Get Facebook demand for native on Android

  • Article

This article describes the process for retrieving native ad assets to display in Facebook's Audience Network SDK in following steps:

Ensure proper SDKs installed

The Mobile SDK and Xandr-FAN-Demand Package will need to be installed. To know more about the details of the releases, see our release page. In the dependencies section of the build.gradle of your project add these two lines:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.appnexus.opensdk:appnexus-sdk:[8,9)'
    implementation 'com.appnexus.opensdk.csr:appnexus-facebook-csr:[8,9)'
}

Initialize Facebook's Audience Network SDK

Early in the lifecycle of your app, initialize Audience Network like so:

AudienceNetworkAds.buildInitSettings(this).withInitListener(new AudienceNetworkAds.InitListener() {
    @Override
    public void onInitialized(AudienceNetworkAds.InitResult initResult) {
        // do something, load ad or else
    }
}).initialize();

Note

To ensure a successful implementation of a native ad with Audience Network your custom native view must include MediaView for the main asset.

Create a native banner ad layout

In the activity layout's activity_main.xml of your app, add a container for your native ad. This container should be of type com.facebook.ads.NativeAdLayout, which is a wrapper on top of a FrameLayout. This wrapper provides extra functionality that enables Mobile SDK to render a native Ad Reporting Flow on top of the ad.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">
    ...
    <com.facebook.ads.NativeAdLayout
        android:id="@+id/native_banner_ad_container"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" />
    ...
</RelativeLayout>

Click here to view a sample code provided by Facebook for setting up native banner ad custom layouts.

Create a native ad request and load the ad

Note

Hold a reference to the request until you receive a response.

Check the type of response returned from the NativeAdRequest. If the response type is FBNativeBannerAdResponse, cast the initial response to an FBNativeBannerAdResponse and call the inflateAndRegisterFB method. For other native ad types, call the inflateAndRegisterNonFB.

NativeAdRequest request = new NativeAdRequest(MainActivity.this, "17823252");
request.setListener(new NativeAdRequestListener() {
    @Override
    public void onAdLoaded(NativeAdResponse response) {
        Log.d("NativeBanner", "loaded");
        MainActivity.this.response = response;
        if (response instanceof FBNativeBannerAdResponse) {
            FBNativeBannerAdResponse fbResponse = (FBNativeBannerAdResponse) response;
            inflateAndRegisterFB(fbResponse);
        } else {
            inflateAndRegisterNonFB(response);
        }
    }
 
    @Override
    public void onAdFailed(ResultCode errorcode) {
        Log.d("NativeBanner", "failed");
    }
});
request.loadAd();

Inflate and register the native ad

The process for creating the NativeAdRequest and loading the ad uses one of these methods, depending on the native ad object returned in the response:

  • inflateAndRegisterFB
  • inflateAndRegisterNonFB

These methods are identical in function except for the registration process. If the object returned in the response is a FBNativeBannerAdResponse the response would call the registerView method to register the ad. If it was not a FBNativeBannerAdResponse object the response would then call NativeAdSDK.registerTracking to register the ad.

inflateAndRegisterFB example

Retrieve and display the call to action text for the call to action button:

Button nativeAdCallToAction = adView.findViewById(R.id.native_ad_call_to_action);
nativeAdCallToAction.setText(fbResponse.getCallToAction());

Once the button text has been retrieved, register the native ad so the click action and impression tracking can be activated:

fbResponse.registerView(adView, nativeAdIconView, clickableViews, new NativeAdEventListener() {
    @Override
    public void onAdWasClicked() {
     
    }
 
    @Override
    public void onAdWillLeaveApplication() {
 
    }
 
    @Override
    public void onAdWasClicked(String clickUrl, String fallbackURL) {
 
    }
});

inflateAndRegisterNonFB example

Retrieve the call to action text to display on the call to action button and display that text:

Button nativeAdCallToAction = adView.findViewById(R.id.native_ad_call_to_action);
nativeAdCallToAction.setText(response.getCallToAction());

Once the button text has been retrieved register the native ad so the click action and impression tracking can be activated:

NativeAdSDK.registerTracking(response, adView, clickableViews, new NativeAdEventListener() {
    @Override
    public void onAdWasClicked() {
         
    }
 
    @Override
    public void onAdWillLeaveApplication() {
 
    }
 
    @Override
    public void onAdWasClicked(String clickUrl, String fallbackURL) {
 
    }
});

Access the original native object

Publishers can access the original native object through the getNativeElements method:

nativeAdCallToAction.setText(fbResponse.getCallToAction());
nativeAdSocialContext.setText(((NativeAdBase) 
response.getNativeElements().get(NativeAdResponse.NATIVE_ELEMENT_OBJECT)).getAdSocialContext());

Unregister the views

When the app is finished displaying the ads you must unregister the views.

if (this.response != null) {
    if (this.response instanceof FBNativeBannerAdResponse) {
        FBNativeBannerAdResponse fbresponse = (FBNativeBannerAdResponse) response;
        fbresponse.unregisterView();
        this.response = null;
    } else {
        NativeAdSDK.unRegisterTracking(nativeAdView);
    }
}

Example app

Xandr has provided an example app on our Github repo.