IAB Updates Digital Video In-Stream Definitions As Market Grows

The digital video advertising market is expected to more than double by 2017 to $9 billion, according to eMarketer.  In response to this growth, for the first time since 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has updated its “Digital Video In-Stream Ad Metric Definitions” and released them today for public comment. The point is to get […]

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The digital video advertising market is expected to more than double by 2017 to $9 billion, according to eMarketer.  In response to this growth, for the first time since 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has updated its “Digital Video In-Stream Ad Metric Definitions” and released them today for public comment.

IAB Instream Video Ads

Source: IAB

The point is to get the industry stakeholders speaking the same language when discussing the process of serving in-stream digital video ads.

“Consensus on the language we use around ad measurement is the foundation for effective conversations between publishers, marketers, creatives and media buyers” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement, IAB. “These definitions bring the lexicon up to date with current video industry technology and industry usage.”

The substantive changes made include:

  • New Metrics Added
    • Ad expand/collapse – Refers to ad creative expansion behavior rather than expand/collapse metrics, which refer to player behavior.
    • Skip – Describes when a user intentionally skips a linear video ad by clicking a button or other control mechanism.
    • Other ad interaction – Catchall for additional ad interactions not mentioned in the document.
  • Out-of-date Metrics Removed
    • Non-overlay, nonlinear ads – No longer or rarely used in the marketplace. Companion ads can now be used to accommodate such use cases.
    • View – No longer used to measure video ads, as it is too easily confused with impressions. Technology vendors may use the “creative view” metric to track which video codec or technical version of an ad was played, but this refers to technical analysis and not measuring user engagement.
  • Additional Modifications
    • Distinguishing between player metrics and ad metrics to differentiate ad performance measurement from player interactions. While player interactions may still apply to ad performance, grouping them may improve ad/player performance analysis.
    • While expand/collapse still reference player behavior, it has been changed to “player expand” and “player collapse” for added clarity.

“The IAB is working to ensure this document is an important and valuable resource for all players in the digital video advertising space. With the industry and technologies evolving at such a rapid pace, it was necessary to update the document to define new metrics and clarify terminology, while removing points that are no longer relevant,” said Margenett Moore-Roberts, Senior Director, Video Advertising Strategy, Yahoo and co-Chair of the Digital Video In-Stream Metrics Working Group within the IAB Digital Video Committee.

 


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About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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