HTML5 Media - HTML5 Advertising - page 180

VPAID
Now that you have an idea of how to serve the video ad to a video player via VAST, you may be wondering, “How do I
make it interactive? Won't that conflict with the video playback?” This is where VPAID comes into play. Video
Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) is fundamentally an API to communicate to the video player from within the
ad unit through various exposed API calls.
The VPAID API is baked into the JavaScript of the creative to give certain commands to the publisher video player
such as “Pause your video; the user wants to expand the ad” or “You can resume playback; the user has closed the
ad.” These instructions allow for a seamless integration between the player content and ad experience. Moreover, it's
an adopted standard in the industry backed by the IAB and others. Ads that leverage VPAID work in conjunction with
VAST; VPAID handles the interactivity, and VAST handles the delivery. Using both to your advantage will allow your
ad tag to run across multiple video players with ease, but make sure you reach out to the certain publishers to ensure
that their player is VAST compliant and can handle the VPAID API before developing your creative execution.
Using VPAID, it could get very interesting if advertisers wanted to do out-of-player video ads that interact with the
surrounding elements of the page. Obviously, this would be pretty complex to pull off across a media plan because
publishers would more than likely all need a specific creative version, but one-off solutions can be done much more
easily. For more information on VPAID and the JavaScript API documentation, visit http://iab.net/media/file/
VPAID_2.0_Final_04-10-2012.pdf ; note that version 3.0 will be out soon.
VMAP
Video Multiple Ad Playlist (VMAP) is a new protocol that allows content owners to describe where ad slots or breaks
should be placed within their video content when they do not control the video player or the content distribution
outlet. Video ad enhancements include support for a “skippable” video ad, which allows publishers and content
owners to price differently, based on ads that can play to completion or offer the skippable functionality. In addition,
there is also support for “pods” or multiple ads to be displayed in a single ad break. This allows for the creation of
similar experiences to broadcast television where you'll often see two 15-second ads back-to-back in a 30-second
ad slot. For more information on the IAB's VMAP specification, visit http://iab.net/guidelines/508676/
digitalvideo/vsuite/vmap .
Mobile Video
Mobile video content is increasing at a rapid pace, and as more and more people place their eyeballs on the smaller
screen, advertisers are soon to follow. Currently, the fragmentation in the technology proves hard to deploy a mobile
ad campaign, but using VAST and VPAID, advertisers can get into the mobile video realm much easier. To get an idea
of the current mobile video landscape, take a look at the graph from eMarketer in Figure 7-15 .