How can I show a UI when ads are paused by the IMA SDK?

From 14th February Google are introducing changes to the IMA SDK, this may impact your viewer experience during ads. This FAQ explains the change and how you can prepare for this change using Bitmovin Player.

What’s changing?

From 14th February Google’s IMA SDK will begin to pause ads when users click on ads from web players. Additionally, ads will be paused when users click on certain buttons within the player, for more information see the Google Ads Developer Blog here: https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/changes-to-pause-behavior-in.html

When ads are paused it’s important for viewers to have the option to resume playback. By default this can be done by clicking on the ad. The Bitmovin Player can also help you to provide additional UI controls. The instructions below show you how to provide UI controls and use the Bitmovin Player to resume playback.

How can I show a UI when the IMA SDK pauses an ad?

Our player fires an event when an ad is paused, to receive this event you can subscribe to:

Paused Event - API Reference

After receiving the pause event you can show a UI on the player. This example shows how to display a Bitmovin Player UI when using the IMA SDK (alternatively you can add your own custom UI):

Player Web Sample - PlaybackControlsUi with IMA Ads

When the play button is clicked in your UI you can resume playback by calling this method on our player API:

play() - API Reference