iAd Interstitials not showing consistently? And not at all on the simulator

Question

iAd interstitials aren't showing up at all on the iPhone simulator, and they don't show up consistently on my iPhone. I've gone to the Developer settings, changed the fill rate to 100%, and turned on Unlimited Ad Presentation. No difference... an interstitial will generally show the first time it's supposed to, and then won't show again for anywhere from a few minutes to fifteen minutes. No idea what is causing the difference in time.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to track if the interstitial is going to show or not / if it actually showed or didn't. I realize there's an interstitial delegate, but it seems that isn't used anymore. The way I am calling my interstitial is using viewController.interstitialPresentationPolicy = ADInterstitialPresentationPolicy.Automatic

Thanks!

Answer 1

So it seems that using requestInterstitialAdPresentation is intended to only be used when your ADInterstitialPresentationPolicy is set to Automatic. When implementing your interstitials using a Manual ADInterstitialPresentationPolicy you must use presentInView to present the ad at your own intervals. When presenting your interstitial in this manner it does not load with its own close button to dismiss itself. So, what I've done is created a UIView to present the interstitial in and used the interstitials delegate methods to dismiss the UIView. The inconsistency with receiving an ad from the iAd network still arises when testing. Sometimes you receive an ad, sometimes it fails to load which allows us to request a new ad, and sometimes nothing happens at all. This just seems to be the nature of iAd's interstitials.

import UIKit
import iAd // Import iAd

class ViewController: UIViewController, ADInterstitialAdDelegate { // Include the delegate

    var iAdInterstitial = ADInterstitialAd() // Our ad
    var iAdInterstitialView = UIView() // View to present our ad in
    var adLoaded = false // Bool to keep track if an ad is loaded or not

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        setupAd()
    }

    func setupAd() {
        // Set presentation to manual so we can choose when to present the interstitial
        // Setting this will also fetch an interstitial ad for us
        self.interstitialPresentationPolicy = ADInterstitialPresentationPolicy.Manual
        iAdInterstitial.delegate = self // Set the delegate

        // Make our view the same size as the view we will be presenting in
        iAdInterstitialView.frame = self.view.bounds
    }

    func requestNewAd() {
        // This will fetch an ad for us
        ViewController.prepareInterstitialAds()
        println("Requesting new ad")
    }

    @IBAction func presentAdButton(sender: AnyObject) {
        if (adLoaded) {
            // We have an ad that is loaded so lets present it
            self.view.addSubview(iAdInterstitialView)
            iAdInterstitial.presentInView(iAdInterstitialView)
        }
        else {
            // No ad has been loaded
            println("Ad not loaded")
        }
    }

    func interstitialAdDidUnload(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!) {
        // Kinda works as expected
        // Sometimes is called prematurely
        // Sometimes takes minutes after ad is dismissed to be called
        println("interstitialAdDidUnload")

        // Get new ad
        adLoaded = false
        iAdInterstitialView.removeFromSuperview()
        requestNewAd()
    }

    func interstitialAd(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!, didFailWithError error: NSError!) {
        // Failed to load ad so lets try again
        println("didFailWithError: \(error)")
        requestNewAd()
    }

    func interstitialAdWillLoad(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!) {
        // There is an ad and it has begun to download
        println("interstitialAdWillLoad")
    }

    func interstitialAdDidLoad(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!) {
        // We got an ad
        println("interstitialAdDidLoad")
        adLoaded = true
    }

    func interstitialAdActionShouldBegin(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!, willLeaveApplication willLeave: Bool) -> Bool {
        println("interstitialAdActionShouldBegin")
        return true;
    }

    func interstitialAdActionDidFinish(interstitialAd: ADInterstitialAd!) {
        // Done with this ad. Lets get a new one
        println("interstitialAdActionDidFinish")
        iAdInterstitialView.removeFromSuperview()
        adLoaded = false
        requestNewAd()
    }