The videojs-contrib-ads plugin provides common functionality needed by video advertisement libraries working with video.js.
It takes care of a number of concerns for you, reducing the code you have to write for your ad integration.
In addition to the video.js library, you'll need two files from this project: videojs.ads.js and videojs.ads.css.
Both are in the src/ directory.
For development, include the CSS in your HTML's <head> section with a <link> tag:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="videojs.ads.css">Then, include the JavaScript file after video.js, but before your integration code:
<video id="video" src="movie.mp4" controls></video>
<script src="video.js"></script>
<script src="videojs.ads.js"></script>
<script>
videojs('video', {}, function() {
var player = this;
player.ads(); // initialize the ad framework
// your custom ad integration code
});
</script>With this basic structure in place, you're ready to develop an ad integration.
Once you call player.ads() to initialize the plugin, it provides six interaction points (four events and two methods) which you can use in your integration.
Here are the events that communicate information to your integration from the ads plugin:
contentupdate(EVENT) — Fires when a new content video has been assigned to the player, so your integration can update its ad inventory. NOTE: This will NOT fire while your ad integration is playing a linear Ad.readyforpreroll(EVENT) — Fires when a content video is about to play for the first time, so your integration can indicate that it wants to play a preroll.contentplayback(EVENT) - Fires whenever the state changes to content-playback state. Included in this event is a 'triggerevent' property which indicates what event type triggered the state change.
And here are the interaction points you use to send information to the ads plugin:
adsready(EVENT) — Trigger this event after to signal that your integration is ready to play ads.adscanceled(EVENT) — Trigger this event after starting up the player or setting a new video to skip ads entirely. This event is optional; if you always plan on displaying ads, you don't need to worry about triggering it.adserror(EVENT) - Trigger this event to indicate that an error in the ad integration has ocurred and any ad states should abort so that content can resume.ads.startLinearAdMode()(METHOD) — Call this method to signal that your integration is about to play a linear ad. This method triggersadstartto be emitted by the player.ads.endLinearAdMode()(METHOD) — Call this method to signal that your integration is finished playing linear ads, ready for content video to resume. This method triggersadendto be emitted by the player.
In addition, video.js provides a number of events and APIs that might be useful to you.
For example, the ended event signals that the content video has played to completion.
Here's an outline of what a basic ad integration might look like. It only plays a single preroll ad before each content video, but does demonstrate the interaction points offered by the ads plugin.
This is not actually a runnable example, as it needs more information as specified in the code comments.
videojs('video', {}, function() {
var player = this;
player.ads(); // initialize the ad framework
// request ads whenever there's new video content
player.on('contentupdate', function(){
// fetch ad inventory asynchronously, then ...
player.trigger('adsready');
});
player.on('readyforpreroll', function() {
player.ads.startLinearAdMode();
// play your linear ad content
player.src('http://url/to/your/ad.content');
player.one('durationchange', function(){
player.play();
});
// when all your linear ads have finished...
player.one('ended', function() {
player.ads.endLinearAdMode();
});
});
});Your actual integration will be significantly more complex.
To implement midroll ads, you'd want to listen to timeupdate events to monitor the progress of the content video's playback.
For a more involved example that plays both prerolls and midrolls, see the example directory in this project.
To manage communication between your ad integration and the video.js player, the ads plugin goes through a number of states. Here's a state diagram which shows the states of the ads plugin and how it transitions between them:
The ads plugin starts in the init state and immediately transitions to content-set if a video is loaded.
Transitions with solid arrows are traversed when an event with the appropriate type is triggered on the player.
Dotted-line arrows indicate a transition that occurs when a timeout expires.
The timeline at right shows how the ads plugin communicates with your integration.
The ad framework can be configured with custom settings by providing a settings object at initialization:
player.ads({
timeout: 3000
});The current set of options are described in detail below.
Type: number
Default Value: 5000
The maximum amount of time to wait for an ad implementation to initialize before playback, in milliseconds.
If the viewer has requested playback and the ad implementation does not fire adsready before this timeout expires, the content video will begin playback.
It's still possible for an ad implementation to play ads after this waiting period has finished but video playback will already be in progress.
Once the ad plugin starts waiting for the adsready event, one of these things will happen:
- integration ready within the timeout — this is the best case, preroll(s) will play without the user seeing any content video first.
- integration ready, but after timeout has expired — preroll(s) still play, but the user will see a bit of content video.
- integration never becomes ready — content video starts playing after timeout.
This timeout is necessary to ensure a good viewer experience in cases where the ad implementation suffers an unexpected or irreparable error and never fires an adsready event.
Without this timeout, the ads plugin would wait forever, and neither the content video nor ads would ever play.
If the ad implementation takes a long time to initialize and this timeout is too short, then the content video will beging playing before the first preroll opportunity. This has the jarring effect that the viewer would see a little content before the preroll cuts in.
During development, we found that five seconds seemed to be long enough to accomodate slow initialization in most cases, but still short enough that failures to initialize didn't look like failures of the player or content video.
Type: number
Default Value: 100
The maximum amount of time to wait for an ad implementation to initiate a preroll, in milliseconds.
If readyforpreroll has been fired and the ad implementation does not call startLinearAdMode() before prerollTimeout expires, the content video will begin playback.
prerollTimeout is cumulative with the standard timeout parameter.
Once the ad plugin fires readyforpreroll, one of these things will happen:
startLinearAdMode()called within the timeout — preroll(s) will play without the user seeing any content video first.startLinearAdMode()is never called — content video plays without preroll(s).startLinearAdMode()is called, but after the prerollTimeout expried — bad user experience; content video plays a bit, then preroll(s) cut in.
The prerollTimout should be as short as possible so that the viewer does not have to wait unnecessarily if no preroll is scheduled for a video.
Make this longer if your ad integration needs a long time to decide whether it has preroll inventory to play or not.
Ideally, your ad integration should already know if it wants to play a preroll before the readyforpreroll event.
Type: number
Default Value: 100
The maximum amount of time to wait for an ad implementation to initiate a postroll, in milliseconds.
If contentended has been fired and the ad implementation does not call startLinearAdMode() before postrollTimeout expires, the content video will end playback.
Once the ad plugin fires contentended, one of these things will happen:
startLinearAdMode()called within the timeout — postroll(s) will play without the user seeing any content video first.startLinearAdMode()is never called — content video stops.startLinearAdMode()is called, but after the postrollTimeout expried — content video stops
The postrollTimeout should be as short as possible so that the viewer does not have to wait unnecessarily if no postroll is scheduled for a video.
Make this longer if your ad integration needs a long time to decide whether it has postroll inventory to play or not.
Ideally, your ad integration should already know if it wants to play a postroll before the contentended event.
Type: boolean
Default Value: false
If debug is set to true, the ads plugin will output additional information about its current state during playback. This can be handy for diagnosing issues or unexpected behavior in an ad integration.
The plugin triggers a number of custom events on the player during its operation. As an ad provider, you can listen for them to trigger behavior in your implementation. They may also be useful for other plugins to track advertisement playback.
The player has entered linear ad playback mode. This event is fired directly as a consequence of calling startLinearAdMode(). This event only indicates that an ad break has begun; the start and end of individual ads must be signalled through some other mechanism.
The player has returned from linear ad playback mode. This event is fired directly as a consequence of calling startLinearAdMode(). Note that multiple ads may have played back between adstart and adend.
A timeout managed by the plugin has expired and regular video content has begun to play. Ad integrations have a fixed amount of time to inform the plugin of their intent during playback. If the ad integration is blocked by network conditions or an error, this event will fire and regular playback resumes rather than stalling the player indefinitely.
Once the plugin is initialized, there are a couple properties you can access to inspect the plugin's state and modify its behavior.
In order to detect changes to the content video, videojs-contrib-ads monitors the src attribute of the player. If you need to make a change to the src attribute during content playback that should not be interpreted as loading a new video, you can update this property with the new source you will be loading:
// you might want to switch from a low bitrate version of a video to a
// higher quality one at the user's request without forcing them to
// re-watch all the ad breaks they've already viewed
// first, you'd update contentSrc on the ads plugin to the URL of the
// higher bitrate rendition:
player.ads.contentSrc = 'movie-high.mp4';
// then, modify the src attribute as usual
player.src('movie-high.mp4');If you've previously developed an ad plugin on the 1.0 releases of this project, you may need to make some changes to operate correctly with 2.0. Check out the migration guide for more details.
You can use the videojs.ads.js file as it is in the src/ directory, or you can use a minified version.
The ads plugin is designed to be built with npm and grunt.
If you don't already have npm, then download and install Node.js (which comes with npm).
Then you can install the build tool grunt:
$ npm install -g gruntWith grunt ready, you can download the ads plugin's build-time dependencies and then build the ads plugin. Open a terminal to the directory where you've cloned this repository, then:
$ npm install
$ gruntgrunt will run a suite of unit tests and code formatting checks, then create a dist/ directory.
Inside you'll find the minified ads plugin file videojs-ads.min.js.
A short list of features, fixes and changes for each release.
- Prefix video events during ad playback to simplify the world for non-ad plugins
- Simplify ad timeout handling and remove the
ad-timeout-playbackstate - Introduce
aderrorevent to get back to content when a problem occurs - Fire
contentplaybackevent any time thecontent-playbackstate is entered - Expose the event that caused the transition to the current state
- Disable and re-enable text tracks automatically around ads
- Snapshot styles to fix damage caused by ad blockers
- Make the ad workflow cancelable through the
adscanceledevent
- Ad blocker snapshot restoration fixes
- Post-roll fixes
- Allow content source updates without restarting ad workflow
- Post-roll support
- Upgrade to video.js 4.4.3
- Added support for burned-in or out-of-band linear ad playback
- Debug mode
- Initial release.
See LICENSE-APACHE2.