IMA SDK Android | Live streaming support

[Anuja Kothekar]

Hi,
I am trying to add ads in live streaming support. I read that it is officially not supported 

https://groups.google.com/g/ima-sdk/c/vm9tPobU7hI/m/bnQB7TlYzrEJ

So I tried in this way but I am having some challenge here.

I am using exoplayer to play my streaming content and I am reading ad_break_start & ad_break_end in manifest of my live content. once I get ad_break_start I am starting IMA ads but as soon as I start ads, I am not able to read ad_break_end event from content manifest. Any guidance for approach will be really helpful.

Regards,
Anuja

[IMA SDK]

Hi Anuja,

Thank you for reaching out to us. Let me do the best I can to assist you in this.

As per checking with the forum thread that you provided, the post is quite old (from 2014) and the information there is already obsolete. As per your use case, IMA SDK now supports Live streams - either VOD or live content. You may want to check our developer guide here. In addition, we would highly suggest to review our DAI VSI and sample app as well to have a clearer view on this.  

Regards,

Teejay Wennie IMA SDK Team

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[Anuja Kothekar]

Hi Teejay,

Thank you for response. I am looking for Android SDK, links given seems to be for HTML5. Anyways, I have checked similar docs for android too. It seems for live streaming only AdsRequest.liveStreamPrefetchSeconds() api is added to fetch ads in advance as given here: https://developers.google.com/interactive-media-ads/docs/sdks/android/client-side/live-stream 

is there any other documentation that I can refer for live stream content integration for android? 

Also, do I have to use DAI for live stream content? is there any other way with which I can overcome the challenge that I have mentioned in original question and use IMA SDK only instead of using DAI?

Regards,

Anuja

[IMA SDK]

Hello Anuja,

 

Michael here and I work along with Teejay.

 

As per IMA SDK's perspective, live stream content can only work with DAI, hence for Android we do have Android DAI SDK. With this setup, apps make a stream request for ad and with a live content video. The SDK then returns a combined video stream, so that you don't have to manage switching between ad and content video within your app. Which means, the configuration for this ad request will come from your ad provider (e.g Ad Manager), the asset key that will be provided to you by your ad provider will be the one you will use in your AdsRequest.

 

You may use our publicly available VSI tool to test your asset keys. You may also check our Android DAI sample apps and use it as reference for your own integration to avoid implementation issues. You may explore the shared documentation and let us know should you have further questions.

Regards,

Michael Angelo IMA SDK Team

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[Anuja Kothekar]

Hi Michael,

Thank you so much for clarification! I will explore DAI for live content. 

Regards,

Anuja