad tag URI even embedded VastTagUri (in case of a wrapper) or a fallback ad URI that happens to be malformed. Given the issue you described, the URI that you're looking for seems to be embedded in a VAST Wrapper and finding it would imply for you to extract the VastTagUri of the Wrappers or the fallbacks URI. The IMA SDK doesn't throw error when it comes to event tracker URIs being malformed.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

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[Cameron Church]

Thanks Arnaud

How do you suggest we go about extracting these tags?  Is the fallback VAST XML available via the SDK?  

Many thanks in advance 

CC

--

Cameron Church

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CEO & Founder

Watching That Ltd

M: 07917203078

W: www.watchingthat.com

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Incorporated in England and Wales

Company Number: 10181169

[IMA SDK]

Hi Cameron,

The tags are not available via the IMA SDK API, however, you can retrieve the embedded ads info such as the wrapper Ad ids, the wrapper ad systems and the wrapper creative ids. On the other hand, to extract the wrapper and fallback ad tags, you would have to run each embedded ad tag you find in the browser until you reach the malformed ad tag uri that is causing the issue.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

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[Cameron Church]

Thanks Arnaud

Two problems with your suggestions -  

1) the Ad Object that contain the ids and systems is not set at the point the SDK emits the error. 

2) browser tracing hasn't thrown up any issue but this could be because they are setup completely programmatic so it's not possible to setup and test ever real world scenario.

What else can we try?

[IMA SDK]

Hi Cameron,

Using the browser or curling the uris to extract the embedded ones from their wrappers then run them individually against your IMA set up is basically the best way you can troubleshoot the issue you're facing. If this method doesn't work for you, we would recommend you to reach out to your ad provider so they can help you identify the ad tag that is causing the issue.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

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[Cameron Church]

Hi Arnaud

Very happy to create a support case with the Google Ad Manager team however given this is an IMA specific error does the SDK ping the error beacons with the 1005 code so it can be tied to a line item?

Can we connect you to the support case given it's the same umbrella and we're flying blind here?

Also, in parallel, to help us help users of the SDK can you give us some words that we can pass on as to why the SDK throws a proprietary error about a specific URI but then doesn't make that URI available along with the error event?  

Thanks in advance

CC

[IMA SDK]

Hi Cameron,

The IMA SDK Error Code 1005, is an AdLoadError type, meaning that the loading operation failed before the SDK could download the VAST XML which contains the Error element necessary for us to ping the error beacons.

Can we connect you to the support case given it's the same umbrella and we're flying blind here?

You don't need to add us on the support case, you can simply email the Ad Manager Support with all the details shared on this thread.

Why the SDK throws a proprietary error about a specific URI but then doesn't make that URI available along with the error event?
It is already known that we are currently in the process of populating the error event object with information that will help developers identify which ad is at fault when the SDK fails on a task. You might wanna keep an eye on our blog post and release history page for further updates on this feature.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

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[Cameron Church]

Hi Arnaud

Regarding the error beacon issue - we've already tested the primary ad tag involved with the 1005 and can see it is not malformed so it's very likely a wrapped tag.  In this case there should be error beacons included for parent wrappers - especially if the original response is from Google Ad Manager.  So those beacons exists and does the IMA SDK ping them like it does in other error situations involving wrapped tags (and fallback structures)?  I'd be more than happy to provide you with a list of ad tags involved in 1005s. Maybe you can see something we're missing?

In parallel the customer in question has raised a ticket with Google Ad Manager and copied this link - although, unless they have some private/proprietary access to IMA then we're not sure if they will be able to help given this is an IMA error code and not something the ad server emits.

Finally thanks fo the links to the blog and release notes - is there an actual page that states IMA's intention to improve error debugging in these situations?  The blog hasn't' been updated meaningfully for over a year and looking back over the posts there's nothing specific to this point.  Basically you say 'it is already known' - can you provide a link or two to where this has been stated that we can share?

Thanks

CC

[IMA SDK]

Hi Cameron,

The error beacons of the parent wrappers are sent whenever an error occurs, you can check your reports you'll see the error code if the error element URI contains the ERRORCODE macro. However, it might not contain all the details you need to identify the VAST XML containing the malformed URI.

Feel free to share the ad tags involved in the 1005 error issue, we'll take a look at them, we might find something.

There's currently no public page that states IMA's intention to improve error debugging in these situations. We do have internal documents/tickets on which we're working that states the feature requirements we'll integrate to the SDK.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

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[Cameron Church]

HI Arnaud

We're in a bit of a it will, it won't loop here. 

So to be absolutely clear.

In the case of a 1005 error, if the malformed URI is in a wrapped VAST doc, the IMA WILL ping any error beacons available in the parent wrappers.   And if that error beacon has the ERRORCODE macro it will be swapped out for 1005?  Which means the platform that the error beacons belong to will be able to find all beacons that came in with a 1005 attached to it?

I'll reply privately in a second with an ad tag - it woudl be great if you could have a look.

Thank you for clarifying the last point - it was very confusing.   Can you provide any insight on the priorities of these tickets that you're working on relating to this issue?  (also happy to discuss privately if that works better).

CC

[Applixir Team]

Hi,

I've been trying to figure this out for a while as well. I have finally been able to consistently reproduce this error with any standard Google ad tag by running the ad in various secure/private browsers. I can reproduce this 1005 error 100% of the time using Firefox Quantum as follows:

1. Run a test URL in a normal Firefox window containing a standard Google ad tag (it will not reproduce with sample ad tags). 

2. Confirm that the ad displays normally

3. Run the same test URL in a Firefox private window.

4. Confirm that the ad fails with a 1005, Error 6 status

If you generate a HAR file from the Network tab on Dev Tools and search for 1005, you can get a fairly good idea of where this is occuring.

Applixir Team

[IMA SDK]

Hi all,

Thanks for reaching out about the 1005 error on html5. This error can be caused for a number of reasons, sometimes related to network connectivity or malformed ad tags. We are aware that it currently can be difficult to debug why this error is occurring. Please visit the IMA SDK html5 release notes page for information on the latest changes made to the SDK that may affect the AdError object, but for now there is no timeline I can provide for changes to improve this debugging experience.

For now, if you are able to reproduce the error 100% of the time, please open a separate issue for your specific error for support with that specific issue.

With regard to the original issue, when I tried the ad tags you supplied with the VSI , I recieved the following error:

Ad error: AdError 901: An unexpected error occurred within the VPAID creative. Refer to the inner error for more info. Caused by: Error: Error: No Ad

I wanted to check if the 1005 error is still reproducible from your end.

Thank you
Jackson
IMA SDK DevRel
 

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[Cameron Church]

Hi Jackson 

It's still very much present with some of our customers.

Per my conversation with Arnaud over the last few weeks we've arrived at a dead end with nowhere to go next as, as you point out, the key bit of information needed is the ad tag and that isn't provided by the SDK so until that changes we're not sure what we can do next. 

We might try and do a deep dive review of all ad tags on the primary ad server but because how how programmatic works it could be (and we suspect that it is) coming from a wrapper a few links away in the chain so there is nothing in the primary ad server that we can find.  

We are also thinking we might be able to zero in on it based on performance metrics of line items in GAM - sort of an detecting the indirect effects of this error - but again we're not quite yet sure how to do that with any confidence given the video error reports from GAM only include VAST errors and not the IMA proprietary 1005 error. 

The only other request other than supplying the ad tag that was attempted at the point of this error would be for the the SDK to fire a relevant VAST code as well (or instead of) - that could help track it easier in GAM. 

We're at a loss really and really need the IMA team to help us out  I'm happy to provide real world data to help increase awareness of the urgency of this issue and the effect it's having on IAM/GAM customers.  Whatever it takes really to get this pushed along the priority queue.

[Dean Kimball]

Hi Jackson,

Something to keep in mind regarding this issue is that I doubt if you will ever reproduce it with VSI unless you randomly run across a malformed ad tag. Based on everything I've found and all the work Cameron's team has done, I don't believe the majority of the recently occurring 1005 errors are being caused by ad tags that are malformed at the source. It's being caused by ad tags that are being malformed by some faulty interaction between ad servers and online users.

Here is an example I setup on one of our test servers. This is a Google IMA 3 Autoplay Example containing an ad tag that you can verify will perform perfectly on VSI but will fail in your example code using these reproduction steps:

Open a private window in Firefox Quantum and load the URL I will send you via PM and you will get a 1005, Error: 6 failure 100% of the time. You can reproduce this in the Avast Secure Browser and others. Considering how these secure/private browsers work I'm pretty sure that these errors are most likely being caused by other various privacy and ad blocking tools as well. If you guys can figure out what is causing the error with Firefox Quantum private windows it will probably be obvious to the developers what is going on with the others.

Thanks,

Applixir Team

[Cameron Church]

We've tried to cross reference Applixir's findings with our data set and have struggled to make it all fit. 

From our side an affected publisher has the error clustering around mainstream browsers - you can see it here

[Applixir Team]

Hi Cameron,

I don't think this is only being caused by privacy/secure browsers because there are far too many of them but right now what is needed is some way to create this error 100% of the time so they can debug it. This is a reproduction approach that will work 100% of the time to produce the 1005, Error: 6 condition even through the underlying ad tag is fine. Hopefully, this will help to point the developers toward the cause of the problem. As I mentioned, I think it's being caused by a variety of browser extensions and utilities along with secure/private browser windows but I think at the core this all started with some change in a central server system based on how it came into existence.

Applixir Team

[Applixir Team]

Hi,

I'm glad you were able to reproduce the error. I didn't mean to imply that it's only related to Firefox, but the steps I provided will produce the error 100% of the time while others browsers don't always reproduce the error. The main thing to notice is that the underlying ad tag is fine as you can verify on VSI. If you look at what is happening in the communications between ad servers prior to the 1005 error being returned you will see that the ad tag is indeed fine to start with and that the problem is occuring during the processing of the tag.

Thanks,

Applixir Team

On Tuesday, January 7, 2020 at 8:49:11 AM UTC-8, imasdkforumadvisor wrote:

Hi all,

Thank you for the timely responses.

The change to improving debugging of 1005 errors is not live yet, but I will respond here when that change does go live.

In regards to the test page here (https://js.applixir.com/ima/Autoplay/index.html); I was able to reproduce the 1005 error in Chrome and Safari, and so it may be unrelated to Firefox Private windows.

In addition, the ad tag url provide successfully played via the VSI in Firefox Private windows (please see the attached screenshot).

I understand it is frustrating to debug this issue given the limited information available from the error. I will respond here when I have updates regarding the issue.

Thanks,

[IMA SDK]

Hello,

Looking at the issue, it appears the error is coming from the underlying ad tags returning 400. I was able to verify this in my own testing app, but was not able to reproduce it in the VSI. My plan is to farther investigate what is causing the 400 response and also what is preventing that from happening in the VSI.  I will reply with my findings here.

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[Applixir Team]

Yes, we found the same thing. The last successful data sequence prior to the error is here:

             {

                "functionName": "b",

                "scriptId": "15",

                "url": "https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.355.3_en.html",

                "lineNumber": 83,

                "columnNumber": 252

              }

Then the (Cafe?) server does a GET of the ad URL and parses it. The only difference we found between a successful ad and the 1005, caused by Error 6 ads is that the URL parameter is null. This value is provided by the IMA3 SDK and cannot be overridden in any way I am aware of so it would be interesting to see how this happened.

Thanks,

Applixir Team

[Applixir Team]

I should have mentioned that the the 400 error is returned as the result of parsing the ad tags containing URL parameters of NULL. I've never seen a URL=NULL parameter in IMA3 so I'm assuming that is the cause of the 400 which results in the 1005-Error:6.

Applixir Team

[IMA SDK]

Hi all,

After investigating farther, it looks like that the AdX redirect URL could possibly be blacklisted in the examples I have been given, and AdX is not allowed to currently transact. I highly recommend reaching out to your Ad Manager 360 account manager regarding the status of the URLs your account is using.

Hopefully that is able to help resolve the issue, but feel free to reply back here if they are unable to resolve it from the Ad Manager 360 side.

[Applixir Team]

Well...

I sent a private URL by PM and it was (accidentally I'm sure) posted to the public forum. Shortly after this URL was published it was blacklisted by Google. Since nothing like this has happened in the past and that URL wasn't given to anyone else, I can only assume that posting this resulted in it being blacklisted. We are working on getting this cleared up but we would certainly appreciate you help with this.

Back to the 1005 error - I've taken down the test setup I provided but I've sent your team all the information required to create the 1005 test internally so you can prove that it's not caused by blacklisting (besides this one).

Thanks,

Applixir Team

[Cameron Church]

We're going to investigate the AdX lead just in case.  Our affected publishers have said their AdX fill has been lower than they expected - although when they contacted the support team there they just said there was no demand.  This was always a suspicious answer to us given that we haven't seen the same low performance on other customers in their cohort.  We'll report back any findings.

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[IMA SDK]

Hi all,

Thanks for pointing out the mis-published URL. I have removed the post containing the URL and will reach out to the Ad Manager 360 in regards to your issue. I still recommend reaching out to your own account manager for help resolving the issue.

I will continue to look into the 1005 error and update here with any findings.

[Applixir Team]

Hi Jackson,

Thank you for looking into this. We have reached out to them but anything you can do to speed things up will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Applixir Team