HTML5 Video Ads: Coming To a Mobile Device Near You
by Pablo Schklowsky on February 21, 2012
As HTML5 grows its share of the online video market, web video publishers are beginning to look for ways to monetize videos being played outside of the traditional Flash advertising methods. But when someone watches a video in HTML5 mode, what should that experience be like? What's possible, given the current state of the tech?
HTML5: Desktop vs. Mobile
Before we begin talking about the challenges that face HTML5 video ads, it's valuable to acknowledge that video in HTML5 can behave very differently on the desktop compared to the same HTML code running on mobile devices. Here are some of the primary differences:
| HTML5 Desktop | HTML5 Smartphone | HTML5 Tablet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clickable Overlays | Yes | No | Depends* |
| Clickable Video | Yes | No | Depends* |
| Companion Ads | Yes | Not visible | Yes |
| Fullscreen mode | Optional | Always | Optional |
| Customizable controls | Yes | No | Yes |
| Available Bandwidth (probable) | LAN/WAN | 3G/4G/WAN | 3G/4G/WAN |
* Platform-specific
As you can see from the table above, some concepts that advertisers take for granted, such as video ads which cause a web page to be displayed when clicked, are not possible on smartphones. For example, on most mobile devices, once an HTML5 video begins playing, whether it's an ad or not, the phone will enter fullscreen video playback mode. In this mode, the user has full control over the playing video, including the ability to seek to the end of it.
Technical Challenges
As the major ad networks are beginning to offer support for HTML5 video ads, they face several important challenges.
Video Codec Incompatibility (WebM vs. MP4)
One issue which HTML5 video publishers are already familiar with is that to support all platforms, video must be encoded into multiple formats — WebM (or Ogg Theora) for Firefox, and H.264 for everything else. Second, someone (whether the browser, ad network, video player, or publisher) will need to select the appropriate format and display it to the user. This can be difficult to implement in an ad scenario, especially if ad networks don't account for the user's browser when generating an ad response.
Crossdomain Issues
An additional technical concern is that loading external assets (a VAST XML response from an ad server, for example) brings with it certain restrictions in JavaScript. These restrictions need to be worked around on the server hosting those assets.
<Video> Tag Access
Depending on the implementation, most ad networks require direct access to the player's <video> tag in order to play an ad in HTML5. This makes sense, considering that in iOS, each distinct <video> tag placed on a page needs to be clicked by the user in order for the video to be played. If the ad were to be played in a new <video> tag which was placed on top of the player, the user would need to click "play" twice - once for the ad and another time to watch the main video. This presents some interesting problems. While the ad is playing, the player needs to treat the events flowing from the <video> tag differently than if the main video were playing. After the ad has played, the video tag needs to be restored to its original state (the video playing, its position, etc).
Industry Roundup
Considering the relative newness of HTML5 video (and the challenges listed above), it's unsurprising that not many video ad networks have implemented full HTML5 support yet. That being said, there are a few ad networks who have made some progress on this front:
- Google recently released HTML5 support in their Interactive Media Ads (IMA) product. This implementation allows publishers to set up VAST ads, with certain limitations based on device compatibility. The JW Player's Google IMA Plugin includes beta support for HTML5 mode.
- YuMe has been steadily improving their HTML5 support, which is now supported in the JW Player's HTML5 mode via the YuMe plugin.
- Most other video ad networks (Tremor, SpotXchange, BrightRoll, and others) have either announced, or are currently implementing support for mobile devices, which will mean HTML5-compatible ad media.
Future Considerations
As in Flash, as more publishers attempt to handle more sophisticated scenarios, new techniques must be devised to handle them. Dynamic bitrate switching, for example, allows publishers make on-the-fly optimizations for video ads based on screen resolution and available bandwidth. Apple HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) is on its way to becoming the standard streaming format on mobile devices — with competition coming in the form of MPEG DASH, which was ratified as an ISO standard last week. Both HLS and DASH are based around the idea of a manifest file, which keeps track of smaller chunks of video that can be stitched together into a single seamless video. To insert an ad into this stream can be as simple as adding the ad chunks inside of the manifest file at the appropriate times, a technique known as dynamic ad insertion. A more general optmization we'll be moving towards is ad delivery which is optimized for variable-bandwidth environments, as many mobile users are viewing content over slower wireless networks.
In short, we're still a long way from having a turnkey video advertising solution for all HTML5 viewers, but we're closer than ever before to achieving that goal.
Using Closed Captions for Online Video
by Meagan Palatino on February 13, 2012
Web video accessibility is a broad term that refers to making videos usable for all types of viewers. Traditionally, it refers to those with impairments, but more recently the definition has broadened. At LongTail Video, we feel strongly about creating the means of equal access to online video content. By building products that support features such as multi-language video captions, we aim to increase viewer accessibility. Though there are many pieces to making a video fully accessible, in this post we focus the discussion on closed captions.
Understanding Video Captions
Video captions are very similar to subtitles. The major difference is that captions describe all of the relevant audio detected in the video, whereas subtitles focus solely on the words spoken in the film. For example, if a phone is ringing in the background a caption will display something like, "the phone is ringing", and a subtitle will display nothing. Captions are "closed" when a user can toggle the captions on/off during video playback. Captions are "open" when they are burned directly into the video, which means they are displayed 100% of the time. Making sure your captions are closed is important - it allows you to support all types of users with the same piece of media, increasing both accessibility & inclusiveness.
The Current State of Video Captions
Captions have conventionally existed for television, but only more recently have been introduced into online video. Although The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) has established a set of guidelines known as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that provide a standardized and definitive set of rules for how to develop accessible online content, online video accessibility federal regulations are still in their infancy.
Since 2010, American accessibility advocates have urged Congress to modify an existing bill that would mandate captions for any online video that has also appeared on TV. Just last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released their final rules on closed captioning for IP-delivered video programming. Though only a small step towards a more universal regulation, it applies to all full-length video television programming in the United States, previously distributed with closed captions.
As closed-captioning of online video programming emerges, speed of adoption is key. Whitehouse.gov is an early adopter who uses the JW Player with our Captions Plugin to display their cataloged live broadcasting footage.
Hulu's CTO, Eric Feng quotes that “users send us feedback about closed captions more often than almost any other feature, so what started as a small side project has turned into a very important part of our user experience...”.
Video Captioning Tools
In our own product development at LongTail Video, we see similar requests, and have recently pushed two product updates for online video captioning:
- Bits on the Run Video Captioning - we now allow users to upload captions in the SRT and DFXP formats to the Bits on the Run Dashboard. Users can then publish their videos with closed captions for accessibility and Section 508 compliance. In addition, videos can now be published with multiple subtitle tracks, for viewers language selection.
- JW Player Captions Plugin for HTML5 - we recently updated our Captions Plugin to support both Flash and HTML5 mode. This means closed captions will now appear in both the Flash and HTML5 rendering mode for videos embedded with the Captions Plugin.
Aligning with the trends in industry, the tools in which closed captions are created have improved as well. Services such as Subtitle Workshop and Jubler are offline tools used to edit text-based subtitles, or in our case, closed captions. Online services that we recommend are Universal Subtitle and our partner, dotSUB.
Added Benefits of Video Captioning
What video publishers may not yet realize is that there is more to captioning videos than simply increasing accessibility among the hearing-impaired. In fact, there are quite a few side benefits such as:
- Mobile video - when users watch mobile video, sound is not always available, or loud enough.
- Language barriers - for non-native-language viewers, closed captions make it easier to follow the video.
- Search engine indexing - as quoted by Google: “When you start adding text to all of your videos, search is aided tremendously.” Textual descriptions of your video footage increase the accuracy of the content indexing.
- In-video search - with your text indexed, it becomes easy to implement an in-video search which allows a user to jump directly to a particular section within the video. Check out Hulu's implementation of their captions search feature.
As video captioning enters the HTML5 market, and standards are developed around the , captions will become even easier to publish.
With big names in video like Hulu and YouTube (where captions are included on all English-language videos uploaded after April 2010), putting emphasis on closed captions, we can be certain that the future will indeed be captioned. We encourage you, as a video publisher, to start experimenting with video captioning and create a workflow where closed captioning is a regular part of your video publishing process.
JW Player 5.9: HTML5 Now Default on Android
by Pablo Schklowsky on February 02, 2012
As we continue to bring HTML5 support in the JW Player closer to parity with Flash mode, we've focused the 5.9 release on a variety of HTML5 stability and user experience updates:
HTML5 is now the default playback mode on Android Devices
In early November, Adobe announced it would stop developing its Flash Player for Android devices. As a result we've decided to focus our energies on optimizing HTML5 support on Android rather on a legacy platform.
Cleaner User Interface (Especially on iOS devices)
We've taken a number of steps to clean up the way the player looks and behaves, focusing on iOS. Although they're subtle, we think you'll appreciate them. Among the improvements are:
- The preview image now fades in when player loads
- Video is not displayed until it is sized correctly and ready to play
- The buffering icon appears on the iPad while video is loading
Saved Volume in HTML5
One feature from Flash mode that you told us you wanted to see in HTML5 was the player's ability to keep track of the last volume level selected by the user. Now, if a user reloads a page, or goes to a different page on your site, the player will be set up with the same volume (or mute state) as the last time they set it. (Note: this won't work on iOS, since websites are not allowed to set the volume of those devices)
Download the JW Player 5.9
You can download the JW Player 5.9 for Flash and HTML5 here. As always, we would love to hear your feedback on the release. Just post your comments directly to this blog.
Check out our release notes for this version. For a complete list of the tickets addressed in JW Player 5.9, please visit our developer site.
Introducing The State of HTML5 Video Report
by Jeroen Wijering on January 26, 2012
Today we announced the public launch of our latest resource, The State of HTML5 Video Report. For two years our JW Player team has researched and monitored the evolution of HTML5 video capabilities so that we could effectively support it. Beyond our own products, we believe that the community at large will benefit from this work. We are extremely pleased to share our detailed research with the community.
We grouped our test results into the few topics we've found to be the most critical. Each section is fleshed out, and to the best of our ability accurately represents the state of HTML5 online video today - complete with our published test pages & results. The topics covered in the report include:
- Market Share of Browsers and Devices
- Media Formats
- Tag Attributes
- Fullscreen Playback
- Adaptive Streaming
- Accessibility
Get full access to the online report here. Each time we update the report, we will post a notification on our Facebook page, as well as on our Twitter account. Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay informed.
Whether you are well-acquainted with HTML5, or just getting started, the content presented in our report is an indispensable resource for tracking the progress of HTML5 video. As HTML5 video progresses, we will update and amend this report to accurately reflect the state of the industry.
We have already received such a great response from our community, and as always appreciate the support. In addition to the applause, we have also received valuable feedback from other HTML5 experts, and intend to edit the report where necessary.
The JW Player team will be participating in discussions with the community around HTML5 video. Visit us on Facebook to join the conversation.
2011: Year in Review
by Dave Otten, CEO on January 09, 2012
With 2011 behind us and beginning of 2012 well on its way, I thought that it would be a good time to share some of our progress over the past twelve months.
In short, 2011 was an amazing year for LongTail Video. We experienced incredible customer growth across all of our products (more on that below) and successfully released a number of fantastic new products and features. Here are a few of the highlights:
- Over 1.5M sites now actively use our products
- Launched HTML5 support in the JW Player
- Released our new content syndication product called LongTail.tv
- Introduced Bits on the Run Free accounts for our users
- Achieved positive net income and cash flow for the entire year
Of course, all of this could not have been possible without the ongoing support of our customers and community, which provide us with an invaluable feedback on what the market needs. Our entire team cannot thank you enough for all of your input.
Looking forward, we have several exciting product releases on the horizon that we think will further cement our position as the leading provider of affordable video tools for publishers seeking to manage and monetize their online video. We look forward to working with you to ensure that we are meeting your expectations.
Thanks again for your incredible support. Here’s to another great year in 2012!
Best Wishes,
Dave
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