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Version: 8.7.0

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Overview​

A good starting point to get acquainted with THEOplayer's advertising features is THEOplayer's Knowledge Base.

While THEOplayer supports a wide range of different ad types, react-native-theoplayer currently supports:

  • client-side ad insertion (CSAI) through Google IMA
  • server-side ad insertion (SSAI) through Google DAI.
  • server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) through THEOads.

In the next section we discuss how to integrate them on each platform.

Additional functionality, such as scheduling ads at runtime, is provided by the ads API.

The final section describes how to subscribe and add custom logic to ad events.

Getting started with Google IMA​

Configuration​

First enable Google IMA support, which requires a different approach on each platform.

Android/AndroidTV

The Android SDK is modular-based, so enabling Google IMA is limited to including the ima extension in gradle by setting this flag in your gradle.properties:

# Enable THEOplayer Extensions (default: disabled)
THEOplayer_extensionGoogleIMA = true
iOS/tvOS

To enable Google IMA you can add the "GOOGLE_IMA" feature flag to react-native-theoplayer.json (or theoplayer-config.json)

Web

To enable Google IMA on web, it suffices to add this script in the web page's header section, as shown in the example app's index.html:


<head>
  <!-- Optionally load Google IMA/DAI libraries -->
  <script type="text/javascript" src="//imasdk.googleapis.com/js/sdkloader/ima3.js"></script>
</head>

Source description​

When providing the player with a source that includes a list of ads, make sure to set the integration property to "google-ima", as shown in one of the sources of the example app:

const imaSource = {
  sources: [
    {
      src: 'https://cdn.theoplayer.com/video/dash/webvtt-embedded-in-isobmff/Manifest.mpd',
      type: 'application/dash+xml',
    },
  ],
  ads: [
    {
      integration: 'google-ima' as AdIntegrationKind,
      sources: {
        src: 'https://cdn.theoplayer.com/demos/ads/vast/dfp-preroll-no-skip.xml',
      },
    },
  ],
};

The API's AdSource description provides additional information on the configurable properties.

Getting started with Google DAI​

First enable Google DAI support, which requires a different approach on each platform.

Android/AndroidTV

The Android SDK is modular-based, so enabling Google DAI is limited to including the dai extension in gradle by enabling this flag in your gradle.properties:

# Enable THEOplayer Extensions (default: disabled)
THEOplayer_extensionGoogleDAI = true

Note that DAI support for Android is available as of SDK version 4.3.0.

iOS

Google DAI is part of the Google IMA SDK. To enable it, you add the "GOOGLE_IMA" feature flag to react-native-theoplayer.json (or theoplayer-config.json)

Web

To enable Google DAI on web, it suffices to add this script in the web page's header section, as shown in the example app's index.html:


<head>
  <!-- Optionally load Google IMA/DAI libraries -->
  <script type="text/javascript" src="//imasdk.googleapis.com/js/sdkloader/ima3_dai.js"></script>
</head>

Source description​

Providing a Google DAI source description to the player requires providing an ssai object and specifying "google-dai" as integration type:

const daiSource = {
  sources: {
    ssai: {
      integration: 'google-dai',
      availabilityType: 'vod',
      contentSourceID: '2528370',
      videoID: 'tears-of-steel',
    } as GoogleDAIVodConfiguration,
  },
};

A full description of the available source properties can be found in the API definition.

Getting started with THEOads​

THEOads is an ad-insertion service for both VOD and LIVE content, created by THEO Technologies, utilizing Server-Guided Ad-Insertion (SGAI). For more information we refer to the THEOads documentation.

Using the Ads API​

THEOplayer provides an AdsAPI that enables additional features such as:

  • Querying whether an ad is currently playing;
  • Skipping the current ad (if possible);
  • Getting the ad break that is currently playing;
  • Getting a list of ads that are currently playing (only available for web);
  • Getting a list of ad breaks that are still scheduled. Once an ad break starts, it is removed from the list;
  • Manually scheduling a client-side ad.

The THEOplayer is provided with a callback on the THEOplayerView component:

const onPlayerReady = (player: THEOplayer) => {
  this.player = player;
}

<THEOplayerView onPlayerReady={onPlayerReady}/>

After which the AdsAPI can be used:

const isPlayingAd = () => {
  return this.player.ads.playing();
};

Google DAI has its own API, which includes DAI-specific features, such as converting time stamps between stream time and content time, and manipulating the snapback flag that prevents users from seeking across ad breaks.

// Convert timestamps using the DAI ads api.
const streamTimeForContentTime = (contentTime: number): Promise<number> | undefined => {
  return this.player.ads.dai?.streamTimeForContentTime(contentTime);
};

Subscribing to ad events​

THEOplayer allows you to subscribe to ad events:

const onAdEvent = (event: AdEvent) => {
  console.log(event)
}
player.addEventListener(PlayerEventType.AD_EVENT, onAdEvent);

See AdEvent, Ad and AdBreak for more information.

Note that the availability of the events being dispatched depends on the platform.