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VAST ad types

Back to blogging on this Sunday afternoon, it is real hot in India 123.8 F. What an awesome day to blog and nothing else ;-) 

In this blog we're gonna be talking about two formats of VAST ads viz. Inline Ads vs Wrapper Ads.

Let's try to understand what these mean.

When you hit a VAST tag and you get a valid response; if the response contains a playable creative (for e.g. .mp4, .mov, .wmv etc.) you call it as an Inline ad.
The Inline response could be readily identified by the <Inline> element in the VAST response.

<VAST version="2.0">

<Ad id="128a6.44d74.46b3">

<InLine>

...
...
..
.
</InLine>
</Ad>

</VAST>

The inline response will have at least one media file in the response structure. 

<MediaFiles>

<MediaFile delivery="progressive" bitrate="0" height="540" width="960" type="video/mp4">

<![CDATA[

http://aka.spotxcdn.com/media/videos/orig/a/9/a9ffd53e1e0f11e68ead19e233f970be.mp4

]]>

</MediaFile>

<MediaFile delivery="progressive" bitrate="0" height="540" width="960" type="video/mp4">

<![CDATA[

http://aka.spotxcdn.com/media/videos/orig/b/0/b01902381e0f11e6b6961e0fb54aFFFF.mp4

]]>

</MediaFile>

</MediaFiles>

Look at the above elements. The MediaFile element contains multiple attributes such as: delivery, bitrate, height, width, type.

If the response contains more than one media file entries, the underlying difference would be the "bitrate" attribute. Ad networks provide same media file of different bitrates so that consumers are able to play the videos at various network speeds / bandwidth.

Inline ads primarily mean that when a request for ad is made to the ad-network & the ad-network has ad available in its inventory; it will supply that to the consumer. But what happens when there is no ad in the inventory.

If there is no ad in the inventory, the ad-network may look towards its partners to fill the slot/request. In such cases, you might see the VAST response contain a "wrapper" response.

Wrapper means it has wrapped something within it. Here in this case, it wraps an Inline ad. When a wrapper response is provide, instead of having an 
"<InLine>" element the response would have a "<wrapper>" element.

The <wrapper> element would have a <VASTAdTagURI> element. Now, we know already that we landed in a situation where the ad-network didn't have ads so it looked towards its partners to serve ad. Hence, the <VASTAdTagURI>
will contain a prospective ad-source.

<VAST>
<Ad id="239699" >
  <Wrapper>
    <AdSystem>YuMe</AdSystem>

    <VASTAdTagURI><![CDATA[http://rtr.innovid.com/r1.570e5ebc3a8b271.90741238;cb=3266479794119321896?dipn=deviceid&deviceid=${device_id}]]></VASTAdTagURI>
...
..
.
</Ad>
</VAST>

While implementing VAST ads to your setup, you would need to hit URI to get
an ad. The response from <VASTAdTagURI> may well be another wrapper response.

Typically, you would get a valid Inline ad in 2-3 hops. You should consider network lags while making subsequent hits and try to optimize your logic so user-experience is not impacted.

You can associated a timeout or identify how many hops your program would make before resume the actual content.

Great!!! Hope you like this small initiative. More on digital video advertising is to come in my next blogs.

Please leave your comments, queries below. You may also leave your feedback as to how you would like to improve my blogging. Thanks,

VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) - Backbone to Digital Video Advertisement

Digital Video Advertisement is one of the most talked about subjects in the current time. Video advertisement becomes crucial as the number of content-owners keep on increasing hence leading into tremendous amount of contents created in various formats. The advent of mobile apps & consumer platforms have increased opportunity for the content-owners to replicate the ad-model on numerous platform.

One of the widely used technologies in Video ad serving is VAST (Video Ad Serving Technology). VAST is a specification that sets standard for communications between ad servers and video players. Simply put, it is a data-structure declared using XML. VAST was designed by IAB.

From its inception, VAST has come in 6 versions viz.

• VAST 1.0
• VAST 1.1
• VAST 2.0
• VAST 2.0.1
• VAST 3.0
• VAST 4.0

Of these six, VAST 1.1 has been deprecated completely.

In order to show, video ads requests are made to the ad server(s) to get a response in XML format, generally called as VAST response. These requests can be made using:

• A video player (client side request/setup)
• A server (server side request/setup)

At the supplier end is an ad-server listening to ad requirements by the client. When a valid request arrives at the ad-server and an ad is available, the ad server would respond with a VAST ad.

A VAST data structure provides you information about:

• Media that is to be played (creative)
• Tracking information

To make an ad-request you would require an ad-tag that will uniquely address ad requests/responses to a particular ad-network. 

Sample VAST tags can be found at:

http://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-ad-serving-template-vast-3-0/

http://www.iab.com/insights/vast-2-0-xml-samples-for-testing/

Talking about ad-networks, some of the well-known ad networks are Google, LiveRail, BrightRoll, SpotXchange, TremorVideos etc. The ad network space is filling fast as new ad companies keep coming into existence.

Posted below is a sample VAST response:

<VAST version="2.0">

<Ad id="602678">

<InLine>

<AdSystem>Acudeo Compatible</AdSystem>

<AdTitle>NonLinear Test Campaign 1</AdTitle>

<Description>NonLinear Test Campaign 1</Description>

<Survey>http://mySurveyURL/survey</Survey>

<Error>http://myErrorURL/error</Error>

<Impression>http://myTrackingURL/impression</Impression>

<Creatives>

<Creative AdID="602678-NonLinear">

<NonLinearAds>

<TrackingEvents>

<Tracking event="creativeView">http://myTrackingURL/nonlinear/creativeView</Tracking>

<Tracking event="expand">http://myTrackingURL/nonlinear/expand</Tracking>

<Tracking event="collapse">http://myTrackingURL/nonlinear/collapse</Tracking>

<Tracking event="acceptInvitation">http://myTrackingURL/nonlinear/acceptInvitation</Tracking>

<Tracking event="close">http://myTrackingURL/nonlinear/close</Tracking>

</TrackingEvents>

<NonLinear height="50" width="300" minSuggestedDuration="00:00:15">

<StaticResource creativeType="image/jpeg">

http://demo.tremormedia.com/proddev/vast/50x300_static.jpg

</StaticResource>

<NonLinearClickThrough>http://www.tremormedia.com</NonLinearClickThrough>

</NonLinear>

<NonLinear height="50" width="450" minSuggestedDuration="00:00:20">

<StaticResource creativeType="image/jpeg">

http://demo.tremormedia.com/proddev/vast/50x450_static.jpg

</StaticResource>

<NonLinearClickThrough>http://www.tremormedia.com</NonLinearClickThrough>

</NonLinear>

</NonLinearAds>

</Creative>

<Creative AdID="602678-Companion">

<CompanionAds>

<Companion width="300" height="250">

<StaticResource creativeType="application/x-shockwave-flash">

http://demo.tremormedia.com/proddev/vast/300x250_companion_1.swf

</StaticResource>

<CompanionClickThrough>http://www.tremormedia.com</CompanionClickThrough>

</Companion>

<Companion width="728" height="90">

<StaticResource creativeType="image/jpeg">

http://demo.tremormedia.com/proddev/vast/728x90_banner1.jpg

</StaticResource>

<TrackingEvents>

<Tracking event="creativeView">http://myTrackingURL/secondCompanion</Tracking>

</TrackingEvents>

<CompanionClickThrough>http://www.tremormedia.com</CompanionClickThrough>

</Companion>

</CompanionAds>

</Creative>

</Creatives>

</InLine>

</Ad>

</VAST>

Next in the blog thread - "VAST ad types". Stay tuned...