The latest addition to the SpotX Publisher Platform represents a convergence of two significant AdTech industry trends.
Trend #1 – HTML5
For years now, we’ve been watching HTML5 gain significant ground on Flash. HTML5 offers more advanced technology that functions seamlessly across devices and web browsers without requiring users to install a plugin. While HTML5 technology may be better, the digital video advertising industry has a long-standing relationship with Adobe Flash. When VPAID emerged in 2009 offering rich ad experiences for viewers and ad playback and interaction details that extend far beyond VAST’s capabilities, the industry happily used Flash, which was required for VPAID 1.0.
A couple of years later, however, an official Occupy Flash movement began to “rid the world of the Flash Player plugin”. While there has been persistent chatter about the death of Flash over the years, the issue blew up last summer when a major Adobe Flash security vulnerability was discovered. Spyware company Hacking Team was compromised via the vulnerability, leading to 400GB of internal files, source code, and emails being made publicly available for download. This reignited the debate – which has continued well into 2016 with several companies including publishers and internet browsers pulling or limiting their support for Flash.
Trend #2 – Viewability
Viewability was one of the most discussed digital advertising topics of 2015 and continues to make headlines today. Making viewable ads the standard currency that advertisers and publishers transact on seems like a mission everyone could theoretically agree on. Advertisers throughout history have paid to have their ads displayed, whether we are talking about billboards or TV, but we all also know that the end goal is for them to be seen. If an ad has 0% chance of being seen, why should an advertiser pay for it?
In a world where viewability was a standard currency, advertisers would benefit from knowing that their ads are being seen and premium publishers would benefit as eliminating non-viewable ads would reduce the supply of ad inventory and thus raise the amount advertisers are willing to pay for a more scarce resource.
Introducing Viewability Targeting for HTML5 Inventory to the SpotX Publisher Platform
Last fall we introduced Viewability Reporting and Targeting to the Publisher Platform for Flash / VPAID=1 inventory. We’re excited to announce a major improvement to that core functionality by expanding these capabilities to VPAID=JS / HTML5 desktop and mobile web inventory.
Our Viewability Targeting technology empowers our Platform customers to optimize their inventory to meet the viewability demands of buyers. Using a proprietary algorithm, we predict viewability performance for inventory on a granular basis using recent historical data from Moat, a leading performance analytics company bringing intelligent insight. Publishers can rely on this predictive performance metric to set a minimum viewability target for new or existing campaigns. After a threshold is set, impressions will only serve on opportunities where the predicted viewability is at or above the set minimum viewability target.
Viewability is a complex issue and a difficult one to tackle. While there is no silver bullet, we’re excited to be part of the solution. By putting this robust technology in the hands of our publishers, we’re helping advertisers get their ads seen and allowing publishers to optimize their inventory and capture more buyers’ budgets as a result.
Insights from:
Leah Brite, Director, Product Marketing