Operative Blog

Just like the mythological Pandora created by Zeus who unleashed untold “ills, toils and sickness” on mankind, many in the Ad Ops world are wondering if video advertising isn’t the modern-day equivalent. The story goes that the only thing remaining in the jar (Editor: yes, the ‘box’ was actually a ‘jar’) was Hope. Likewise, video advertising offers the potential for great pitfalls and great promise.

Toils

Make no mistake; it’s a tricky realm to navigate. Setting up video ad serving involves a lot of the same steps that a typical ad server implementation does, but it also adds extra layers of complexity that require knowing what a video player can handle. There are a plethora of options out there to consider when deciding who has the best product for your specific needs. DoubleClick’s rich media product and Brightcove’s video platform are some of the more popular ones we’ve seen our publisher clients use quite successfully. However, cost becomes a concern when you’re looking to get more bang for your CPM bucks.

Hope

Fortunately, publishers are not limited to outsourcing their video operations to third-party providers. Because Adobe Flash® has become the de facto standard for building video players (offering ease of use and flexibility), many are able to develop video solutions in-house that effectively satisfy their video advertising requirements. It all just comes down to the expertise of the developers and their knowledge of what needs to be handled in their players. Here are some important factors to consider:

1) Know what Flash can do for you – Flash is not limited to just serving video. You want to get a 300×250 companion ad working in your player? Flash can do it. Overlays popping up in the middle of video content? Flash can do it. A moving shot of you jumping off rooftops in the middle of the night in a black cape? Err… umm.

2) Know what method you wish to employ in video ads – JavaScript is the most common method due to its use of what’s called “Flash variables” that an ad server uses to pass values for a variety of video player assets. The player can then grab those values and render them for each ad call made. But a programming language called XML is rapidly gaining ground. XML, in a way, allows you to pre-define your own code templates for serving any different combinations of assets.

3) Know how much you want to track – It’s becoming standard to include three-point tracking into players. This allows a publisher and/or advertiser to track the beginning, middle, and end of when a video ad plays. Some have gone even further and track in quartiles. Information like this is valuable to a client who wants to know how much interaction a user is having with their ads.

4) Know your ad server – This stays true whether it’s in banner or video advertising. Clearly defining the ad server architecture that will allow for as much flexible targeting as possible is critical to a successful video integration.

Let’s be clear here – this in no way should discourage you from deploying a third-party video advertising solution; many of them are well proven and have a lot to offer in helping ensure a more captivating advertising experience. The number of options is continuously growing and demonstrates that we’ve come a long way since the original opening of Pandora’s video advertising box. Knowing your requirements and getting the right video expertise will guarantee more “promise” than “pitfalls” when building the best video solution.

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Blogged by Tim Robinson

Operative provides world-class video integration support through its Managed Services Ad Server Support team.  Tim Robinson manages this wildly band of ad serving gurus … they really do eat Javascript for breakfast.