DoubleClick Platforms Support VAST 2.0
April 8th, 2010 | Published in Google DoubleClick
Building a Robust Video Advertising Ecosystem
According to eMarketer, Video ad spend is expected to top 40% year-over-year growth for the next five years, becoming a $5B US Market by 2014. To help fuel this growth, we’re introducing three initiatives to streamline online video advertising for marketers, agencies and publishers. First, DoubleClick now supports the IAB’s VAST 2.0 standard for video ad serving in both DFP and DFA. Second, we've launched VAST Inspector, allowing publishers and advertisers to easily review and test ad tags for VAST compliance. And third, we’ve rolled out the Interactive Media Ads SDK, a Flash library that allows publishers to display VAST 2.0 ads.
Creating Efficiencies with a Common Language
DoubleClick has worked closely with the IAB and other industry participants over the past several years to create a universal language for video advertising, resulting in the Video Ad Serving Template, or VAST. In simple terms, VAST is to video ads as HTML is to web pages - a standardized response. Just as all browsers understand HTML, eventually all video players will understand VAST. Other companies that have recently announced VAST 2.0 compliance include ADTECH, a division of AOL Advertising, and SpotXchange.
With VAST 2.0, publishers currently using DoubleClick In-Stream to monetize video assets can now benefit from third-party ad serving, allowing them to open up more video inventory and sell it more effectively. DoubleClick for Advertisers customers can use VAST to run and measure campaigns across any publisher who accepts VAST 2.0 tags.
Compliance with the latest VAST standard reduces time-consuming, error-prone and expensive trafficking work and technical implementations, allowing ads to be easily viewable in many different video players. Additionally, all DoubleClick clients can take advantage of VAST Inspector to make sure tags have been set up correctly for smooth performance and error-free reporting metrics.
Support for a Broad Range of Development Needs
Over the years, DoubleClick has released different Software Development Kits (SDKs) to support various video ad serving needs. We have now consolidated all of these SDKs into a single Interactive Media Ads SDK (IMA SDK). The IMA SDK combines the power of previous versions, and can request and display all of the most popular video ad formats, whether they are served by DFP, AdSense or any other VAST-compliant ad source. We’ve also rebuilt the IMA SDK from scratch to display ads faster and support the latest standards.
For publishers that have basic video ad serving needs, the IMA Component requires virtually no coding. For large media companies and video distributors, the IMA SDK version allows for complete customization. We’ve also worked alongside the leading video player vendors, including Brigthcove, Ooyala and Longtail Video (which distributes the JW player), to ensure compatibility with our SDK, helping publishers get up-and-running quickly with little technology overhead.