[SOLVED] GADBannerView delegate methods not called if the view is not in the view hierarchy

GADBannerView delegate methods not called if the view is not in the view hierarchy

I'm working with the Google Mobile Ads SDK on iOS and trying to display some ads. My code:

GADBannerView* bannerView = [[GADBannerView alloc] initWithAdSize:GADAdSizeFromCGSize(CGSizeMake(300, 250))];
bannerView.adUnitID = @"hidden";
bannerView.rootViewController = self;
bannerView.delegate = self;

GADRequest* request = [GADRequest request];
request.testDevices = @[ kGADSimulatorID ];

[bannerView loadRequest:request];

This works fine if I add the bannerView to the view hierarchy right after the code you see above. However, I don't really want to add it until the ad is loaded, so I wanted to delay it. I noticed that if the bannerView is not in the view hierarchy, the delegate methods are not called at all. Furthermore, I have found this answer, which is in line with what I'm observing. On the other hand, this is a quote from the GADBannerViewDelegate header:

/// Tells the delegate that an ad request successfully received an ad. The delegate may want to add
/// the banner view to the view hierarchy if it hasn't been added yet.
- (void)adViewDidReceiveAd:(GADBannerView *)bannerView;

This suggests that it should be possible to receive those delegate callbacks even if the view is not in the hierarchy, which is exactly what I want. So, any ideas how could I achieve this?

Solution

Ok, so the problem here was that I didn't keep the reference to the bannerView. It was deallocated after the method returned, and this is why the delegate methods were not called.