Open Measurement SDK for Android 1.6.10 adds opt-in support for Android’s Jetpack JavaScriptEngine, according to a post on the IAB Tech Lab site written by Sid Polo, a Senior Software Engineer at DeliveryHero. Native ad sessions can now run verification scripts in an isolated sandbox process through androidx.javascriptengine instead of a WebView. If the sandbox is not available on a device, the SDK falls back to the existing WebView executor, and apps that do nothing keep working as before.
The post includes a benchmark on a low-end device with 10 cold-start iterations. Median first session creation took 11.07 ms with JavaScriptEngine and 268.51 ms with WebView. Worst-case frame overrun at the 99th percentile was 119.08 ms with JavaScriptEngine, 589.07 ms with WebView and 114.51 ms for a baseline with no OM session at all.
For publishers, the gap shows up as smoother ad-load frames and less risk on the first render, particularly on low-end devices. To adopt it, a publisher updates to OM SDK Android 1.6.10 or later, adds the androidx.javascriptengine dependency, creates a connected JavaScriptSandbox on API 26 or higher, and passes it to the SDK at activation. Android permits one sandbox instance per app.
Our read: the figures describe one device class and ten runs, so treat them as a direction to confirm in your own app, and not as a fleet-wide guarantee. The more useful point for a measurement lead is that verification code has a measurable cost on the user’s device, and that cost lands in the app publisher’s frame budget. The post also notes that HTML and JavaScript ad sessions, where the integrator supplies a WebView, do not yet support JavaScriptEngine, and the OM SDK team is investigating it as a follow-up. We covered another recent measurement standard in IAB Tech Lab Finalizes Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.3, and the broader measurement shift in Amazon, Meta, Discord and Google Hand More Ad Buying to Software.
