Getting started on iOS

This page explains how to install the Equativ Instream SDK into an iOS application. This is the first step to complete before delivering instream ads in your video content.

Table of contents

1. Prerequisites
2. App Tracking Transparency & IDFA
3. App Privacy details
4. App Transport Security
5. Installation
   1. Installation with Swift Package Manager
   2. Installation with Cocoapods
6. Location

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Prerequisites

There are some prerequisites before installing the instream SDK.

• You use Xcode 15.0 or higher.
• Your app targets iOS 13.0 or higher for iOS apps, or tvOS 13.0 or higher for tvOS apps.

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App Tracking Transparency & IDFA

Starting with iOS 14, your application will have to ask for consent before tracking the user. This request for consent can be made through the use of the App Tracking Transparency framework.

The Equativ Instream SDK makes use of the device IDFA during ad calls and will retrieve it automatically if your app have requested tracking consent (and if the user has accepted). If no user consent is available or if the user denied the request, the SDK will not send any advertising ID.

To keep access to the IDFA on iOS 14 devices, you must implement the App Tracking Transparency framework in your app. You can find more information about this integration in our samples or in Apple’s official documentation.

Note that requesting user consent using the App Tracking Transparency framework does not guarantee that your app is compliant with local privacy laws (including GDPR, CCPA, …). Check the relevant page for more info.

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App Privacy details

Apple now requires you to disclose user data that your app is collecting, and the purpose of this collection. You will need to provide these information when submitting a new app or and app update starting December 8th, 2020.

Since the Equativ Instream SDK collects some user data, you MUST declare in addition to the data collected by your app!

You can find more information about the data collected by the Equativ Instream SDK and how to answer Apple’s questions on dedicated page:

App Privacy details configuration

The data collected and processed can change from a SDK release to another, remember to check this page every time your update the Equativ Instream SDK.

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App Transport Security

App Transport Security (ATS) is a feature to protect user privacy introduced in iOS 9. ATS will block every non HTTPS connections. It is enabled by default for iOS applications and enforces secure connections.

Eventhough the ad industry tends to full HTTPS support, it happens that some medias are not hosted on secured servers. To avoid your video ads being blocked by ATS you should configure exceptions in your app’s Info.plist file.

Under App Transport Security Settings of your Info.plist, make sure you enable the exceptions for:

• Allow Arbitrary Loads and
• Allow Arbitrary Loads For Media

Your Info.plist should contains these keys:

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoadsForMedia</key>
    <true/>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoadsInWebContent</key>
    <true/>
</dict>

The NSAllowsArbitraryLoads exception is required to make sure your ads will not be blocked by ATS on iOS 9 whereas NSAllowsArbitraryLoadsForMedia will make sure your ads are not blocked on devices with iOS 10 and higher.

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Installation

There is two official ways to install the Equativ Instream SDK in your application’s project:

• Swift Package Manager
• Cocoapods

There is no dedicated TV SDK (aka Smart-Instream-TV-SDK) anymore for iOS starting with the SDK 7.20. The main SDK xcframework now supports both iOS & tvOS devices.

Installation with Swift Package Manager

Swift Package Manager is a dependency manager included by default into Xcode. It can be used to integrate third party libraries from a Git repository.

To integrate the Equativ Instream SDK in your app using Swift Package Manager:

1. Choose File > Add Packages in Xcode menu bar to open the Swift Package Manager window

2. In the Swift Package Manager window, enter the following URL:

   https://github.com/smartadserver/swift-package-manager-instream-sdk.git
   

3. Choose the SDK version you want to use.

   We recommend Range of versions: 7.0.0 < 8.0.0 as Dependency rules

4. Click on the Add Package button.

   You can now proceed with the integration of your ads directly within your project’s workspace.

Continue to integration

Installation with Cocoapods

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Xcode projects. You can read Cocoapods official documentation for information on how to setup Podfiles.

1. Add in your project’s Podfile the following line:

   pod 'Smart-Instream-SDK'
   

2. Open a terminal window and cd to your project’s directory.

3. Then from the command line, run:

   $ pod install --repo-update
   

   This will install all the dependencies and frameworks required for the Equativ Instream SDK to work.

4. You can now proceed with the integration of your ads directly within your project’s workspace.

Cocoapods is deprecated and is going to be only available as a read-only repository soon.

The Equativ Instream SDK will be updated on Cocoapods as long as possible, but we advise you to switch to Swift Package Manager as fast as possible to continue receiving the latest version of the SDK in the future.

Continue to integration

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Location

For ad targeting purposes, the Equativ Instream SDK can automatically send the latest known user location, if already made available to the application (The Equativ Instream SDK will never actively try to retrieve user location).

This automatic location retrieval is disabled by default, and you can enable as follows, provided that one of the location permissions is granted to the application, and that the User consent was properly collected for ad targeting purpose regarding his location.

[SASConfiguration sharedInstance].allowAutomaticLocationDetection = YES;