Create an ad

Once you’ve created a campaign and have created at least one line, you can start setting up an ad (creative) for the campaign under the Ad Summary page.

  1. Choose Create Ad in Workbench.
  2. Enter an ad name.
  3. Select an ad language (for publishers in Canada only).
  4. Select a creative type.
  5. Select the target device.
  6. Select a creative source. Creative source is dependent on your selections for creative type and target device.
  7. Select an ad destination. You’ll need to set an ad destination if you’ve selected From My Desktop as the creative source.
  8. Review your ad in the Ad Preview section. For additional details, see Preview and test ads.
  9. Include additional third-party ad tracking URLs (optional). For details, see Third-party ad tracking.
  10. Associate your ad to a line. For additional details, see Create a line.
  11. Click Save or Next.

Ad unit development constraints

While the ads are loaded in a fairly standard web view (WKWebView), there are important constraints that must be considered when developing ads for use on Apple News.

Paths

All paths to resources that the ad loads must be absolute (complete) URLs. Relative paths aren’t supported.

SSL serving is required. All tags, resources, assets, and URL calls must be SSL compliant.

Framework

Custom close buttons aren’t supported for expanded units. Apple will supply a standard close button displayed in the upper-right corner of the expanded ad unit.

Note that iframes aren’t part of the MRAID spec and therefore aren’t supported. Using iframes will result in a failed ad load. The MRAID object is only accessible via the document’s mainframe.

Taps and clicks

Taps are supported using MRAID.open method or anchor tags <a href>

window.location and window.location.protocol are not supported, as there is no base URL provided to the frame. Use of window.open will cause clicks to fail.

Thresholds

A maximum of 100 requests per impression is allowed, including all pixels, JS, image, and so on. All requests beyond the limit will be ignored.

Orientation and rendering

A single ad tag will be used to render all display orientations on devices (iPhone and iPad). Each ad tag needs to be written to detect changes in container size for it to render properly. Workbench requires unique ad tags for iPhone and iPad. It’s recommended that you preview your ad on the appropriate device(s) to ensure it’s rendering and behaving as expected.

In-banner features

To optimize for the best user experience as well as ensure security and privacy, some device features are blocked by the Apple News Ad SDK. The following features are supported for Apple News:

Supported In-Banner Features Unsupported In-Banner Features     
HTML5 JS/ CSS Animation Accelerometer
Tap: Activates a control or selects an item Gyroscope
Flick: Scrolls or pans quickly In-banner forms
Drag: Move an element from side to side or drag an element across the display banner’s interaction space
  • Tap to SMS/call/email 
  • Camera access 
  • In-banner video/audio 
  • Device location

Supported Macros

The following are macros supported for Workbench:

Macro Description
%%cachebuster%% Replaced with a random number for cache busting.
%%APPLE_NEWS_CHANNEL_NAME%% Replaced with the channel name.
%%APPLE_NEWS_CHANNEL_ID%% Replaced with channel ID.
%%APPLE_NEWS_CAMPAIGN_NAME%%
Replaced with campaign name.
%%APPLE_NEWS_CAMPAIGN_ID%% Replaced with campaign ID.
%%APPLE_NEWS_LINEITEM_NAME%% Replaced with the line name.
%%APPLE_NEWS_LINEITEM_ID%% Replaced with the line ID.
%%APPLE_NEWS_CREATIVE_SIZES%% Replaced with the width and height the ad format is expected to return. This macro can return more than one value if the dimension of portrait and landscape units are different.

Whitelisting

Ads requested by Apple News will be routed through an Apple-hosted proxy server for privacy purposes. This means that all ads served on Apple News will come from an Apple IP address. Therefore, you need to make sure this traffic isn’t identified as bots or DDOS by your servers. The ideal way to solve this is to whitelist all IP addresses beginning with 17 (for example, 17.*.*.*), which are all owned by Apple.