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The Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab has updated the technical specifications for digital video ads, designed to provide media buyers with more choices and introduce more transparency, whose definitions will help determine the flow of billions of dollars in advertising budgets.
The new framework’s primary revisions concern splitting the existing two formats of in-stream and out-stream video ads—which have been used to classify digital video for over a decade—into four: in-stream, accompanying content, interstitial and no content/standalone.
Historically, in-stream advertising referred to any video ad that accompanied editorial video content, while out-stream referred to standalone video ads, unattached to editorial video. In-stream inventory, which runs against videos that users have chosen to watch, can fetch CPMs 15% to 20% higher than out-stream.
It will take a few months for publishers to set their video inventory using these new values, which will then prompt supply-side and demand-side platforms to follow suit, said Paul Bannister, the chief strategy officer for CafeMedia, who participated in the working group.
“I am optimistic that by the end of Q2, a pretty good number of publishers will have set the new values,” Bannister said. “If 60% to 70% of the inventory is labeled correctly, then the buy-side will take action.”
While the updates require time and resources to implement, ultimately, they should improve the ecosystem, said media analyst Scott Messer.
“The less obfuscation, the better,” Messer said. “If you were making a bunch of money from running sticky-video floating players, you should count yourself lucky and be happy that now you get to create a better ad experience for your users.”
With the changes, media buyers can choose their video ad inventory with more precision, adjusting their choices based on the goals of their campaign.
For instance, in-stream offers an expensive, scarce vehicle for brand advertising, while no content/standalone presents an affordable option more likely to generate engagement. Accompanying content and interstitials offer a mix of both.
