iTunes Banner Builder Problems

Hi, can anyone confirm if iTunes Banners are broken?
here's a link below that used to work but doesn't now on my machines/mobile devices iv'e tested, can someone confirm whether they can see the artwork from the link below or it is broken? (ie no artwork)
This only started happening yesterday (19/8/2015)
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By the way the link is for "PacMan 256" (Free) which is a great game with MFi Controllers.

http://banners.itunes.apple.com//banner … w=728&h=90

I've never used iTunes banners, but the iTunes lookup API I do use breaks frequently. Give it a day, it'll probably be back to normal

Thank Kev,
Just got a reply back from Apple Dev, the answer is yes something has gone wrong Apple server side.
It's been out 4 days now. so any developers/bloggers that use banners.itunes.apple.com to display apps on their blogs/websites, apparently Apple are aware of the issues and are fixing them.
.
Will update when it comes back online.

Last edited by MFiGamer (Aug 20 6:16 PM)

It's sad, but Apple doesn't really seem to care much about this stuff. Not sure how iTunes banners work, but their lookup API is ancient. They break it regularly, they patch it infrequently, they add features basically never.

I actually had to design my list code so that the code constantly checks to make sure Apple provided valid information, so the whole damn thing doesn't break whenever Apple goes offline. Not fun.

Yeah No Fun.. Everything is operational again, Banners are fixed, only took them 5 days.

MFiGamer wrote:
Yeah No Fun.. Everything is operational again, Banners are fixed, only took them 5 days.

Glad they fixed it at least. Sad that banners, API, and iTunes all use different information, and break independently from one another.

Hey, was just checking out your site on my computer, and none of the banners would load for me. I did a little troubleshooting, and it turns out adblock kills the iTunes banner code and blocks the banners themselves from displaying.

You might want to consider transitioning to another method of app display before iOS 9 comes out, since I have a feeling it'll greatly expand the number of people running ad blockers.

Kevin wrote:
Hey, was just checking out your site on my computer, and none of the banners would load for me. I did a little troubleshooting, and it turns out adblock kills the iTunes banner code and blocks the banners themselves from displaying.
You might want to consider transitioning to another method of app display before iOS 9 comes out, since I have a feeling it'll greatly expand the number of people running ad blockers.

Thnx Kev was looking into Apple's Advanced Linking Tools, any pointers would be helpful, not had much time lately to focus on transitioning.

MFiGamer wrote:
Kevin wrote:
Hey, was just checking out your site on my computer, and none of the banners would load for me. I did a little troubleshooting, and it turns out adblock kills the iTunes banner code and blocks the banners themselves from displaying.
You might want to consider transitioning to another method of app display before iOS 9 comes out, since I have a feeling it'll greatly expand the number of people running ad blockers.

Thnx Kev was looking into Apple's Advanced Linking Tools, any pointers would be helpful, not had much time lately to focus on transitioning.

Sure, how familiar are you with JavaScript and CSS? If you know that stuff well, the best option by far is to write some code to automatically turn your forum links into app buttons.

If you're not so familiar with JavaScript, or don't want to spend a bunch of time reinventing the wheel, there might still be ways to make banners work. Try switching between Iframe mode and JavaScript mode, and test with Adblock on. Each mode works a little different, and some may not trigger the blockers

Thanks Kev 😉 will try a few ways when i get chance, just thought it might be silly for iOS9 to block their own banners.

It's not a global feature of iOS 9 that Apple is integrating themselves, it is more dependant on users manually installing apps. Still, I predict they'll be doing a lot of that - I just installed a beta ad blocker on iOS 9, and it works excellently.

The one I'm running on my iPad does NOT block app banners. Thus far, its only been the full Mac adblockers that affect banners