About the IAB Video Advertising Standards
The Digital Video Committee of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of over 180 members dedicated to the creation and execution of digital video advertising. One of the goals of the committee is to implement a comprehensive set of guidelines, measurement and creative options for interactive video advertising. A series of standards and guidelines have come out of the committee's work.
Two key standards for Open Video Ads are:
The VAST Standard supports two main types of Video Advertising:
- Linear video advertising, where the ad is presented before, in the middle of, or after the video and takes over the full view of the video (with optional companion banners)
- Non-Linear video advertising, where the ad runs parallel to the video content so the users see the ad and content simultaneously (with optional companion banners)
OVA supports both the VAST and VPAID standards. Linear Video advertising is either video (15, 30 second etc.) or interactive (flash) based advertising. Linear video advertising can be scheduled to occur before (pre), during (mid) or after (post) the main video stream. Non-linear video advertising occurs during the playback of a video stream.
Non-linear video advertising can take two forms - either overlay (displays within the player screen) or non-overlay (which displays in the immediate vicinity around the player screen) All forms of video advertising may support companion banners that are display ads shown on the web page around the player. The IAB has published a set of guidelines and best practices for video advertising that illustrate the various types of video advertising and how they are best deployed. It is worth reading this guideline to better visualize the type of advertising that the Open Video Ads supports out of the box. For detailed information on the work of the committee, and the VAST standard please refer to www.iab.net/vast