Bumper Videos with the Native SDKs

Introduction

A bumper is typically a very short video (10 secs or less) automatically inserted before any pre-roll ads and your content. A bumper is not used for monetization but instead relays information such as your company logo or branding.

Here is an example of a bumper video playing before the main content.

Requirements

The following requirements are needed for this feature:

Brightcove SDK version

• Native SDK for Android 9.0.0 and newer (BumperComponent, in the ExoPlayer module)
• Native SDK for iOS 6.11.0 and newer

Functionality

Here are some details about Bumper videos:

• Bumpers are compatible with both Client-Side Advertising (CSAI) and Server-Side Advertising (SSAI)
• Bumpers play before any pre-roll ads and your content
• The player is configurable during bumper video playback:
  • Show/hide the player controls
  • Prevent seeking during playback
  • Change the seekbar color to indicate a bumper
• Analytics data will be tracked the same as for any content video

Configuration

A bumper video can be set for the player or for an individual video.

Player-level bumper

By default, bumper videos are a player-level feature. This means that all videos in a player will have the same bumper.

A bumper consists of a single Video Cloud video, referenced by either:

• Video ID
• Reference ID

Video-level bumper

To assign a bumper to a video, you can define a custom field in Video Cloud Studio. The custom field must have the following:

• Custom field name of bumper_id
• Custom field value must be a valid video ID

Android Implementation

A player requests a bumper from the Playback API like any other video and inserts it before ads and content.

There are two ways to configure a player to play a bumper video:

1. Bumper ID

   The bumper ID is the video ID or reference ID of the video to play before other content.

   // Building the instance of the bumper component, providing the existing video view and catalog.
    bumperComponent = new BumperComponent.Builder(brightcoveVideoView, catalog).build();
    bumperComponent.setVideoBumperID("Bumper ID");
    // Initializing the bumper.
    bumperComponent.init();
    

2. Custom Fields

   The bumper_id field can be defined in Custom Fields in Video Cloud Studio. It must contain a valid video ID or reference ID. The Android BumperComponent does not read the custom field itself: read the field from the video properties and pass its value to setVideoBumperID().

   // Building the instance of the bumper component, providing the existing video view and catalog.
    bumperComponent = new BumperComponent.Builder(brightcoveVideoView, catalog).build();
    // Obtaining the bumper ID from the video custom fields.
    Map<String, Object> customFields = (Map<String, Object>) mVideo.getProperties().get(Video.Fields.CUSTOM_FIELDS);
    if (customFields != null && customFields.containsKey("bumper_id")) {
        bumperComponent.setVideoBumperID((String) customFields.get("bumper_id"));
    }
    // Initializing the bumper.
    bumperComponent.init();
    

You can access the video view for the bumper to modify it as any other video view by using:

bumperComponent.getBumperVideoView();

For a complete example, see the Android BumperSampleApp (a Kotlin version is also available).

iOS Implementation

The Native SDK for iOS/tvOS supports bumper video playback.

For details, see the following:

• Bumper Support