IAB made an announcement that the specs for video would be changing. While VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition) was an answer when it came to rich media, it was learned that this particular tag had a lot of downfalls. There were some restrictions when it came to devices such as mobile. Despite so much mobile usage, it couldn’t serve on apps. Serving to OTT devices was impossible, too. Regardless of device, it often overloaded the publisher sites, which took more time for the video ad to load. In this Digiday article, an online video platform director estimated that it failed 25-30% of the time. Even if it loaded correctly, there were still hurdles when it came to tracking viewability accurately. Due to this, many creatives and media planners stuck to using VAST tags, despite it not supporting rich ads.

The two new sets of specifications should address these failures. With IAB’s Tech Lab Open Measurement Standard, it’s aiming to make one set of specs acceptable across the industry. This will help keep all vendors, sites and creators on the same page. This will be accomplished through a SDK (“OM SDK”). By using one standard SDK, viewability will be better measured as publishers won’t have to constantly update code.
The second set is designed specifically for OTT and rich ads (unofficially called “VPAID-i”). It will address the slow speed sites may encounter when try to load the video by pre-caching. It will also serve mobile and OTT devices, increasing inventory for these type of ad creatives.

These new updates will definitely improve measurability and interactivity. These changes are expected to roll-out in the upcoming months.