Smart TV Ad Playback Made Easy: VMAP Parsing, No IMA Required

Introduction

If you’ve ever tried integrating Google IMA (Interactive Media Ads) into your smart TV video experience, you have probably hit a few roadblocks. While IMA works like a charm on web and mobile, it’s a different beast altogether when it comes to smart TVs.
Let’s talk about why that is, and explore a more manageable alternative using VMAP with a playlist parser approach that gives you more control.

Challenges with Google IMA on Smart TVs

Performance Overhead: Smart TVs aren’t as powerful as mobile devices or desktops. They’re optimized for media playback, not heavy ad SDKs. The Google IMA SDK brings in a fair bit of complexity, especially if you are using client-side SDKs in custom TV environments. This often leads to:

• • Slower load times
  • Frame drops during ad playback
  • Occasional crashes or blank video screens.

Lack of Customization: Need to skip the ad after 5 seconds on a smart TV remote? Want to track custom events or sync UI states? Tough luck. The IMA SDK doesn’t play nicely when you need to customize behavior outside of what the SDK expects.

Why Use VMAP + Playlist Parsing Instead?

VMAP (Video Multiple Ad Playlist) is a more declarative way of defining when and where to place ads. You can fetch and parse the VMAP file before the player even starts, giving you complete control. Instead of handing over control to a monolithic SDK, you control the timeline.

Sample Flow Using VMAP and a Custom Parser

Here’s a super simplified breakdown:

1. Setting up the Player: Set the basic HTML and video tag with source for the player to play.

HTML for Video Player

2. Fetch and Parse the VMAP using a vmapURL adURL: The loadVMAP method takes the vmapUrl as a parameter, then fetch the vmapUrl and parses the XML response. Then it goes through the XML response to find different ad breaks, including pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and post-rolls ads. Within each adbreak, it loops inside to find the vastURL(actual ad usually in a tag called <AdTagURI> or <Ad>), and also checks at what point in the video the ad is supposed to play (like at the beginning, middle, or end). It returns a list of all the ads along with their offsetTime and vastURL, so they can be played at the right moments in the video.

Fetch and Parse the Vmap

3. Schedule the Ads Yourself: The scheduleAd method waits for a given number of seconds (timeInSeconds). When the time comes, it calls the parseVast method to fetch ad details like mediaURL(URL for the actual mp4 file) and trackerURL (to fire the Ad impression) from a provided ad URL (vastURL). Once the ad media URL and tracker URL are ready, it plays the ad.

Schedule the Ads Yourself

4. Ad Playback Handler: Setting up the ad player by creating the video element and assigning the source and some basic styling to it. This playAd method first pauses the main player and plays the ad player. Also, it fires the trackerUrl for ad impression. Once the ad ends, it removes the ad player from the DOM and plays the main player.

Ad Playback Handler

5. Loading Vmap and playing Ad on the loadedmetadata event: Once the player is initialised, call the loadVMAP method to parse XML to extract the adbreaks. On receiving the onloadedmetadata/onloadeddata event, load the ad and play the ad on the ad cuepoints(scheduled/offset time).

Loading Vmap and scheduling ad on the loadedmetadata

Key Benefits:

• Lightweight (no third-party SDK load)
• More flexible across platforms (especially TVs and custom apps)
• Easier to debug (you own the ad scheduling logic)
• Full control over timing and UI
• Better performance on low-end TVs

Conclusion

Integrating ads into Smart TV apps doesn’t have to be complicated or heavy. While Google IMA might work well on web and mobile, it often falls short on TVs due to performance and flexibility issues.. By using the VMAP custom playlist parser, you can implement your own custom ad library and  you keep full control, improve performance, and ensure a smoother experience for your users.