In April 2010 during iOS 4 presentation Steve Jobs announced new advertisement platform – iAd. This platform is intended to allow developers of free apps to earn on their apps showing advertisement. The main idea of iAd is
to connect interactivity(using smartphone or tablet) and emotionality of advertisement (JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, multi-touch). It allows to create absolutely awesome advertisement which looks like apps with
video and audio. In addition, iAd ads is opened inside the app and user do not exit his app and can get back anytime he wants.
Below is the guide on how to add iAd banner into iPhone app. Guide is based on iAd Programming Guide and WWDC 2010 video.
Add iAd Banner to iPhone App
The first thing you need to do is to add iAd.framework in your Xcode project which is contained in iOS 4 SDK. Also do not forget to add #import <iAd/iAD.h>. Developers can choose between
two banners: 320×50 px for portrait and 480×32 px for landscape. The base of banner is ADBannerView, which is subclass of UIView. So the only thing you
have to do is to add this view in your control elements hierarchy (you can do this programmatically or using Interface Builder).
Apple recommends to put banner at the bottom or at the top of the window and do not place it on any moving elements like ScrollView or TableView as far as that will decrease shows of banner
(and your revenue respectively) and will make it more difficult for user to tap on the ads.
Let’s create a new project in Xcode using View-based Application template and add a banner into it. Name of the app – iAdEx. We are going to edit iAdExViewController.h
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#import#import@interface{ ADBannerView BOOL}@propertynonatomic,assign)BOOL@end |
and modify viewDidLoad method in iAdExViewController.m
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-void)viewDidLoad adView adView.frame adView.requiredContentSizeIdentifiersNSSet adView.currentContentSizeIdentifier [self.view adView.delegate=self; self.bannerIsVisible=NO; [super} |
Let’s talk about requiredContentSizeIdentifiers and currentContentSizeIdentifierproperties. In the first one you define all types of banners you are going to use. And the second property defines which type
of banner you are going to use at the present moment.
Connection issues
Banners are downloaded from the network. What if we have no network connection right now? Or Apple has any issues with ads server? Our ADBannerView will be empty is these cases. It doesn’t look very nice and wastes space on the screen. Apple
recommends to do it in this way: when there is no banner for any reason remove it from the screen; when banner is received – show it again.
We have the ADBannerViewDelegate in our class and it can receive messages from banner – bannerViewDidLoadAd (when banner is loaded successfully) anddidFailToReceiveAdWithError (when
any problems occured). Let’s implement these messages:
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-void)bannerViewDidLoadAd:(ADBannerView{ ifself.bannerIsVisible) { [UIView@"animateAdBannerOn"NULL];// banner.frame [UIView self.bannerIsVisibleYES; }}-void)bannerView:(ADBannerViewNSError{ifself.bannerIsVisible) { [UIView@"animateAdBannerOff"NULL];// banner.frame [UIView self.bannerIsVisibleNO; }} |
It’s time to launch the app and see what we have now:
Tap the banner
And that’s it – we’ve done it in accordance with Apple’s recommendations. When we launch the app we see the banner. If we tap it, then full view of advertisement is shown. But we still have one issue…
Stop & Resume your app
In real app we should stop any application’s activity such as video, audio playback or pause game. In order to solve this task we will create two methodsbannerViewActionShouldBegin (when
full screen ad is shown) andbannerViewActionDidFinish (when we close ads).
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-BOOL)bannerViewActionShouldBegin:(ADBannerViewBOOL)willLeave{ NSLog(@"Banner); BOOLYES; if { // // // } return}-void)bannerViewActionDidFinish:(ADBannerView{ // // //} |
Change Orientation of iAd
What else should we do? We need to make banner change it’s orientation in accordance with iPhone position. First of all we need to change the line where we define types of banners which we will use:
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-void)viewDidLoad...adView.requiredContentSizeIdentifiersNSSetnil];...} |
and here are methods for changing orientation:
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-BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation // return}-void)willRotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientationNSTimeInterval)duration{ if adView.currentContentSizeIdentifier else adView.currentContentSizeIdentifier} |
And here is how it look in a landscape
When device changes orientation we change currentContentSizeIdentifier property ofADBannerView. Now we can see banners in landscape mode too. There is still 50 px offset, but it’s easy to fix.
Apple developers also recommend to write object.delegate=nil; line before deallocatingADBannerView object. In our example it will look like:
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-void)dealloc adView.delegate=nil; [adView [super} |
Now we have finished with programming part. Good luck with Apple iAd!