Video / VAST Ad Serving

Video ads have proven themselves to be a highly effective advertising format. That's why it become so popular in recent years.

Adserver.Online is a Video Ad Server that provides all the necessary tools to serve and manage your video ads. Our platform utilizes the IAB standard for video advertising, VAST (Video Ad Serving Template), making it compatible with any video player that supports VAST.

What Is a VAST tag

A VAST tag is simply a URL. For example, https://srv.aso1.net/vast?z=34668

If you try to open a VAST tag URL in a browser directly, you will see an XML document and nothing else since a VAST tag is data only.

To make it work, configure your VAST tag in one of the VAST-compliant video players (see below).

Pre-roll, Mid-roll, and Post-roll Video Ad

Ads inserted into videos are classified into Pre-Roll, Mid-Roll, and Post-Roll ads based on their position or placement in the video, i.e., before, in the middle, or after the video completes playback.

However, the VAST standard itself doesn't care about it. Pre-roll, Mid-roll, and Post-roll are the subject of a video player configuration only.

That means a video player defines where and when your video ads will be shown, not the adserver.

When you don't have access to player configuration, VMAP tag can help you to specify ad positions if the video player supports VMAP specification.

3rd-party Video Ads Republishing

Adserver.Online simplifies the process of serving third-party video ads by allowing you to utilize VAST wrappers.

If you wish to republish third-party video ads, use the VAST / VAST Wrapper ad format. Configuration is easy. Only the 3rd-part VAST URL is required. Ensure that you specify a valid VAST URL. You can test it using one of the tools from the Troubleshooting section below.

To maximize revenue, specify multiple 3rd-party URLs in the Fallback URLs section. The system will use them if the primary URL returns no ads.

Ad Pods

VAST supports running multiple ads in sequence within an ad break. 

To enable multiple ads, you need to add "num=X" parameter to your VAST tag, where X is the number of ads to be included in a pod. The maximum number is 5.

For example, https://srv.aso1.net/vast?z=34668&num=2. This tag will respond with a pod containing two ads.

To avoid duplicated ads in a pod, you can use the noad=1 parameter in the tag URL—for example, https://srv.aso1.net/vast?z=34668&num=2&noad=1

VMAP

Our video ad server supports VMAP (Video Multiple Ad Playlist), which allows you to control the timing and scheduling of your VAST video ads by inserting ad breaks. Learn more on how to create a VMAP tag.

VPAID support

VPAID, which stands for Video Player Ad Interface Definition, is an established industry standard for interactive video advertisements that provide users with a highly engaging experience.

Adserver.Online offers a range of ad formats that work seamlessly with VPAID, including VAST / VPAID linear and VAST / VPAID nonlinear. With VPAID, you can publish advanced interactive ads (via HTML5 banners or arbitrary HTML/JS codes) directly to video players.

Companion Ad

A Companion ad runs along with a video ad (pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll) to provide a more integrated experience for viewers. Adserver.Online supports image banners as a companion for VAST liner ads.

Reporting and VAST events

Progress tracking (start, first quartile, mid-point, third quartile, complete) and other user actions (pause, resume, full-screen, mute, unmute) are available from the Reports/Video events menu. Besides, you can configure custom tracking pixels with your own events tracker.

Impressions and clicks are available in the Statistics report.

Promote YouTube/Twitch video as VPAID

Maximize your YouTube video exposure with our powerful ad promotion tools. We created scripts allowing you to promote YouTube/Twitch videos as VAST / VPAID ads. Learn more on how to configure.

VAST-Compliant Video Players

Adserver.Online does not provide a video player.

If you don't have a video player, you may use one of the commercial or open-source players available on the market—for example FluidPlayer, VideoJS, JWPlayer, or FlowPlayer.

Server-to-Server / InApp / CTV tag

We have a special tag for playing ads in a non-web environment. This tag can receive user-related data via URL parameters.

We call this tag – server tag. It's disabled by default.

Ask support for details.

Video Programmatic Advertising

Adserver.Online allows you to buy and sell video ads programmatically via OpenRTB protocol. Check out these articles to get more details.

If you want to buy video traffic using s2s/in-app tags, check out this article.

Google Ad Manager (GAM)

Our VAST tags are compatible with Google's GAM. To track clicks, you must add their click macro to our standard VAST URL as the following:

https://srv.aso1.net/vast?z=34668&redirector=%%CLICK_URL_ESC%%

Roku Advertising Integration

Roku is a popular streaming platform that lets you create a video channel and display ads from your advertisers and third-party sources on your own video ad server. Learn more about running your own Roku ad server

Video ads demo

https://adserver.online/demo/video

Troubleshooting

To check how your VAST ad looks, you may use these services: