Facebook Instant Games ads not loading more than once

Bugs
1

Hi all,

I’m trying to load Facebook instant game ads as below,

-- Preload ad unit
function load_ad_unit(ad_unit_id)
	print("loading ad unit...")
	fbinstant.load_interstitial_ad(
		ad_unit_id,
		function(self, success)
			if success then
				print("Ad unit successfully loaded ")
			else
				print("Ad unit doesn't loaded ", ad_unit_id)
			end
		end
	)
end

-- Show ad unit
function show_ad_unit(ad_unit_id)
	fbinstant.show_interstitial_ad(
		ad_unit_id,
		function(self, success)
			if success then
				print("Ad unit successfully opened ", ad_unit_id)
			else
				print("Ad unit doesn't opened ", ad_unit_id)
			end
		end
	)
end

function on_message(self, message_id, message, sender)
	if message_id == hash("NEW_GAME") then
		load_ad_unit("<ad_unit_id>")
	elseif message_id == hash("ON_PRESS") then
		show_ad_unit("<ad_unit_id>")
	end
end

But this only works once at the beginning of the game when I press a button. For the second time it doesn’t work. So I tired to load the ad unit again and it throws ADS_TOO_MANY_INSTANCES.

Thanks

2

According to the best practices for ads:

Don’t hold on to too many AdInstances: Both methods getRewardedVideoAsync or getInterstitialAdAsync return an AdInstance which can be preloaded. Preloading 3 or more AdInstances without showing them will cause subsequent attempts of creating a new AdInstance to fail. This means that calls to getRewardedVideoAsync and getInterstitialAdAsync will start to fail with error code ADS_TOO_MANY_INSTANCES until showAsync is called or until the player restarts Messenger.

There could potentially be a bug in the extension code as well. This is where references to ad instances are kept and removed:

And this is where they are loaded and shown:

1 Like
3

Hi Britzl,

Thanks for your response,

Yes, I already checked those library files including JS and CPP and I can see there are only 4 module methods for the Ads in fninstalt.cpp:1564.

Those are not relevant to get an ad instant. Still, I couldn’t find a solution for this, at least how to get the instant of a loaded Ad in Lua script and show it instead of trying to load it again. I just need to show this loaded ad several times.

Below are errors that occur in most situations,

> FBInstant_PlatformShowInterstitialAdAsync - unable to find ad. Did you load it?
> FBInstant_PlatformLoadInterstitialAdAsync - error a {code: "ADS_NO_FILL", message: "No fill"}
> FBInstant_PlatformLoadInterstitialAdAsync - error a {code: "ADS_TOO_MANY_INSTANCES", message: "Too many ad instances"}

Can you please provide an example Lua snippet?

Thanks

4

Yes they are. The load_interstitial_ad() will call into the javascript code to get an ad instance and keep a reference to it in the javascript part of the extension. When you call show_interstitial_ad() it will take one of the loaded interstitial ads and show it (and then throw away the reference to it so that it gets garbage collected).

I don’t think that’s how it works. You can only show a loaded ad instance once. When it has been shown you need to load a new one. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

2 Likes
5

Well, it’s clear now. One last thing, is there any way that I can catch the error and handle it? So I can check the error code and load ad new ad if ad instant not exists.

The reason here is, I’m showing the ad when a player presses a button. So a player can be press the button too many times. Every time when he press the button the Ad should be shown. So I changed my show_ad_unit function as below. Now it’s loads a new Ad after success.

-- Show ad unit
function show_ad_unit(ad_unit_id)
	fbinstant.show_interstitial_ad(
		ad_unit_id,
		function(self, success)
			if success then
				print("Ad unit successfully opened ", ad_unit_id)
                                
                -- * I put this here because `show_interstitial_ad`
                -- handles removing the ad instance
				load_ad_unit(ad_unit_id)
			else
				print("Ad unit doesn't opened ", ad_unit_id)
			end
		end
	)
end

This also not working. I keep getting these errors,

> FBInstant_PlatformLoadInterstitialAdAsync - error a {code: "ADS_NO_FILL", message: "No fill"}
> FBInstant_PlatformLoadInterstitialAdAsync - error a {code: "ADS_TOO_MANY_INSTANCES", message: "Too many ad instances"}
  1. And is there any issue with that I keep using one placement ID for this?
  2. Can I listen to the on-close event of an Ad? (To load a new one)
  3. Is there any way that I can catch errors thrown by the fbinstant module?
  4. Or is there a bug on this extension?
6

No, that shouldn’t be a problem as far as I can tell.

Is there a close event? Check the official SDK docs and if there is then sure, we should be able to add it to the extension as well.

The callback function has a success boolean indicating if it went well or not. There is no higher granularity at this point.

Maybe, please create an Issue in the extension and I’ll investigate.

1 Like
7

Ads only work for me when I precede each load interstitial function with a get interstitial ad function. Is that how it should be or should we get only once on init then load several times with the same id returned from get?

8

You need to get, load and show every time you wish to show an ad.

1 Like