
If the app seeks after we get an ads manager but before the player exposes the timeline with ads, we would end up expecting to play a preroll even after the seek request arrived. This caused the player to get stuck. Wait until a non-empty timeline has been exposed via onTimelineChanged before initializing IMA (at which point it can start polling the player position). Seek requests are not handled while an ad is playing. PiperOrigin-RevId: 265058325
ExoPlayer IMA extension
The IMA extension is an AdsLoader implementation wrapping the Interactive Media Ads SDK for Android. You can use it to insert ads alongside content.
Getting the extension
The easiest way to use the extension is to add it as a gradle dependency:
implementation 'com.google.android.exoplayer:extension-ima:2.X.X'
where 2.X.X
is the version, which must match the version of the ExoPlayer
library being used.
Alternatively, you can clone the ExoPlayer repository and depend on the module locally. Instructions for doing this can be found in ExoPlayer's top level README.
Using the extension
To play ads alongside a single-window content MediaSource
, prepare the player
with an AdsMediaSource
constructed using an ImaAdsLoader
, the content
MediaSource
and an overlay ViewGroup
on top of the player. Pass an ad tag
URI from your ad campaign when creating the ImaAdsLoader
. The IMA
documentation includes some sample ad tags for testing. Note that the IMA
extension only supports players which are accessed on the application's main
thread.
Resuming the player after entering the background requires some special handling
when playing ads. The player and its media source are released on entering the
background, and are recreated when the player returns to the foreground. When
playing ads it is necessary to persist ad playback state while in the background
by keeping a reference to the ImaAdsLoader
. Reuse it when resuming playback of
the same content/ads by passing it in when constructing the new
AdsMediaSource
. It is also important to persist the player position when
entering the background by storing the value of player.getContentPosition()
.
On returning to the foreground, seek to that position before preparing the new
player instance. Finally, it is important to call ImaAdsLoader.release()
when
playback of the content/ads has finished and will not be resumed.
You can try the IMA extension in the ExoPlayer demo app. To do this you must
select and build one of the withExtensions
build variants of the demo app in
Android Studio. You can find IMA test content in the "IMA sample ad tags"
section of the app. The demo app's PlayerActivity
also shows how to persist
the ImaAdsLoader
instance and the player position when backgrounded during ad
playback.
Links
- Javadoc: Classes matching
com.google.android.exoplayer2.ext.ima.*
belong to this module.