IAB Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines

Last week, the IAB released video ad format guidelines for publishers, advertisers, and agencies. Because video encompasses a lot, the scope of the guidelines only covers in-stream video. The formats outlined by the IAB are exactly what's needed for the industry and covers the highest priority areas in a sensible manner.

In-banner video is covered under rich media guidelines. The most important aspect there, as part of the user experience, is that audio is user-initiated. In-text video is a minimal part of the user experience. Standardization isn't an issue.

The next area of standardization for publishers for video is measurement of each of these video ads. The key is determination of a set of measures that would be standard campaign reporting. Many of these are already provided in-depth by rich media providers like Pointroll for their ad units. This needs to extend to the publisher and/or ad server side, in terms of what is provided to advertisers and agencies.

Video ad impressions should only count when associated with user-requested content. For in-stream video, these impressions correspond to a specific piece of user-requested video content (URL). As part of a standardized set of metrics, publishers need to provide the percentage of impressions with user-initiated audio for the ad unit (where applicable), a key measure of the campaign's engagement (or at least eye-catching ability). As for video that automatically plays when a page loads (think the front page of espn.go.com), the page was still user-requested. However, the video was not specifically user-requested. Hence, it ought to be considered less engaging to the viewer than if he/she had requested the piece of video content. The counter example to ESPN would be a video URL linked from the CNN front page on which a viewer clicks. Ultimately, though, this differentiation of value likely falls to advertisers and agencies to assess among various publishers.