It’s always the same thing - over and over and over again. And then some. “Schick Skintimate” present “Ready, Shave, Shine” - a fake-blond gal frowns at her razor, then texts and starts having disturbing Schick-branded visions - then ends with “Rock Your Legs”.
That’s not normal, Doc - is it?!
I can’t imagine i am doing it wrong, because it’s the simplest sequence - get Roku_Ads(), getAds(), showAds(pods) - that has been working all along.
I think this is normal. Every time I play Pathogen 2, it tries to convince me to shave my legs. If I complied every time, I’d be shaving down to the bone marrow by now.
For me it’s been a solid week of leg shaving, till today.
But today i observe something stranger: the public channel is reliably stuck peddling “Lowe’s 4th of July” - where the beta/pvt channel prefers “Walt Disney World” (or may show soccer ad). Now they both use exactly the same build/bundle right now, bit-for-bit. Whence the difference?!
Was v1.7 of RAF just released, i did not keep track of versioning?
“RokuJoel” wrote:
I’ve sent an email to the ad team.
This is a hairy situation. […] This may have to do with razor thin industry margins. I’m sure it will all gel in the end. Hairy situation + shaving gel + razor = “Skintimate” margins, indeed! The shoe seems to fit
Hmmm… someone once said “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”.
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I am thinking… if i were to start selling “disable ads” as a premium upgrade, i ought to sell a good deal of “lemonade” given the “lemons” that RAF is handing right now. There is some irony to how self-regulating such model would be - the worse the ads, the more willing users would be to pay to get rid of them. And vice versa - if ads become any good (captivating, useful/meaningful, non-repetitive, targeted etc), less inclined people would be to avoid.
“renojim” wrote:
Well today RAF seems to be totally broken. My calls to getAds are returning NO ads!
-JT
On the Video Poker channel I’m seeing two ads at the beginning: ad 1 of 2 is the Lowes ad; ad 2 of 2 is also the Lowes ad. I’m not sure which I prefer – watching one leg shave ad, or two Lowes ads.
Ah, i was going to ask about that. I noticed such behaviors over the weekend - often not serving ads, figured that the Co. ad pool must be drained.
Today though, i was going to complain but had quick look at my logs and “only” slightly above 100 of the last 300 ad requests came up empty, so i was like “yeah ok, 34% ain’t that bad”. Your stats worse?
PS. @belltown : “Nice little game you got there, eh? Be a shame if you did not pay for ad-protection and something were to happen…”
I haven’t checked in the last couple of hours, but what I was seeing was only the two Lowe’s ads or nothing at all. Unfortunately I throw away duplicate ads at the next ad break, so when I see the same ad(s) at the next break I keep calling getAds up to 10 times trying to get something different. If I only get duplicates with additional empty pods, I display nothing. It’s not unusual to get two Lowe’s ads and eight pods with no ads or, worse, 10 pods with no ads. I’m trying to keep my users from seeing the same ad(s) over and over again, but I’m going to have change that so that if Roku only wants to give me one or two ads I just go ahead and show them ad nauseam (pun intended).
RAF 1.7; rendering preroll pod of 1 ads
BrightScript Micro Debugger.
Enter any BrightScript statement, debug commands, or HELP.
Current Function:
5698: ??
5699: ??
5700: ??
5701:* ??
5702: ??
5703: ??
5704: ??
5705: ??
Member function not found in BrightScript Component or interface. (runtime error &hf4) in roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(5701)
5701: ??
Backtrace:
#9 Function $anon_8111() As Void
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(5701)
#8 Function $anon_8110() As Void
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(5695)
#7 Function $anon_810f(params_ As Object) As Object
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(5746)
#6 Function $anon_7f8f(ad_ As Object, isexitkey_ As Dynamic, global_ As Object) As Object
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(330)
#5 Function $anon_7fca(ad_ As Object, isexitkey_ As Dynamic) As Object
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads_BrightLine.brs(1272)
#4 Function $anon_83cb() As Void
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads.brs(2518)
#3 Function roku_ads_showads(adstructure_ As Object) As Dynamic
file/line: roku_ads_lib:/Roku_Ads.brs(3338)
“renojim” wrote:
Well now (10:23pm PDT) I’m seeing a good variety of ads, but the “Disney Activate” ad crashes RAF and therefore kills my game. :?
This should only be an issue if the device is running firmware version older than 7.1.
Do you have information about the firmware version and/or region for the crashing device?
Sorry guys, I just noticed your posts. Joel, I posted the debugger output. It’s clearly crashing in the RAF library code. I was surprised to catch it my side-loaded app. I had to comment out the showAds to go on with my developing.
KC, I wish my memory was better on which devices the crash was happening. As you can see from the debugger output, it was definitely happening on RAF v1.7, so maybe that gives you some idea of what the firmware version was. I think I captured that on my SE which has fw v7.0. I have three devices that I use regularly and I know it happened on at least two of them. I’m fairly certain it occurred on my Roku 3 with fw v7.2 and my SE with fw v7.0. I also have a TCL TV with fw 7.1. I know I was seeing the crash on two of the devices and quite possibly all three, so at least one of the devices where the crash was occurring had fw > 7.0.
I haven’t seen the crash today and I know I’ve seen a Disney ad, I’m just not sure it was the problem ad and I’m not sure which device I was using. I’ll keep watching ads and see if it’s still happening.
It looks like the crash may be of my own doing by not allowing my SE to update its firmware. I could have sworn I saw the crash on multiple devices, but it was getting late and my frustration level was on the rise, so perhaps my memory was faulty. Since my last report I’ve only seen the crash on the SE with fw 7.0 and the same ads don’t crash my Roku 3 or TV. I am seeing a few users that look like they’re still on v7.0 as of 7/6, so this is still a little bit of a problem.
“renojim” wrote:
So no ads coming through again today. Anyone have any suggestions for a service that works with RAF and actually has a good supply of ads?
Confirming - during the last 4 hours over 50% of RokuCo-served requests for ads have been unfilled.
I blame it on channels that show multiple ads per session and thus drain a shallow pool.
But seriously - i too am all ears about “serious” video ad suppliers.
“belltown” wrote:
I think this is normal. Every time I play Pathogen 2, it tries to convince me to shave my legs. If I complied every time, I’d be shaving down to the bone marrow by now.
I’m trying to keep my users from seeing the same ad(s) over and over again, but I’m going to have change that so that if Roku only wants to give me one or two ads I just go ahead and show them ad nauseam (pun intended).
