Guide to Digital Video Advertising Jan.15, 2017 Overview Practical Advice For Cross-Platform Video Advertising
The current video landscape is being transformed by the confluence of technological innovation and consumer behavior shifts.This new media landscape created by the TV-video shift is increasingly automated, data-driven, addressable, and accountable, where audience is as important as content and context.The perceived dichotomies of television vs.video, broadcast vs.cable, and desktop vs.mobile are breaking down under the pressure of an accelerated convergence of technologies and markets.
In a world of endless choices, accessibility, quality content and user experiences are key.
Sight, sound, and motion have always been the most engaging way to reach an audience, and the continued vitality of ad spend in linear TV demonstrates that the compelling nature of television advertising has not abated.
The introduction of internet technologies to the TV market has certainly blurred the lines between linear TV and digital video—by introducing more data, addressability, and cross-platform capabilities—but without diminishing TV’s core value proposition.Whether viewed on a connected TV set at home, on a streaming device at the gym, or on a desktop at work, video remains an advertiser’s most powerful tool to connect with audiences, wherever, whenever, and however they may be watching.T
When ad buyers—particularly brand advertisers—look at this new media landscape, they see the persistent value of television as a high-reach medium.They also see how valuable digital video is in targeting and delivering cross-platform niche audiences to advertisers, especially younger, tech-savvy, and thus highly desirable demographics.Buying only linear TV would leave out a growing audience that doesn’t necessarily tune in for primetime, but are accustomed to watching video on the go.
A key question continues to vex cross-platform marketers: which screen is most effective for reaching a particular audience or communicating about a particular product? The measurement and attribution side of video marketing is an ongoing challenge facing the converged TV-video space.
These market forces have culminated in a critical inflection point, illuminating the industry’s need for a clearer and more detailed understanding of the ongoing interplay between traditional TV and digital video.This Guide to Digital Video Advertising seeks to make sense of those changes.
If TV is increasingly digital, what does digital video mean? What will it become? How can video best be used to reach, engage, and drive actions?
To start tackling these questions, IAB and its members have created this Guide to Digital Video Advertising.
The guide seeks to help the industry demystify video by giving publishers, marketers, and brands the tools they need to understand the evolving video landscape.The guide is presented as a reference for all things video in the digital advertising space, providing best practices, thought-leading perspectives, and practical advice on the state of the video advertising ecosystem.
It will offer a deep dive into data and targeting, automated buying and selling processes and mobile video, as well as the future of digital video—the New TV.This guide draws extensively from research papers, primers, and standards authored by IAB, IAB Tech Lab, Media Rating Council (MRC), Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), and a wide range of external research sources.The guide provides links to all current IAB working groups with the hope to promote broader industry participation in advancing video advertising space education.
We encourage our members to read through sections of interest, share the content with their co-workers and social networks, and to communicate feedback and suggest updates to [email protected] .This guide will be updated periodically to reflect the continuing evolution of the digital video advertising marketplace.
The 2017 Guide to Digital Video Advertising was developed by the Digital Video Committee, a working group of the IAB Digital Video Center of Excellence, primary forum for discussing and addressing the challenges that arise from delivering video content and advertising.
This comprehensive, practical guide to the current state of digital video is the centerpiece of the working group’s educational mission.
This Guide to Digital Video Advertising would not be possible without the invaluable input of the following contributing IAB member companies: ZEFR
About the IAB Digital Video Center of Excellence
The IAB Digital Video Center of Excellence—a dedicated unit within IAB—is devoted to the advancement of the digital video medium in the global marketplace.Its board and members reflect a dynamic mix of top television brands, original digital video content producers, pure digital players, digital video technology leaders, and innovative startups spanning the growing digital video programming, marketing, and distribution spectrum.Together with its member companies and in cooperation with the IAB Tech Lab, the IAB Digital Video Center produces technical standards, research, and thought leadership critical to the field.Established in November 2014, the Digital Video Center is based at the New York headquarters of IAB, and membership is open to all IAB member companies.
For more information about the IAB Digital Video Center of Excellence, please visit iab.com/video or email [email protected] .Digital Video Advertising Opportunities
The continued growth in digital video advertising demonstrates the indomitable power of sight, sound and motion to capture attention, drive engagement, and build brands.
As U.S.digital advertising revenue increases, mobile advertising is helping drive the growth, surpassing desktop advertising revenues for the first time in 2016.We see more growth and new opportunities for digital video in the near future.Read about the latest trends and a forecast in this section.Market Size, Forecast, and Trends
The digital ecosystem has never been more vibrant and exciting.
The latest industry data demonstrates record digital ad revenues, continued robust double-digit compound annual growth, and a dramatic shift from desktop dominance to the seemingly inevitable march of mobile revenue prominence.Market Size
Digital Advertising Revenue grew 22% from $59.6 billion in 2015 to $72.5 billion in 2016.
According to Nielsen, total U.S.media revenue only increased by one percent during the same period.[1]
2016 showed record revenues, with a strong overall compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16%, and an astounding 87% CAGR for mobile ad revenues for the 2011-2016 period.
In terms of digital video advertising revenues, 2016 has been an extraordinary year with revenues reaching $9.1 billion, a gain of 53 percent across mobile and desktop.Mobile video saw an extraordinary increase of 145 percent, with revenues of $4.16 billion.
Desktop video advertising revenue reached $4.9 billion, representing 16 percent growth over 2015.[2]
Video ad revenue, including desktop and mobile devices, had the biggest increase compared to other formats.
This massive growth is a result of the explosive mobile device content consumption channels, properties, and platforms including social media.[3] As $10 streaming opportunities have never been so abundant and continue to expand, content will also be more inclined towards video.Forecast
The U.S.digital market is continuing its growth trajectory, with expected total $6.5 ad revenue reaching nearly $100 billion by 2021.Filtered by format, digital video advertising is forecasted to show the biggest CAGR, (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) reaching $23 billion in revenue in 2021.[4]
Growth in digital ad revenue is supplemented by the continued increase of mobile and social spending.Trends
As we examine the continued convergence of TV and digital, a few key trends are emerging: the dramatic growth of mobile video revenue, the deep penetration of smartphone adoption, and the rise of automation in buying and selling of video inventory.
The anticipated and seemingly inevitable “year of mobile” finally arrived in 2016.For the first time, mobile advertising spend surpassed that of desktop.According to IAB Full Year 2016 Internet Advertising Revenue Report, mobile ad spend has grown to account for over half of digital ad revenue for full-year 2016.
Overall, mobile video advertising has grown an astonishing 145% year-over-year to $4.2 billion.[5]
The explosion of smartphone ownership has made mobile the number one platform for brands looking to access audiences.A recent ZenithOptimedia report suggests that consumers spend nearly 20 minutes a day watching online videos on mobile devices.[6] PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook[7] projects that growth will fuel equally rapid expansion for mobile advertising, making it the fastest-growing ad channel globally.
Smartphone adoption surpassed 80 percent of all mobile phone owners as of July 2016 and has inched up to 81 percent by December 2016.
Given that the average U.S.
adult now juggles four connected devices (the majority being smart phones and tablets), it’s no wonder that mobile advertising is demonstrating such strong revenue growth.[8]
Automated buying is becoming the new normal in transacting digital video advertising as its efficiency, ease, and analytics have already garnered profits across all advertising verticals.In the last 3-5 years, programmatic has gone from a fringe term used to describe the automated buying and selling of remnant inventory to a widely adopted marketplace enabler, garnering billions of ad dollars.Automation in buying and selling has moved beyond display and is now a signicant force in digital video ad buying as well.
According to eMarketer, advertiser adoption of programmatic video has become mainstream with 60% of U.S.digital video ad spend expected to be transacted through automated channels in 2016.These projections are echoed by the latest IAB Ad Spend Study that show that the share of digital video ad spend bought in an automated fashion will continue to grow in 2017.
Blockchain: A Glimpse of the Future Video Marketplace
Blockchain, best known at this point in the context of financial markets, is the technology underpinning bitcoin, essentially a massive shared excel sheet with many innovative uses.
While synonymous with crypto-currency, new transactional use cases are emerging for block chain, including the buying and selling of media.Some pundits are hopeful that the use of blockchain can bring greater efficiency and transparency to the marketplace.[9]
How does it work? Blockchain is a protocol that enables a time series of data to be recorded, creating a distributed ledger through which logs from a tagged piece of creative can be tracked to determine its path and audience, conversion rates, and budget spend along the chain.
The process is as follows: A buyer buys an impression which is encrypted in a block and then broadcasted to every single participant on the chain.
The impression is verified by the publisher, then added to the ledger.Everyone in the blockchain gets to see the impression event, validate, and approve it (creating ideally, a more transparent marketplace).
The key benefit of blockchain is that it potentially allows multiple parts of the industry to work together with no dependency on any single party’s data.The Digital Video Advertising Landscape
Changing consumer behavior and technological advances in content delivery have resulted in a new media landscape, one where the lines between TV and video are increasingly blurred.This TV-video-shift is prompting the marketplace to rethink definitions and approaches to video advertising.
In order to understand digital video and its many benefits, we must seek to understand its complex and ever-shifting ecosystem.
This section outlines how all these moving parts interact, including branding opportunities, the planning processes, pricing models, and creative decisions required to ensure high-quality consumer experiences.
Across video platforms, new opportunities to reach and engage consumers come in many shapes and forms.The term video is perceived through varying yet overlapping frameworks and lenses.
Brands and marketers utilize these options to better connect and engage with consumers.Mapping the Ecosystem
From start to finish, buying and selling digital video involves a number of steps—often dependent on multiple vendors—to ensure a high-quality video asset makes it through the entire lifecycle of a video ad and with all usage rights in order.So, what are these different components and who are the key participants throughout the lifecycle of a campaign?
Publishers: Organizations with owned or curated media who sell inventory on their websites and/or apps.
Publisher Networks: Organizations that aggregate advertising space but don’t necessarily own them.
Agencies: A service business dedicated to planning, creating, and handling advertising for its clients.An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client’s products or services.
Trading Desks: A centralized agency team or organization that provides a managed service layer, typically on top of a licensed demand-side platform (DSP) and other audience buying technologies.This group typically manages automated, bid-based media, and audience buying on behalf of their advertiser clients.
Brands: The company or product being advertised.
Demand-Side Platform (DSP): Software used by buyers to access and decision against publisher inventory.Other functions usually include bundled bidding algorithms/optimization techniques, third-and first-party data integrations, tagging and attribution functionality, and media delivery reporting.
Sell-Side Platform (SSP): Software used by publishers to aggregate, consolidate, and manage available demand sources and exchange inventory.Sometimes includes ad serving functionality.
Data Management Platform (DMP): Technology service that allows participants/operators to aggregate and normalize disparate data sets for advanced campaign analytics/reporting as well as segmentation and targeting.
Advertiser Ad Server: Technology that provides centralized storage, tracking, and delivery of media campaign assets.
Publisher Ad Server: Software to manage advertiser creative tags and delivery priority amongst many advertisers.
Measurement Vendors: Companies that measure a range of metrics valuable to advertisers and publishers, including but not limited to, measuring for viewability, online or offline sales, and brand awareness.
Verification Vendors: Third-party technology companies intended to measure target delivery, viewability, brand safety, and fraud.
Creative Vendors: Third-party vendors who offer their creative skills, consulting, and products.
These fall into two buckets.
1) (as you have it written) and 2) vendors that manage and deliver the creative assets, including quality control and rights management.
IAB offers a Digital Fundamentals class—available as an in-person class and as an online learning curriculum—that provides learners with a comprehensive introduction to the digital advertising ecosystem.The Media Buying Process
The media planning process involves selecting where to advertise and when to use specific media vehicles (the right timing) to deliver a message, to reach and engage a target audience.
Within the brand’s budget constraints, the media planning process includes: determining the media objectives and establishing communications goals, developing a media strategy and tactics to enable the media objectives, and determining how to measure the effectiveness of the media plan.
Key Pre-Planning Considerations What objectives do you have for your campaign? Are there specific measurement goals that are important to meet? What is your budget? Do you need to utilize a third-party vendor to perform measurement? In thinking about the audience you’re trying to reach, which targeting parameters will be most important? Age, Gender, Behavioral Targeting Segment, Re-Targeting Segment, Household/Purchase Targeting Segment, Country, Designated Market Area (DMA), Time Zone? What’s the most relevant inventory medium or media mix given the target audience? Desktop, Mobile, Connected TV, Inventory Source, Contextual Category, Genre?
These key considerations will help define the scope of the campaign and determine measures of success, a.k.a.Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).KPIs are measurable performance metrics that allow marketers and agencies to work towards a common goal.A campaign can be sold against a number of KPIs.In TV, the most common KPIs are achieving a certain Gross Rating Point (GRP)[10], reach[11], or frequency[12].
In digital video advertising, the abundance of data allows campaigns to measure a wider variety of KPIs, including a specific target audience, verified ratings delivery, viewability rates, and/or other criteria.Brand advertisers also require brand and sales metrics such as brand awareness, brand consideration, and offline sales to be available to them.
Planning and Targeting
After determining the campaign success metrics, budget, and desired outcomes, the next steps are defining the target audience to reach, the creative formats and media/channels to utilize.The audience will be based on the desired outcome of the campaign.For example, an automotive advertiser may be trying to incite higher in-dealer test drives for their newest car model.For them the target audience could be families in suburban areas that have owned the brand in the past.
The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer focused marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.Digital video is used throughout the purchase funnel as a branding mechanism, driving awareness, brand familiarity, consideration, through interactive capabilities and calls to action to purchase.Media mix modelling can be used in strategic planning to determine which platforms, publishers, and formats to use.
Some useful questions to ask at this stage include: Is the campaign focused on driving brand awareness, direct response (i.e.purchase), or loyalty? Should we use a combination of display, video, and mobile ads?
Next step is adding targeting parameters to better reach the desired audience.
In contrast to TV where demographics (age and gender) are the most commonly used targeting parameters, digital video advertising allows additional targeting types, including: Behavioral Targeting: Targeting based on user behavior typically from third-party data providers, or information collected from owned and operated properties.This data could include user purchase history and intent, general interest, web navigation history, and customer relationship management information Geographic Targeting: Targeting limiting the delivery of a campaign to specified countries, states, postal codes or DMAs (Designated Market Areas) Daypart Targeting: Limiting ad delivery to specific time frames when the target audience is expected to be most receptive.For example, you can set the ad to run only in the evening or only on weekdays Contextual Targeting: Targeting to inventory based on the content of the page on which the ad is running Technology Targeting: Targeting based on the technology the user is utilizing to access the content, such as Browser, Operating System (OS), Device, and more Inventory Buying
After defining KPIs, audience, and targeting criteria for the ad campaign, the next step might be the development of specific media tactics.This is separated from the task of media planning and traditionally is the responsibility of the media buyer.Media buyers select the media vehicles and inventory needed to execute the media strategy.
Their key considerations include which media properties will give them the reach and frequency (considering quantitative measures such as audience duplication and cost) to develop an optimal “media mix” inventory plan to fulfill the campaign.
Depending on the platform utilized, agencies/DSPs may be able to select inventory offered by a publisher, which may be an entire website/web property or mobile apps or particular ad locations within a website or mobile app.In addition to managing inventory, domain-level whitelists and blacklists may be applied to campaigns.Whitelists (generally more restrictive) declare the campaign may run only on the listed domains, whereas blacklists declare a campaign may not run on the listed domains.
While possible, it’s not advisable to select both a whitelist and blacklist, as that would overly restrict targeting options.Forecasting
At this stage, forecasting is important to ensure full delivery of the campaign.
Forecasting is the ability to calculate in advance how much inventory you’ll need, through the combination of reach and frequency, to deliver against the desired KPIs.
Historical campaign data, available inventory, and targeting parameters help determine spend amount and specific price points at various volumes.The ability to forecast against specific audience segments enables automated audience buying.This is complex because it doesn’t simply require connecting the right pipes or hooking up publishers’ backends with DSP platforms.It requires anticipating available inventory with certain specific audience characteristics beyond age and gender at a certain time.This isn’t an easy task and few technology partners can accomplish this precisely, particularly in video where supply is limited.
Campaign Launch and Delivery
Launching and delivering a campaign requires an IO, sourcing the right creative and trafficking the media.
IO Approval: Insertion order (IO) is generated and approved as a commitment from an advertiser to run the campaign.
Sourcing Creative Assets: Typically, the video plan requires assets in many different formats and specifications.
The activation team also has to get confirmation that the rights are in place for all placements on the media plan.Traffic Media: The trafficking process starts after the planning and creation phase, and assumes that you have the required video/companion assets and tracking tags.
Once a campaign has been set up in the system, the IO approved by buyer and seller, and creative assets trafficked, it is ready for launch.Once launched, an account manager or delivery manager will monitor the campaign closely to ensure there aren’t any setup mistakes.Reporting
Campaign effectiveness is critical to campaign optimization.
In some cases, advertisers can get daily reporting on the health of their campaign, and can see how the campaign is performing against their KPIs.The data gleaned from these reports can provide insight into potential adjustments.
Campaign reporting can normally be customized to meet the end-client’s needs, but typical metrics reported may include:
Brand Awareness: How many of the target audience have become aware of the brand post- campaign?
Purchase Intent: How many of the target audience purchased the brand or product as a result of the media campaign?
Additional video metrics may include: click-through rate (CTR), video completion rate, video view- through rate (VTR), quartile analysis, creative type, creative length, video starts, video view count, average view rate, average view time, and conversion rate.
Examples of additional studies and advanced reporting include: Real-time brand metrics that can be used to measure specific campaign objectives to include message recall, awareness, purchase intent and brand favorability through a control/exposure survey-based approach Insights showing both TV & Digital ad exposure as well as the brand’s customers TV viewing behavior Audience verification reports that use verified demographic data to identify audiences exposed to an online ad campaign Online and offline sales studies that rely on different methods to track how the video campaign ties back to sales Viewability and invalid or fraudulent traffic analysis and verification
In 2016, IAB established the Digital Media Buying & Planning Certification exam to set an industry benchmark for digital media planning and buying competency.
One to two years of digital media planning and/or buying experience is required to be eligible for certification.IAB also offers preparatory classes supporting this exam.
Campaign Optimization and Path to Conversion: How does it all come together?
Using information from the current campaign (such as how it’s pacing against the delivery plan, forecast and KPIs) the technology partner can optimize and re-adjust the campaign to achieve the desired outcome.This ongoing feedback loop is a part of every campaign.
To optimize against advertiser goals, the platform needs to be capable of processing billions of events, dynamically combining first-, second- and third-party user data in real-time.
A comprehensive DSP can also self-learn, improve, and continuously optimize against brand KPIs, thereby delivering the best outcomes.
Video campaigns, just as with any other medium, are evaluated by their effectiveness through a path to conversion or an increase in brand awareness, depending on the campaign’s overall goal.Simply put, this is the process of evaluating a sequence of events that will help to infer behavioral scenarios that are likely to produce the end goal.This analysis can then inform future planning or in-flight optimization between channels, audiences, or creative messaging.
To find out more about attribution, path to conversion and incrementalism of impression delivery, please reference IAB’s attribution primer .Digital Video Ad Formats
Digital video ads can be broken down into two different formats: linear and nonlinear .Either format may include a “ companion ” ad that displays outside the player.[13]
Linear video ads are ads that are sandwiched between segments of streaming video content much like a TV commercial.
They can play before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) the streaming content.Linear ad formats can be accompanied by a companion ad or they can include an interactive component such as branded components of the video player (i.e.
logos within the control bar, progress bar, etc.)
Non-linear video ads are typically served as images that “overlay” the video content.The ad runs concurrently with the streaming content so the user sees the ad while also viewing the content without interruption.Ideally, the non-linear video ad is small enough to allow a relatively unobstructed view of the content.
Non-linear video ads can be delivered as text, static images, interactive rich media, or as video overlays.
Typically, a non-linear video ad developer can take advantage of the medium and use the small overlay as an invitation for consumers to further engage with a more robust set of interactions.As with linear ads, nonlinear ads can be served with companion ads.
Companion ads are served along with linear or nonlinear ads in the form of text, static image display ads, rich media, or skins that wrap around the video experience.These ads come in a number of sizes and shapes and typically run alongside (or surrounding) the video player.The primary purpose of the companion ad is to offer sustained visibility of the sponsor throughout the streaming video experience.
Digital video companion ads are always served with a master ad, which is either the linear or nonlinear ad.Digital Video Ad Units
There are two primary types of ad units: in-stream & out-stream.
In-stream video ads are played before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) the streaming video content that the consumer has requested.In-stream video ads are displayed within the context of streaming video, frequently used to monetize the video content that the publisher is delivering, and can be played inside short-form or long-form video.Users typically cannot stop in-stream ads from being played, particularly with pre-roll.There are three different types of video content where in-stream may play: journalistic (i.e.news content); syndicated (i.e.distributed content); and user-generated content.
Out-stream video ads is video advertising that takes place outside of in-stream video content.The key difference between in-stream and out-stream video ads is that out-stream video ads leverage the existence of standard display ad units to deliver a video experience.
For example, a site visitor may view an article on a news website and a muted, auto-play video ad may load in a standard display ad unit.
Out-stream video ads are not the primary focus of the page and typically not rendered in a prominent video player.The visitor did not visit the page with the intent to view a video nor did they actively initiate the experience.
The out-stream definition includes:
In-banner video is a video clip within a web banner that leverages the banner space to deliver a video experience as opposed to another static or rich media format.The format relies on the existence of display ad inventory on the page to be delivered.
In-article video ads load dynamically between paragraphs of editorial content when a user scrolls through the page, playing video when the ad unit is in view.
Native videos are promoted videos within one of the six IAB native core ads[14] (i.e.in-feed unit, paid search unit, recommendation widget, promoted listing, in-ad with native elements, or custom).Native videos include a headline, description, and context for the ad.
In-feed videos are native video ads found in content, social, or product feeds, often paired with a headline, description, and logo.
Interstitial video are ads that appear between two content pages.Also known as transition ads, inter-commercial ads, and splash pages.Other terms such as in-page, mobile pre-roll, and incentivized videos appear in the context of mobile interstitials or ads that have 100% share of voice/screen.Digital Video Content Types
Inventory opportunities are expanding as a result of the growing number of screens, devices, and platforms.
Video content types range from long-form , which IAB glossary defines as typically more than 10 minutes, and short-form , typically less than 10 minutes.Full Episode Players (FEP) haven’t yet been defined by IAB, but as described by ABC provide schedule-free viewing of premium, full-length shows.User-generated content (UGC) is defined as any form of content such as blogs, posts, chats, tweets, podcasts, digital images, video, audio files, advertisements and other forms of media that are created by users (i.e.not professionally produced).
Most of these videos are found on YouTube.Online Video Platforms (OLV)
IAB defines video platforms as those environments in which video content is shown or streamed, including desktop, mobile devices, tablets, Over-The-Top (OTT) devices , and Advanced TV.As technology advances, we can expect to see more new devices and ways of consuming content entering the marketplace.One example of this is shaping up in Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) media.
From large, digital billboard-style formats to screens in taxis, elevators, and gyms, we are seeing digital video content and ads, discovered and consumed in unique formats, reaching consumers in locations they frequent most.
Visit IAB DOOH Committee page for additional Digital Out-of-Home resources for buyers and publishers alike.
Digital Video Creative Decisions
In addition to the steps outlined above, there are creative decisions required to achieve a campaign’s desired result.These include (beyond the duration of the campaign itself) the duration of the advertisement, frequency and sequencing, as well as the campaign’s interactive elements.Duration
The duration of the ad will depend on the target audience, and the device on which it will be shown.Several studies (including the IAB Multiscreen Video Best Practices report) indicate that the ideal ad length can vary by generation and screen.Ten-second videos for instance can help maximize impact among millennials and multiscreen videos should be branded with smaller mobile screen sizes in mind.
Frequency & Sequencing
Frequency and sequencing will also depend on the campaign’s target audience, budget constraints and the campaign’s media mix modelling.The effective frequency is the number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising message before a response is made and before additional exposure is considered wasteful.
The subject of effective frequency is quite controversial.In digital advertising context, ad sequencing refers to scheduling a particular and ordered ad sequence made of different creatives; should the ad be shown during primetime and have burst during the weekend, or should it be shown in specific times during the day? Interactive Elements
Interactive elements that can be used in video ads, and are generally executed with a VPAID tag that allows for interactivity with the user.There are various forms of interactivity: a campaign can be set to have personalized assets—if the user’s locale is New York, it can present the user with relevant financing options for New York as opposed to Los Angeles.Social icons can also be utilized to make video sharable, and an “add to calendar” feature can work well for movie releases.
If the brand is trying to drive in-store car testing, they could add an interactive form to be completed by the user prior to going to the showroom.
These are only some of the interactive elements used in video campaigns.To explore additional examples of interactive and cross-platform creative executions, please visit the IAB Cross-Platform Creative Showcase .What Makes for Quality Digital Video Creative?
Some of the most often shared content is video advertising.The 2016 Rio Paralympics trailer “ We’re the Superhuman? ” is a great example.
The three-minute video was viewed over eight million times on YouTube, and now has over 1.8 million shares across social media.It’s proof that great content works— even when it’s advertising.
So what can advertisers do to garner more views and shares? For starters: Do not just repurpose the same TV commercial on every platform!
It may seem as though this option is a money saver, but it will inevitably cost more in terms of negative brand perception—for instance, when a 60-second ad designed for a TV screen is served to a user on a mobile device.
Traditional TV and digital video environments are profoundly different.TV viewers are used to lean-back experiences; digital consumers are typically more lean-forward, short-term task-focused and susceptible to clicking away at a moment’s notice.Mobile consumers have also grown accustomed to content that has been meticulously tailored to their tastes, and they expect advertising to be no less relevant and personalized.While in some cases repetition may improve recall, too much frequency on any platform can cause annoyance among consumers.A good way to ensure a better consumer experience is to shoot video ad creative from the outset in different aspect ratios (9:16 and 16:9) with story lines of different lengths so as to better match the ad to every platform on which it will be viewed (i.e.vertical video ads for mobile app platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram).
Considering the digital video viewers’ experience is vital.
Think critically about audience and the platform the ad will appear on, and use targeting to send messages tailored to unique groups in the campaign.With video viewability (the opportunity to see a video ad) defined as a video advertisement playing for two continuous seconds with half of the ad’s pixels in focus in the browser, advertisers need to hook their audiences quickly.Additionally, with the power of the internet at viewers’ fingertips, marketers are advised to offer a strong, concise call-to-action or message that the video viewer can act upon or remember.Interaction points can include a “click-to-call” to learn more about the brand, the option to fill out a post-video form or end card, to request a test drive for a new car, or to download a coupon for a discount.
Many platforms will offer the ability to run dynamic creative—in other words, the ability to allow advertisers to schedule slightly modified ads as the timeline of the campaign progresses.
Be sure to take advantage of this capability.While some platforms offer advertisers the ability to run short creative, other brands are responding with longer creative.Though challenges can arise from placing and promoting long form video ads, the payoff—if done correctly—can lead to increased attention, earned media, and even virality.In the end, people respond to ads that challenge their expectations, pull at their heart strings, and show them something they’ve never seen before.
Finally, if you want humans to respond to your message, be sure your message sounds human.
Internet users have spent the last 20 years overwhelmed with offers and messages, and will often quickly tune out messages that are executed poorly, or are just irrelevant to them.Targeting and personalization will be the name of the game—delivering fewer ads, to the right people, at the right time.
Location-based advertising, campaigns enhanced by location data and/or utilizing location-based ad targeting capabilities, can deliver more meaningful ad experiences and increased return on investment (ROI) when used effectively.Marketers can, through the use of location data, gain insights into their target audiences enabling them to develop proximity-specific campaigns such as serving a localized version of video ad to in-market auto intenders.
To learn more about location-based marketing strategies, see the IAB Mobile Location Playbook .To get involved with the IAB Local Advertising Committee and related location working groups, please email [email protected] .
Video Pricing Models
The most common video pricing models in the digital video landscape today include:
CPM: Cost per thousand impressions, calculated as CPM = Total Cost / Total Impressions x 1000.For example, a website that charges $1,500 per ad and reports 100,000 impressions has a CPM of $15.
CPCV: Cost per completed view.Pricing model in which the advertiser pays for every time a video ad runs through to completion, calculated as CPCV = Total Cost / Completed Views.Rather than paying for all views, some of which may have been stopped before completion, an advertiser only pays for ads that finished playing.
CPV: Cost per view.
Pricing model in which the advertiser pays for every time a video ad starts (each start is counted as a view), calculated as CPV = Total Cost / Total Views.
VCPM: Viewable cost per thousand.Pricing model in which the advertiser pays based on the cost of 1,000 viewable impressions, calculated as VCPM = Total Cost / Total Viewable Impressions x 1000.A viewable impression refers to an opportunity to view an ad for more than two seconds.
VCPV: Viewable cost per view.Pricing model in which costs, views, and viewability are all taken into account to determine what the advertiser pays.Calculated as VCPV = VCPM / CPV where “view” usually means a completed view.
CPAOT: Cost per audience on target
CPE/CPI: Cost per engagement/cost per interaction.
Pricing model in which the advertiser pays for every time a user actively engages—or interacts—with an ad.
For example, when a user hovers over a lightbox ad to expand it, that’s an engagement/interaction.
Time-Based Pricing: CPH (cost per hour) and CPS (cost per second) are pricing models in which the advertiser is guaranteed a minimum exposure time for their viewable impressions and then charged based on how much time 1000 impressions create.Read more about how the Financial Times implemented this measurement .
As the business model for video is so dependent on views, marketers should be aware that the definition of a view can vary depending on the platform (i.e.
Facebook vs.Snap Inc.vs.YouTube).[15] Video Ad Tech: Overview
Having understood the participants involved in the ecosystem, the next step in understanding digital video is learning how digital video advertising is executed.This chapter focuses on the “how,” honing in on the video player—digital video’s central character—its role, and the technologies it utilizes.The Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) and the Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition (VPAID) are broken down in both technical and practical terms and event tracking and tags are highlighted.Finally, it introduces digital video creative formats and containers, adaptive bitrate support capabilities, as well as iframes and their function.At the end of this chapter you will find further in-depth information on the player, video ad serving requirements and Digital Rights Management (DRM) cross-platform capabilities.
The Player
At the most basic level, the main technical difference between display advertising and digital video advertising is the player .When the call goes out for a display ad, the publisher’s ad server is looking to find a set of HTML code on the page to insert the ad.Once it finds it, the ad is shown.
Before including the player into the equation, it is important to understand how ad serving works.Ad Ops Insider published this useful overview.
Calling the Publisher Ad Tag
When a browser navigates to a publisher website (1), the publisher’s web server sends HTML code that (2) tells the browser where to get the content (3) and how to format it.Part of the HTML code returned to the browser (4) will include a coded link known as an ad tag.
Here is a theoretical example of what an ad tag from DoubleClick by Google, one of the major ad serving companies, could look like:
https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?sz=640×480&iu=/124319096/ext…
The ad tag points the browser to the publisher’s ad server, a system designed exclusively for delivering and tracking advertising.In most cases, the publisher’s ad server (5) is a network of cloud servers[16] owned and maintained by a separate company.In the case of the tag shown above, the content server tells the browser to get the ad from DoubleClick.The Ad Selection Process
In many cases the ad server is deciding among thousands of potential ads to deliver to the page in mere milliseconds.The ad server makes a decision, and usually sends back another ad tag (6), or redirects the browser by pointing it to the marketer’s ad server.
These are technically 302 redirects, which tells the browser the page has been “temporarily moved.” This allows ad servers to count the 302 call as an impression and serve the actual ad content on a different server.Once the publisher’s ad server sends the browser a redirect to the marketer, it counts a delivered impression in its own reports database.
The only exception here is if the publisher decides to deliver a house ad or the marketer has asked the publisher to “site-serve” the ads, both of which require the publisher to load the actual creative files into their ad server.This indicates the publisher is the final source and destination of the ad, and the browser can skip the loop through the marketer’s ad server (steps 7, 8, 11, 12).
Read more from Ad Ops Insider about Why Publishers and Marketers Have Their Own Ad Servers .
Image files, on the other hand, are kilobytes or even megabytes in size and could be called millions of times a day, requiring a much faster and robust infrastructure.Ad servers might maintain multiple data centers across the world, but a content delivery network (CDN) can distribute delivery, process heavy bandwidth, and deliver the ad content faster.They operate hundreds of data centers and can route requests to the one nearest to the user, no matter where they are.Think of the ad server as the brain and the CDN as the brawn.
Ad servers aren’t the only companies that use CDNs, in fact many websites host their bandwidth intensive files in these cloud networks.A CDN is almost always another independent company, such as Akamai, that hosts the heavy creative assets.
In addition to sending back the redirect to the CDN, the marketer’s ad server also appends a second redirect (10) back to itself with a query string to fetch a 1×1 pixel for tracking (11) after the ad content has been called.
When the browser fires this last redirect, calling a 1×1 pixel from the marketer’s ad server, the ad server knows the ad was successfully downloaded and it finally counts an impression in its own database.In many cases, the browser has to make at least four calls for site served ads and six in the case of third-party served ads (if not more) for the process to work.This should not take more than a second, regardless of the number of parties involved.
To visualize the process explained above, please see the Ad Ops Insider diagram in 4.1—302 redirects are highlighted in blue, and the ad creative is highlighted in red.Adding the Player to the Ad Selection Process
When adding the video player to the ad serving process, a publisher ad server is asked to pull a video asset and show it in a publisher video player as a continuous stream of images and sounds.The player is the interface between the video content and the end user, running the ad and communicating with the page.
It also has the ability to pass user data, record engagement information, and coordinate with content on the page to run companion ads.Additionally, the video ad can interact with the video player, ad server, and ad source.
A video ad server will deliver an ad response that has multiple formats for the ad creative.It is important that the video player technology can determine the most appropriate format to play and has the ability to render that ad.
The player should choose a creative file size based on the user’s available bandwidth to ensure a quality user experience, especially on mobile.
While the video ad is playing, the player technology is responsible for requesting tracking pixels to capture impressions served, time spent, and various other important events.Once the ad has finished playing, a video player must be able to seamlessly transition to playing the content the viewer was expecting to see in the first place.This content can be anything from a video stream to a video-on-demand asset that is hosted on a CDN or is syndicated.[17] Just like the ad, the video player requests the content file and makes decisions on the files to be played.When the content ends, a video player can provide recommendations targeted towards the user’s ad preferences.This is usually provided as a service from vendors and can be turned on from a video content management system (CMS), or by adding additional scripts to the page.
Advanced video players are not only able to identify the absence of creative, but can also add an additional layer of optimization that maximizes yield and fill rate.
An optimized video player not only reduces the risk of a creative not showing, it also helps to maximize prices, drive publisher revenue growth by improving yield and fill rate update with ‘not showing’, and create an optimization loop.Video Ad Server
An ad server is a web based tool used by publishers, networks, and advertisers to help with ad management, campaign management, and ad trafficking.
An ad server also provides reporting on ads served on the website.
There are numerous parties involved in digital video ad serving.Determining whether a party is first, third (or fourth) is based on the technical concept of internet delivery (and not who the party is), or who contracted with the party.First party, third party (and fourth party) essentially refers to the sequential number of internet round trips required to execute all elements of an ad delivery transaction, including calling to ad servers for delivery of creative assets, and calls to measurement providers.
IAB defines third-party ad servers as independent outsourced companies that specialize in managing, maintaining, serving, tracking, and analyzing the results of online ad campaigns.They deliver targeted advertising that can be tailored to a consumer’s declared or predicted characteristics or preferences.
Third-party ad servers can also be used for: Tracking/counting impressions Filtering for GIVT (general invalid traffic) Choosing the appropriate ad content for each site Reporting, verification, and auditing Creative rotation, frequency capping by and sequencing Targeting Optimization Video Tags: VAST and VPAID
The video ad serving protocols VAST and VPAID may seem complex at first glance, but they are analogous to something familiar: The original VHS video tape format.In the early days of video cassette recorders, there were two competing tape formats: VHS and Beta.
A Beta cassette was smaller than VHS.Initially, movie companies had to manufacture and distribute two sets of cassettes for each format for the same movie.
The bifurcation was expensive, not scalable, and resulted in a fragmented industry.Ultimately, the consumer electronics and film industries picked one format as the standard: VHS (Video Home System).
The advertising and media industries faced a similarly fragmented landscape for the delivery of digital video content.Initially, publishers created their own custom implementations for video content and ad serving, making it un-scalable and expensive for advertisers.The industry needed a “create once, run everywhere” solution.In response, IAB developed a standard template for video players with protocols guiding actions when an ad is received and after the ad is played.VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) and VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition) advance the video advertising ecosystem by providing a standard interface between video players and ad units.
VAST, is a standard protocol or set of XML code used by advertisers to instruct their ads how to work with any VAST-compliant video player.
DVD was the next step in video playback standards, enabling users to skip different chapters, access bonus features, turn on subtitles, and change language settings.
This is analogous to functionality added by VPAID, or Video Player Ad Interface Definition.Advertisers can, through standard VPAID functionality, program interactive features into ads, such as sharing ads through social media channels, enabling user registration within the video ad, inserting a survey, and more.Just as in VHS, where it wasn’t able to handle interactivity as DVDs were, VAST too was not equipped to handle the more complex communication with the video player.Therefore, IAB built upon VAST to create a standard called VPAID that supports greater interactivity.
Layering VPAID onto VAST offers an enhanced solution.
It enables the executable ad unit to expect and rely upon a common set of interactive functionalities from the video player.This is significant as advertisers using VPAID ads can provide rich ad experiences for viewers and collect ad playback and interaction details that are just as rich as the ad experience.With VAST and VPAID both being utilized widely, it is common to assume that a video player is both VAST and VPAID compliant.The reality is most players are VAST compliant and some are also VPAID compliant, but it is not safe to assume that every VAST compliant player also supports VPAID, especially in the mobile world.Broadly speaking when an ad request is made from a video player for a video ad, information about which protocols are supported are passed with the ad request, informing advertisers of the type of ad the player can support.Without this information, the assumption is that the video player does not support VAST or VPAID.
It is important that advertisers understand the requirements of the standards to which they’re building creative assets as it impacts the potential audience they can reach.
Simply put, in the same way that video playback standards have evolved from the early days of VHS to support greater interactivity and scale, so too have VAST and VPAID standards, supporting more complex forms of video advertising and engagement.Evolution of IAB Video Standards
Video advertisers have two important execution goals for the delivery of their video ad campaigns: to provide viewers with a rich ad experience, and to capture ad playback and user-interaction details that report on the viewed ad experience.To achieve these goals in a world without common video player functionality, advertisers would have to develop multiple specialized versions of their ad creative for every unique video player—an expensive proposition that doesn’t scale well.
VAST kick-started an industry-wide standard solution to these issues in 2008, and IAB has since released several new versions of VAST, VPAID, VMAP , OpenRTB and DAAST .
The latest update to the VAST standard was VAST 4.0, released in 2016, aims to ensure smooth communication between video players and ad servers by making multiple improvements in delivery and measurement.A list of the main updates and challenges are summarized on the adjacent graphic.VAST 4.0 enables advertisers to send variants of a creative file, from high quality mezzanine files (viewable by high-resolution TV screens) to standard MP4 and interactive (VPAID) ads.
With this update the video creative file is handled separately from the interactive API (Application Programming Interface) file, so publishers across multiple platforms can now choose the right format of ad on the fly to deliver to the right device and application.
The focus of this new update has been on improving the quality of video ads by adding support for features like Server Side Ad Insertion, Mezzanine file support, and “UniversalAdId,” which is used to provide a unique creative identifier that is maintained and tracked across all systems.As part of the VAST 4.0 requirement for the UniversalAdId, Ad-ID is considered the registration authority for advertising in the United States.
Using the UniversalAdId feature as the creative identifier ensures that an individual video ad will have a single unique identifier across publishers and campaigns.Having a unique identifier creates efficiencies in workflows and allows the creative to be consistently tracked by enabling all data associated with the creative to follow it across systems.Tracking the creative streamlines data collection and provides more accurate reporting and “real-time” measurement when running cross-platform campaigns.
The UniversalAdId can also be used for identifying and tracking ads in ad-stitching processes.
To find out more about Ad-ID please go to the following link .
For a list of the benefits of using Ad-ID for advertisers, agencies, media and vendors, please access the following link .With VPAID, IAB aims to address the following market inefficiencies for publishers, advertisers, and vendors: Increase common video ad supply technology so that video publishers can readily accept video ad serving from agency ad servers and networks.Provide common technology specifications for advertisers to develop against, decrease the cost of creative production and increase business ROI.Improve video ad supply liquidity as cost of integration decreases.
VPAID was originally developed to support interactivity in video ads but its use has evolved, and there have been issues with complexity.VPAID 3.0 is therefore being developed to provide better separation of media files from interactive creative and verification/viewability code, reducing implementation complexity while offering enhanced OTT/Smart TV support.
The Digital Video Technical Working Group within IAB Tech Lab is currently working on updates to VAST and VPAID.IAB Tech Lab members who would like to participate in the working groups should contact [email protected] For those interested in the latest on VAST/VPAID, please visit the recently recorded webinar: “VAST4 and Server Side Ad Insertion—Technology and Best Practices.”
To learn more about VAST & VPAID, please watch this short video on understanding IAB Digital Video Suite .Additional IAB Tech Lab resources of note for this section include:
The below table summarizes V-Suite functionality and the evolution of the standards:
This timeline shows the evolution of IAB video standards: Video Player Technologies
Until relatively recently, the predominant way to decode and render streamed or downloaded video files on the web was through a browser plugin (Flash player).Adobe released the first version of its Flash player in 1997.
There were other web-based players, but they required a full-blown software installation.The Flash player was both easy to install by the user, and frequently came pre-installed with browsers.
The emergence and penetration of mobile quickly flagged a need for an alternative: the HTML5 player.HTML5 offers critical benefits, studies show that on average, a Flash video will take up 17 percent more battery life than HTML5 video on a desktop and 12 percent more on a tablet.HTML5 is supported on all mobile devices, while Flash is not.
Developers prefer HTML5 since it does not have as many versions as Flash, and HTML5 allows for better user experience since it does not require the user to install a video player plugin.The HTML5 player comes as a native part of standard HTML code that the browser understands.Finally, unlike Flash, HTML5 technology utilizes the ubiquitous JavaScript scripting language.
So why is Flash still present? The Flash browser plug-in technology was released by Adobe in 1997, and was widely adopted long before work on the HTML5 standard had begun.While changes in technology are continuous (and often rapid), industries move more slowly, and so while HTML5 support for video within the browser has been available as a replacement for Flash for a while, some companies and agencies are still producing creative using Flash (despite the fact that browsers not longer support Flash).
For the sake of the consumer experience, it’s time everyone in the ecosystem stops using Flash and migrates to HTML5.Transitioning to another video player technology would mean requiring the conversion of millions of websites.HTML5 also allows video ads to be streamed in connected TV/Smart TV with built-in browser capabilities, while Flash doesn’t.Flash only supports flash proprietary video formats (.flv and .f4v).
HTML5 supports multiple video formats including popular formats such as mp4.
The following table provides a comparison of Flash and HTML5 technologies:
Technology Support
All of the major browser vendors have been announcing plans to restrict the use of Flash, and replace it with HTML5 as the default media playback option.Some of the changes announced have a direct impact on video ads and will require the video advertising community to move from Flash to HTML5/JS based technologies.
IAB Tech Lab has been working with members of the Digital Video Technical Working Group to determine the best approach for publishers and agencies to orchestrate this transition.
References to Flash in all IAB technical standards and guidelines (including VAST, VPAID, OpenRTB, Ad format guidelines) should be considered as “deprecated” as of January 2017.The goal has been the complete elimination of Flash video ads by July 2017.IAB has released checklists for agencies and publishers on how to transition to HTML5 .
Captions
Captions and accessibility for the hard of hearing are an important aspect of player technologies, especially with regard to publishers or broadcasters who need to be FCC (Federal Communications Commission) compliant.The basic formats are WebVTT, SRT, and DFXP.It’s also useful to know that captions can be used as separate text files and can be included in an HLS (Adaptive Bitrate) manifest.608 and 708 caption formats are also relevant, as they were/are standards for TV broadcasts.
To learn more about captions, visit Adobe’s “ Introduction to Closed Captions.Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management (DRM) is a systematic approach to copyright protection for digital media.The purpose of DRM is to prevent unauthorized redistribution of digital media and restrict the ways consumers can copy content they’ve purchased.
DRM products were developed in response to the rapid increase in online piracy of commercially marketed material, which proliferated through the widespread use of peer-to-peer file exchange programs.Typically, DRM is implemented by embedding code that prevents copying, specifies a time period in which the content can be accessed or limits the number of devices the media can be installed on.
DRM helps you protect your content.Some DRM providers of note are Apple FairPlay, Microsoft PlayReady, Google Widevine, the open Clear Key standard, and AES 128-bit encryption.Event Tracking
Improved user experience and effective targeting enabled through the use of data are critical qualities in an optimized ad campaign.In order to acquire reliable analytics on all activity generated by a campaign, event tracking is implemented.This table shows the commonly tracked events that appear either directly in the ad server, or third-party analytics tools.Some of these are specified and others are events that are fired by a rich-media (VPAID) creative itself.
User session related metrics (such as video view quartile tracking) is slowly beginning to take precedence over click-through rate (CTR) as one of the most valued metrics.Instead of simply tracking clicks on the ad, session based duration metrics measure the amount of user engagement generated by the impression.
While CTR is a performance metric that represents a clear one-to-one relationship between the ad being viewed and action being taken, engagement is becoming more desirable to advertisers in some cases as a way to assess their branding, and forge new relationships and connections with their audience.
The number of trackable events continues to grow as clients demand more ways to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns.Some more custom metrics are valuable to certain clients such as downloads, number of shares of a video, scroll tracking, conversions to a purchase, and number of interactions with a VPAID ad.
VAST Error Guide
Spearheaded by Rubicon project, together with JW Player, Brightcove, Radium One, The Trade Desk, publishers, and other DSPs, this group has put together a video creative troubleshooting guide.The goal is to create a repository to help solve the many video creative issues that plague the industry.
To access the VAST error guide, please visit IAB Tech Lab’s Video Tech FAQs .If you are interested in joining IAB Digital Video Technical task force, please contact Amit Shetty at [email protected] .Digital Video Container Format/Creative Format
Have you ever heard of rich media creative format, media files, video container format or streaming protocols and wondered what they were? Another important decision in the life cycle of a video ad is format: rich or non-rich media? Rich Media
Rich Media Creative formats: VPAID-js (.js) / MRAID (.js) / VPAID-flash (.swf) are like giving an artist a blank canvas and telling them to paint it however they want using whatever they want.
They could even paint a different picture for each user or interact with the user in other ways.If a creative is not rich media and there is nothing dynamic about the playback, the player will show every user the same thing.
Rich Media Creative format capabilities depend upon a player supporting their technologies.If the player doesn’t support VPAID or MRAID, it cannot play the files.
VPAID-js (.js) and MRAID (.js) require HTML5, whereas VPAID-flash (.swf) requires Flash.Media Files (.js) Similar to .swf, this is a JavaScript file.
This is the
With the migration to HTML5 .js VPAID will likely completely replace .swf VPAID.
Google provides additional details on Interactive Media Ads (IMA) Flash Software Development Kit (SDK) Version 3 .
On June 1, 2017, Google ceased support for the IMA SDK for Flash and Flash VPAID ads in the HTML5 SDK.We strongly encourage all publishers using the Flash SDK to migrate to the HTML5 SDK.
We also strongly encourage advertisers trafficking Flash VPAID ads to migrate those ads to JavaScript VPAID.Non-Rich Media
Non-rich media creative formats (solely video with no extra logic or functionality): Streaming Protocol (how the video is transmitted): HDS, HLS, MPEG-DASH, RTMP Streaming Protocols are often handled by the internal ActionScript or JavaScript of the player (developed by the player’s author), although in some cases Streaming Protocols can be handled directly by Flash or the browser (ex.MPEG-DASH) Non-streamed plain files over HTTP Video Container Format: The envelope and packaging that holds the video and audio when transmitted Examples: .flv, .mp4, .wmv, .mov, .webm (.flv): is the container format used by Flash, like .mp4 (.mp4): Type code: MPG4, File extension: mp4 is the container format used to store video (.wmv): Type code: ASF is Microsoft’s advanced systems format; video container format for streaming (.mov): Type code: MOOV is a multimedia file format for Apple’s QuickTime (.webm): Open graph video codec
For all videos (streamed and otherwise): Video Codec is the compression and encoding of the video; the “language” the video is written in:Sorenson Spark, On2 VP6/VP7/VP8, Google VP9, MPEG-4 H.263/H.264 Audio Codec is the compression and encoding of the audio; the “language” the audio is written in: AAC, MP3, Vorbis Video Container Formats and Video/Audio Codecs must either be supported by Flash or the browser to play
Here is a snippet from a VPAID-enabled VAST response showing the .js response type returned and .js response types returned (not based on real links).Most VAST responses in the industry today follow a similar format:
A player that supports VPAID will ‘in principle’ select either the .js or the .swf based upon whether or not Flash is installed or if the player prefers one type over the other.
This is the ideal goal but is not guaranteed.After it loads the appropriate file, it calls the VPAID unit method handshakeVersion () to determine the VPAID protocol version to use.
Both the player and the media file determine the highest version they both support, then use the VPAID interface to call back and forth to one-another to play a creative.Media format support is determined by the player at runtime based upon the browser/native device’s installed plugins or built-in media.As such, it’s not consistent even from one device to the next.
It’s worth noting that a VPAID-enabled creative does not, itself, have to play a video file.The VPAID creative could just be a wrapper with additional logic to make more VAST calls and load more VPAID wrappers until eventually a wrapper plays a creative.You can end up loading several VPAID wrappers before getting a creative.
Each wrapper is likely doing its own waterfall or bidding scheme to select what to play and what not to play.Each of these layers of wrappers takes a lot of time and network bandwidth, resulting in latency and high abandonment rates, which result in wasted impressions for the publisher and a poor user experience.
For more information on HTML5 codec/container support by browser, visit MDN’s “ Media formats supported by the HTML audio and video elements.” Adaptive Bitrate Support
Adaptive streaming is a technical process that adjusts the quality of a video delivered to the client/video player of a connected device based on changing network conditions, video buffer status, and CPU utilization to ensure the best possible viewer experience.The video quality is determined and set by real time detections of a user’s available bandwidth (throughput), video buffer capacity and CPU utilization.Based on these conditions the bit rate is adjusted in real time to ensure the best possible quality.
A simplistic example: “When you watch a movie that is streaming from your mobile device while travelling by train, network conditions are changing all the time.In order to ensure the best user experience, buffering and adaptive bitrate streaming occur.”
How? Adaptive bitrate streaming splits a video into multiple, separate video files with different bandwidth requirements and provides the ability to switch seamlessly between those different files during playback.
Normally, without adaptive bitrate streaming, when network congestion occurs and the video file cannot be delivered as quickly as is required to play it, playback of that video will work off of a buffer of the video that had been pre-loaded.When this buffer runs out, the player will pause while the player pre-loads a new “buffer” of content from which to play.With adaptive bitrate streaming, the player can start requesting a different video segment with either higher or lower bandwidth requirements to match conditions.This can avoid a rebuffering condition.
However, it is important to note that a rebuffering interruption can still occur even with adaptive bitrate streaming.For example, if the network drops out entirely (such as the train going through a tunnel) or if the network is slower than the lowest bitrate file that was encoded rebuffering will still occur.
Adaptive bitrate streaming enables the quality of the video to adjust on-the-fly without the interruption of having to pause the video and rebuffer a new video at a different quality.iFrames
An inline frame —more commonly known as an iFrame—is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document, like creating a box full of HTML code as its own compartment within a webpage.
Why are iFrames used?
Both publishers and advertisers may choose to have content served into an iFrame to avoid disruptive behavior and potential security risks in serving ads and other third-party content in line with the page.
Using an iFrame ensures that elements such as CSS styles[19] and JavaScript libraries of different versions don’t interfere with those being utilized by the ad.This prevents a collision between advertiser code and publisher code.
Depending upon the type of iFrame that is used, content can be completely sequestered within the iFrame and be unable to access information about the main HTML document within which it is embedded.This prevents an ad from doing things like expanding over the content of the page without permission, but it can also prevent the ad from interacting with the user in dynamic ways.Since this happens on both sides, the main publisher page is also prevented from accessing information inside the iFrame and the ad content within the iFrame cannot expand outside its borders, move around the page or slide into and out of view from the bottom of the page.This can also prevent collection of data that might be necessary to determine ad effectiveness, such as viewability.
Why do iFrames come into play even more with video?
Video represents some of the most complex interactivity on a webpage.
Therefore, to isolate each component as much as possible to simplify its implementation and maintenance, video is sometimes placed within an iFrame.Additionally, when rich media video advertisements are involved, such as VPAID or MRAID, the entire player may be wrapped within an iFrame to sequester any third-party code an advertisement may execute.
Types of iFrames
IAB defines two different types of iFrames: “ Friendly IFrame ” (FIF) and “ SafeFrame.” A FIF is typically used as a simple container in which to push HTML.A FIF allows full access to the parent page’s code.
This type of usage is only recommended where the publisher trusts the advertiser and vice-versa.
A SafeFrame is different in that it loads the frame’s content from a URL at a different domain from the parent page.This is referred to as “cross-domain iframe.” Doing this makes the browser block access to the parent page by the code in the frame.Likewise, it blocks the parent page from accessing the frame’s code.
Additionally, a technology called cross-document messaging allows both the parent page and the SafeFrame’s code to communicate on a limited basis.Without the SafeFrame specification, a standard cross-domain iFrame has no communication.The Player Home-Built vs.Third-Party Video Player Companies
Players can be home-built by digital content providers (i.e.Hulu) or provided by third party companies such as Brightcove, JW Player, and Ooyala.In both cases, the player provides the controls for the consumer to manage the video experience (i.e.
play/pause, full screen, closed captions, etc.).It also must make run-time decisions about the environment it sits within (i.e.web vs.mobile browser, mobile apps, smart TVs), and determine what’s possible and optimal given the capabilities or limitations of any given environment (i.e.
small screen size, Flash is disabled, device is Dolby 5.1 audio capable).
The player must then render the video content the best it can, performing an ongoing balance of providing the best video quality possible for a given (and often changing) network connection speed (adaptive bitrate streaming) without forcing the viewer to wait (video buffering).
Finally, it must seamlessly fetch and serve ads when and where desired by the content publisher, typically as pre-roll, mid-roll and/or post-roll videos.Player Impact on Ad Playback
When it comes to actually displaying an ad, several variables are taken into account.Standard VAST linear ads interrupt content playback.
Interactive Media Ads (IMA) HTML5 SDK renders VPAID creatives in a cross-domain iFrame by default, which limits VPAID creatives access to the page DOM.As a result, some creatives may not work properly.Most VPAID ads expect friendly iframe access to the page DOM in order to work properly.
Additionally, the IMA SDK team calls out standard vs.
custom ad playback and the pros and cons of each in a recent blog post.Standard Rendering
If you’re using the HTML5 SDK you probably have a web page playing your content in a
In standard rendering, the SDK will create another
If you’re playing a pre-roll, you can start loading your content when the ad starts and buffer the content the whole time the ad is playing.For mid-rolls, the separate player allows you to preserve your content buffer while ads are playing; if your viewer has buffered ten minutes of your content, and you play an ad at the five-minute mark, they won’t lose the content in the buffer for 00:05:00-00:10:00.
Custom Ad Playback
Per Google, the recommendation is to always pass your content video element as the custom playback element.The HTML5 SDK will intelligently use custom ad playback only when it deems necessary, as described below.
When it’s not necessary, it will use standard ad playback.
When the SDK decides to use custom playback mode, it renders video ads in the same player as your content.This means you lose the buffer-related benefits of standard rendering.If your viewer has buffered 10 minutes of your content, and you play an ad at the 5-minute mark, they will lose the content in the buffer beyond the ad.Certain ad formats (such as AdSense) require an SDK-owned player and can’t play in your content player.
So then why use custom ad playback? Simply put, some platforms do not support multiple, simultaneous, active video elements.On those platforms, the SDK can’t create its own ad player because the one allotted video player slot per page is already occupied by your content player.
If the SDK tries to play an ad in a second video player, it will either fail to play (freezing the player) or make it impossible for the content to restart after the ad is finished (again freezing the player).Thus we must show the ad and video content in the same player.Custom ad playback is sometimes referred to as single player ad-serving.
For client-side ad insertion (CSAI), single-player opportunities typically exist where the content publisher also controls the ad inventory all within a common infrastructure.This provides more direct-control of the end-to-end consumer viewing experience by a single entity, reducing a lot of the variables that can impact the viewing experience quality related to ads.The ads and main content can operate through a common CDN.The ads can be processed and streamed in identical formats compared to the main content, and there are fewer network hops and less run-time logic compared to automated ad scenarios.
Another single-player scenario is with server-side ad insertion (SSAI).With SSAI, the ads are stitched into the same stream as the main content, and continuously played through by a common player.
There’s no need for the player to pause and either hand-off playback to another player for ads or switch streams in the single-player CSAI scenario.SSAI has the significant advantage in that it’s impervious to ad blockers (the main video content and ads look the same to ad blockers), and there are few variables that can degrade the user-experience during ad transitions.SSAI can also be particularly attractive in low- bandwidth environments such as 2G or 3G mobile networks, as it can achieve much higher fill-rates due to eliminating ad timeouts commonly seen with CSAI under these environmental conditions.The downside of SSAI includes limitations on supported ad formats (e.g.SSAI typically cannot support interactive ad formats, such as VPAID) and that ad analytics are built around CSAI and don’t work as well with SSAI.Ad Playback Capabilities and Limitations
Because of the different technologies involved with browsers, video players and ad creatives, certain combinations can’t be supported.For example, given VPAID ads’ interaction with the player, Flash (.swf) VPAIDs typically don’t work with HTML5 players.
Workarounds exist, such as the above-mentioned IMA situation where a second video player is layered on top of the base player.
This allows the primary player to be HTML5 with the player on top to use Flash and successfully play a Flash VPAID, including use of the interactive functionality.
Latency can also impact ad playback.
Latency is the delay between request and display of content and an ad.Latency sometimes leads to the user leaving the site prior to the opportunity to see.
In streaming media, latency can create stream degradation if it causes the packets—which must be received and played in order—to arrive out of order.Typically, the balance between latency, time to first frame, ad timeouts, and other functionality on the page including tracking and analytics is one that anyone employing a video player with ads must focus on to ensure optimal viewer experience.Lightweight and otherwise performance-focused players aim to ensure ad playback is not impacted by these other variables.
Ad pods are another scenario where the player can impact ad playback.
When electing to play a Pod of ads returned by the ad server, the video player should play the ads in the Pod in the prescribed sequence and should play as many of the ads as possible.The player may elect not to play all of the ads (truncating the Pod from the end) if either, the ads cannot be played because they cannot physically fit into the stream (such as when time is limited in a live stream) or if the entire Pod of ads returned by the ad server violated any limits specified by the calling video player (i.e.number of ads to return, or maximum Pod duration).
When an Ad Pod is the result of following a VAST
When selecting an ad server, we recommend that you have these minimum requirements: MRC accreditation Ability to support all IAB recommended tag types (VAST, VPAID, etc.) Easy integration with your video player, or ability to create integration Support IAB specifications for ad units (including companion ads) per the guidelines issued in IAB New Ad Portfolio Be able to deliver across multiple platforms (mobile, desktop, etc.) with on-the-fly transcoding to customize video assets to inventory requirements
Ideally, your ad server should also be able to offer customizable and near real-time reports that are easy to read, include geo-targeting capabilities, thorough vetting of the vendors they serve, and allow for flexible setups to customize across sites.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) Cross-Platform Capabilities
Planning for cross-platform compatibility is a mission-critical sill in digital video advertising.If your video use case requires DRM and you know the budget and time investment involved, understanding the support in various browsers is critical.Most DRM technologies are proprietary and are only supported on Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)-specific products.For example, Apple FairPlay is only compatible with Apple’s Safari web browser and other Apple products.
Here is a list of DRM technologies that are supported and which browsers support them (used with permission from JW Player ).
Audience, Data, and Measurement
Previous chapters documented the media planning process which involves selecting where to advertise and when to use specific media vehicles (the right timing) to deliver a message in order to reach and engage a target audience.
This chapter will focus on audience, data, and measurement, including different methods of collecting, analyzing, and utilizing audience data.It examines Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics such as reach, frequency, and engagement, and also highlights the importance of verification data in validating these metrics.Introduction: The Centrality of Data
In the “Mad Men” era of advertising, data owed in a linear and highly front-loaded process.Data on how to effectively reach a particular target audience was based on research about the target consumer, then passed to a communications’ strategy team within an agency.From there it was sent to a creative agency to devise the “big idea,” which in turn informed the media plan and campaign.
In today’s world, decision-making is based upon a much more decentralized flow of data, originating in the media platform and going to various teams in no particular order.Such data informs all steps in the advertising process, and includes: Age, gender, and behavioral characteristics Geo, time of day, day of week analysis Media consumption patterns Sequential messaging analysis Audience segments[20]
These ever-evolving techniques and technologies are enhancing opportunities for accurate campaign targeting and measurement to improve both advertiser ROI and publisher yields.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and post-campaign analysis rely on data.Media platforms must source data points against contextual, geographic, device, browser, time of day, day of week, and reach/frequency signals for marketers to confirm positive return on investment (ROI) and accurate measurement.
Additional information on this section can be found in “ IAB Programmatic Video: A Spectrum of Automation.” Common Video Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Metrics
Unlike other formats, video advertising as a branding format, shouldn’t be solely assessed by performance metrics such as clicks (CTR), but rather, the users’ engagement and attention throughout streamed content.
The most common KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), or metrics identified as a core means of tracking performance, may include impressions, completion rate, viewable completed rate, completed view, reach & frequency, total unduplicated reach, brand lift, engagement, and attention.
The initial delivery of a video ad impression is typically a core metric and a minimum input or precursor to viewability measurement and metrics.
As defined in the version 1.1 draft of the IAB / MRC Digital Video Impression Measurement Guidelines (currently in public comment) “Digital Video Ads” which appear before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), and after (post-roll) content, are counted as the “measurement of responses from an ad delivery system to an ad request from the user’s browser, which is filtered for invalid traffic and is recorded at a point as late as possible in the process of delivery of the creative material to the user’s browser.The ad must be loaded and at minimum begin to render in order to count it as a valid ad impression.”
KPIs are measurable performance metrics that allow marketers and agencies to work towards a common goal.
A campaign can be sold against a number of KPIs.
In TV, the most common KPIs are achieving a certain Gross Rating Point (GRP), reach, or frequency.In digital video advertising, the abundance of data allows campaigns to measure a wider variety of KPIs, including a specific target audience, verified ratings delivery, viewability rates, and/or other criteria.Brand advertisers also need brand and sales metrics such as brand awareness, brand consideration, and offline sales to be available to them.KPIs vs.
Secondary/Tertiary Metrics
Today’s technology allows us to slice and dice data in many ways.Video campaigns are typically measured by selecting various KPIs usually staggered by priority.If using a platform, the machine learning algorithm will optimize the campaign according to the primary KPI first and then apply logic for the subsequent ones.
If the campaign is not pacing for delivery, the account manager can tweak certain levers in the platform to relax certain parameters in order to achieve the desired outcome.
Reach & Frequency
Reach and frequency are terms generally used when planning and analyzing advertising campaigns; along with GRP, they are the two most commonly used metrics to assess TV advertising effectiveness.Understanding these metrics will help you achieve your short- and long-term advertising goals.
Reach is the percentage of targets who are exposed to your media at least once during a predetermined period of time.To properly determine reach, you need to define who your target audience is.Reach isn’t a percentage of total customers, but rather a percentage of a specified audience.For example, you may want to reach car owners in a particular metropolitan area or within a certain demographic.You will determine how many people you want to connect to within this audience and calculate the reach of your campaign as a percentage of that.
Measuring audience reach quantifies the number of people that visit a site—either directly or indirectly.These measurements are called “uniques” and play an important role in marketing and decision-making.
The IAB Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines help to ensure companies audited for audience reach measurement are transparent and accountable especially as brands allocate more budget to online advertising.
To find out more about measurement of audience in browser or browser-equivalent based internet activity including any emerging technology that uses HTTP, please refer to the IAB Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines.
Evaluating Frequency
Frequency is the average number of times a household/uniques/users are exposed to your campaign over a set period of time.The real trick lies in understanding your campaign’s “optimal frequency” to achieve maximum effectiveness.In academic circles, the process for evaluating this is known as “frequency value planning.”
How Much is Enough in Ad Frequency? More than you think…
YuMe recently partnered with Kantar Millward Brown to understand the relationship between frequency, awareness, and persuasion metrics in video.According to their study: Regardless of frequency, video ad exposure leads to increases across all brand metrics (aided awareness, message association, brand favorability & purchase intent).While one video exposure is sufficient to trigger increases across all awareness metrics, multiple exposures garner higher awareness scores.Lower funnel metrics benefit most significantly after 8+ exposures.
Strongest gains emerge at 8+ exposures for 30 second ads and 15 second ads.15 second ads showed incremental growth in performance with increased exposures.For vertical videos purchase intent is increased by more exposures (8+).
Frequency Versus Reach: Which Matters Most?
Both reach and frequency are important to consider throughout the lifecycle of your campaign.The value you place on these metrics, however, depends on your goals and your product’s buying cycle.
Reach should be a high priority with a new campaign.If you’re promoting new products, packaging, or distribution, then reach is where you want to focus.Concentrating on reach is also more effective with a broad demographic.Frequency is a more important metric when facing stiff competition.
When you’re struggling to establish yourself as an industry leader with your targeted audience, frequency is your primary focus.Frequency is most important for a narrowly defined audience within a very specific demographic.
Total Unduplicated Reach & Frequency (TURF) Analysis
TURF refers to Total Unduplicated Reach & Frequency, a technique that allows you to assess which combination of ad campaigns will allow you to appeal to the greatest number of customers.It takes a step further than frequency analysis, which defines how often a user is exposed to an ad, or number of people it reached.Several companies in the space provide multi-platform reach and frequency services that deliver an unduplicated view of audience scale, ad frequency, and costs associated with a single, multi-platform campaign.Engagement/Attention
Engagement metrics for digital video can vary based on type of ad, device, campaign goal and advertising category.It is not a single concept, but a spectrum of interconnected dynamics that will ultimately have a positive impact on the consumer-brand connection.
Engagement assumes active participation, but does not necessarily require an action; engagement may describe a cognitive or emotional connection, in addition to or instead of a physical one.Although it is assumed to be a prerequisite to advertising effectiveness, it does not, in and of itself, always result in tangible, immediate effectiveness.This definition communicates that engagement is a “push/pull” process.
The “push” is the advertising itself, dependent on both the media platform and, critically, the creative execution and brand storytelling.The “pull” is the consumer who is aware of, spending time with, and internalizing that advertising.
Engagement can include any of the following: Ad/Campaign Awareness Attribute Recall Change in Message/Attribute Recall and Association
The Media Ratings Council (MRC) is currently engaged in iterating through the final phases of 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense) including drafting Engagement Standards.Such efforts will leverage the existing research such as the IAB Engagement whitepaper: Defining and Measuring Digital Ad Engagement in a Cross-Platform World .
Completion Rate/Completed Views
A critical function of the video player, when requesting and displaying VAST ads from ad servers, is to send tracking information back to the ad server(s) exactly as specified in the VAST document.Failure to send accurate tracking data renders inconsistent results between the video player and ad server counts.
“Complete” is a tracking event type in the VAST standard that signifies the creative was played to the end at normal speed ensuring 100% of the creative was played.
When the video player detects that a completion event occurs, the video player is required to trigger the tracking Uniform Resource identifier[21] (URI) provided in the VAST tag.When the server receives this request, it records the event and the time it occurred.
Completion rate is a more widely used measurement of consumer attention and interest in a brand’s message.For more information please refer to IAB VAST 4.0 and eMarketer’s Quantifying Digital Brand Ad Effectiveness .
Brand Lift, Awareness, Purchase Intent
Brand Lift refers to an increase in a user’s interaction with a particular brand as a result of an ad campaign.It is the measurable difference in a specific KPI metric over a set period of time.Brand awareness measures whether a consumer is familiar with a brand.
Brand awareness studies enable advertisers to benchmark and track the effects of an advertising campaign on the percentage of the audience that is aware of the advertised brand and ad campaign.
Brand awareness measurements can be segmented into aided or unaided, whether mentioned in a set position (e.g.top three) or influenced by survey methodology.Differences in pre- and post-metrics should be significance tested, ideally at a 95 percent confidence interval.For recall, the time between exposure and the survey should be noted, i.e.
immediately after exposure, within one hour, same day, etc.Note that high brand awareness is not always a positive outcome, as consumers can be aware of a brand, but have a negative opinion of it, due to scandal or negative news stories, e.g.Exxon Valdez oil spill, Tylenol scare, etc.
Brand lift surveys will usually measure the pre-post delta (change) in brand awareness, purchase intent, consideration, favorability, perception, and recall.
Brand lift surveys allow marketers to quantify the behavioral impact of their digital ad campaigns on brand measures such as purchase consideration and favorability.These surveys can be deployed directly within a digital video player, a companion banner on a website or within an online consumer panel.Brand lift surveys ask a standard set of questions aimed at measuring ad recall, brand awareness, message association, purchase consideration, and brand favorability.These measurements allow for pre- and post-campaign analysis that will indicate brand lift.
Brand lift could include a quantifiable positive change in message and attribute association; change in brand recognition or familiarity; and change in purchase consideration.Brand lift could also include a quantifiable positive change in brand perception, favorability, and loyalty.
MRC is currently engaged in iterating the Ad Effectiveness Standards as the nal phase of 3MS .[22] To learn about the mission of Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS), read this 3MS primer on this important industry initiative.
CTR CTR (“click-through rate”) is the percentage of users who clicked an ad relative to the total number of users who were exposed to the ad.
CTR is calculated as clicks divided by impressions.“Click” or “click-through” is a user-initiated action on an ad element, usually causing an HTTP 302 redirect to another web location.This thereby transfers the user from a publisher site to an advertiser site.Additionally, internet-based search activity or shopping activity can lead to click-through transactions on search results or other content sites that display ad impressions.This can similarly result in redirects to other web locations, such as an advertiser site.
When measuring clicks, the actions should be filtered to account for invalid traffic and click activity in accordance with the provisions of the guidelines linked above.Video click-through occurs when a user clicks a pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad that plays within an online video.
MRC’s effort along with the modernizing measurement task force (MMTF) are updating the existing IAB Click Measurement Guidelines .
IAB members interested in participating in this task force may contact Ilham Elkatani at [email protected] The Role of Data to Validate KPI Metrics
Data plays an integral role in validating the objectives set for the campaign and advertising effectiveness.According to the 2016 IAB NewFronts Video Ad Spend Report, advertisers use multiple data sources to optimize their digital video buys.
Viewability and verification are two metrics that are widely adopted in the video advertisement space.For digital ads to make an impact, they have to be viewed, not just served, by a human being in an advertisement safe environment.
As digital advertising becomes more sophisticated, advertisers want to not only prove ROI, they also want to transact on viewability.In addition, it’s more important than ever to ensure your advertising appears alongside content that is brand safe and free of fraud.Viewability
A viewable video impression is a desktop video ad or mobile video ad where there’s an opportunity to see an ad, if fifty percent or more of the ad is visible for two seconds or more.See the list of MRC accredited vendors for viewable video ad impressions as well as the MRC’s Digital Landscape Chart .
According to the latest report from IAS Viewability: The Essentials , an ad would not be viewable for the following possible reasons: Ad loads in an area outside of the consumer’s browser Multiple ads are stacked on top of each other (ad stacking) Multiple ads are stuffed within the same pixel (pixel stuffing) Pages are frequently refreshed
From a consumer point of view, IAS research indicates that an ad would not be viewable due to the following reasons: A consumer takes an action before the ad can load Takes an action before the minimum requirement is met Minimizesbrowser Opens multiple tabs, and the ad is displayed in a tab that’s not currently open Isn’t a real person
In December 2016, IAS surveyed over 1,000 digital advertising professionals across ad tech companies, agencies, brands, and publishers, about 2016 trends and where they see digital advertising heading in 2017.[23] Viewability and ad fraud were the two most important aspects in media qualities for both publishers and agencies.Verification (Brand Safety, Fraud)
Ad verification is a process which attempts to verify that one or more attributes of a served online ad have been executed in a manner consistent with the terms specified by the advertiser or agency and agreed to as part of the ad campaign terms.
Ad verification is often leveraged for brand safety.
The goal of brand safety is to ensure an ad will not appear in a context that can damage the advertiser’s brand, minimizing the risk of media delivery against placements that have been deemed questionable or off-brand.
Advertisers have defined two types of content that fall under brand safety: objectionable content such as adult content, and content that falls under the specific brands or legal (i.e.natural disasters, opinion content, competitors, etc.).
Five pr.
