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About OpenRTB

As specified by the IAB.

Real-time Bidding (RTB) is a way of transacting media that allows an individual ad impression to be put up for bid in real-time. This is done through a programmatic on-the-spot auction, which is similar to how financial markets operate. RTB allows for Addressable Advertising; the ability to serve ads to consumers directly based on their demographic, psychographic, or behavioral attributes.

The Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Project, formerly known as the OpenRTB Consortium, assembled technology leaders from both the Supply and Demand sides in November 2010 to develop a new API specification for companies interested in an open protocol for the automated trading of digital media across a broader range of platforms, devices, and advertising solutions. At the time Programmatic had only accounted for 4% of the display advertising market. By 2017, RTB is expected to account for 29% of the digital mix (source: eMarketer March 2013). This group continues to create open industry standards that ensure all parties, buy and sell side alike, can transact RTB at scale and build future industry innovation.

Historical Timeline

In reverse chronological order.

Open RTB

Open RTB 3.0 – Currently in beta, IAB estimated release date – end of 2018

OpenRTB 2.5, released January 2017

OpenRTB 2.4, released March 2016

OpenRTB 2.3.1, released June 2015

OpenRTB 2.3, released January 2015

OpenRTB 2.2.1, released July 2016

OpenRTB 2.2, released April 2014

OpenRTB 2.1, released October 2012

OpenRTB 2.0, released January 2012

 

Ads.Txt

Ads.TXT 1.01, released September 2017

 

Native

OpenRTB Dynamic Native Ads V1.2, released July 2017

OpenRTB Dynamic Native Ads API Specification Version 1.1, released March 2016

OpenRTB Dynamic Native Ads API Specification Version 1, released February 2015

Sources

• https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/OpenRTB-API-Specification-Version-2-5-FINAL.pdf
• https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project/
• https://digiday.com/marketing/what-is-rtb-3-0/

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

— Mark Twain

What is Bid Stacking?

Big stacking, or multi-bidding, is a bidding practice used by exchanges/DSPs in order to increase their chances of winning an impression. Instead of submitting a single bid for each single impression opportunity, some exchange/DSPs submit multiple bids to account for advertiser blocks, landing page blocks, etc. For exchanges, this can be particularly lucrative, as exchanges typically charge publishers a fee for each impression won.

Single vs. Multi-Bid Graphic

Single Bid Scenario

Multi-Bid Scenario

Images from Lift Letters.

Drawbacks

• DSP bids can be used against themselves.
• Longer processing time and cost for more bid signals.
• Unfair advantage compared to competitors.
• Overcharging publishers.

Potential Solution

Publishers can work around this practice by requesting log-level data from the exchanges. However, many vendors are unwilling to do this as they are concerned about security and privacy.

Sources

• https://digiday.com/media/wtf-what-is-bid-stacking/
• https://www.liftletters.com/all-letters/2018/9/14/dsps-and-multi-bid

I gravitate towards gravitas.

— Morgan Freeman

VPAID stands for Video Player Ad Interface Definition and was created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Unlike VAST, it is composed of Javascript code instead of XML. VPAID ads are generally found within VAST responses. VPAID was initially introduced to enhance VAST by allowing for interactivity and measurement on video ads, something that VAST was not yet capable of doing. Essentially, by adding VPAID capabilities to its video player, a publisher will be able to capitalize and a larger number of ad opportunities.

Sample VPAID JavaScript from medium.com.

Examples of VPAID Functionality

• User click leads to an overlay that gives information on the different options available for a certain product.
• User click leads to a photo gallery of different images on a certain product.
• Ability to skip a video ad after 5 seconds of viewing.
• User click leads to a dynamic landing page based on the user’s geographical location.

Benefits of VPAID

• Interactivity. This allows for viewers to do things such as clicking into an interactive video ad to learn more within the player, or for a different message to be shown depending on where the user is.
• Measurement. This allows for the tracking of important ad performance metrics such as viewability, video completion rate (VCR), and clickthrough rate (CTR).
• Wider selection of ad types. With more ad types available for monetization, there is more competition for the same video ad opportunity. The increased competition ultimately leads to increased revenue for publishers.

Drawbacks of VPAID

• Issues with mobile app. Whereas mobile web and desktop environments typically support Javascript which is needed for VPAID, mobile app developers must purposely integrate Javascript in order to support VPAID functionality. An app’s SDK or video player needs to be capable of rendering the VPAID ad and all associated measurement events, but many apps are properly built for that.
• Ad reselling. Some arbitrage-based ad networks will purchase premium publisher content in the hopes of reselling it for a profit, all without the publisher’s consent. If the ad network doesn’t find a buyer to resell the inventory to, it can even use VPAID opt-out to leave the publisher with unmonetized inventory. Not only does this decrease publisher revenue, but it also hurts the user experience by slowing down load times with additional auctions.
• Tracker overload. Although the measurability functionality introduced with VPAID allowed advertisers to track performance, some advertisers went overboard and inserted too many event trackers into the tag. This led to an increase in page load time and an overall less satisfying experience for the users.

Looking to the Future

The IAB has released VPAID-I, a new interactive spec that will give publishers more control over VPAID inventory. The IAB has also released the Open Measurement Interface Definition and the OM SDK as a new way to support viewability measurement. There are 3 distinct facets of video advertising that the IAB hopes will be widely adopted as time goes on:

• Delivery through VAST 4
• Interactivity through “VPAID-interactive*” and “VAST Interactive Templates”
• Verification through Open Measurement

Sources

• https://digiday.com/media/what-is-vpaid/
• https://medium.com/varrando/what-is-vast-and-vpaid-how-about-a-vast-vpaid-video-player-dc157004b61f
• https://blog.smaato.com/to-vpaid-or-not-to-vpaid-the-dilemma-of-video-advertising
• https://www.spotx.tv/resources/blog/product-pulse/in-defense-of-vpaid/
• https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/ads/making-mobile-vpaid-ads-mainstream/

 

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

— George Washington

Video Ad Serving Template, or VAST for short, is the video technology that standardizes video players and ad servers. This allows publishers to use different ad servers without having to make any modifications to their videos or video players. This effectively allows publishers to both scale and simplify their ad stack, resulting in more effective video ad monetization.

VAST utilizes extensible markup language (XML). Within this language, the video player can control many different aspects of the ad.

Functionalities of VAST

The VAST format allows video players to control a variety of different aspects of the video ad serving process. Among them include:

• Control which ad to play
• How long the ad should last
• How the ad should be displayed
• Whether ad is skippable or not
• Video ad interactivity
• Viewability measurement
• Ad stitching (bypass ad blockers)

VAST Versions

Differences Between Different VAST Versions – Parameter Difference

A table representation of the various VAST feature upgrades with each additional version of VAST, courtest of adtagmacros.com. Note that that each new version of VAST adds new features and is backwards compatible with all previous features. For example, VAST 3.0 has all the features of VAST 2.0 and VAST 1.0.

VAST 1.0 (2008, Deprecated)	New root node “VAST” Not Present	No Support for interactive MediaFiles ;	VASTAdTagURI was used for AdTag calling	Companion ads, Non-linear ads, and media delivery files are not supported
VAST 2.0 (2010)	Suppport Linear Ads (Pre,Mid, Post roll);	Suppport Non-Linear Ads Overlays Ads;	Support for companion Ads	Change VASTAdTagURL to VASTAdTagURI
VAST 3.0 (2012)	Allow Ad Pods	Support Skippable Ads	Define Passback Ads	New Event Tracking Added: Skip,Progress
VAST 4.0 (2016)	Ad Stiching (Insertion of Ad within the Content)	Support for conditional Ads	Suppport Ad Categories	Support For Mezzanine file and Server-side support:

A Note on VPAID

Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) allows for publishers and advertisers to both implement and measure more advanced features such as viewability and interactivity. VPAID was released with earlier versions of VAST, and filled the VAST gap to allow interactive video ads and additional measurement tactics for video players. Today, VAST 4.0 can actually provide many of the features that VPAID had done in the past. In an ideal world, everybody would use VAST 4.0. However, roadblocks such as a lack of awareness, lack of resources for implementation, and waiting for the other side to implement VAST 4.0 first all pose major challenges for this to happen.

New Features with VAST 4.0

Some new VAST 4.0 features explained below via IAB.

• Separate video file and interactive file: The complexity of digital video has given rise to the need to separate the linear video file from any creative interactive API files. While the VAST media file has accepted a variety of media files in the past, interactive APIs cannot always be executed. A VAST tag that provides the video file separate from APIs can display more successfully across platforms and devices.
• Server-side support: While client-side ad execution and tracking has been the recommended way to track ad impressions and other metrics, digital in-stream video ads are often served to devices (clients) that cannot execute and track ads using traditional display methods. VAST 4.0 supports the increasingly common “ad- stitching” method for stitching linear video ads into a video content stream and sending it to players with limited capabilities.
• Mezzanine file: To support advertising across video platforms that include long-form content and high-resolution screens, VAST 4.0 features include support for the raw, high-quality mezzanine file. The mezzanine file is very large and cannot be used for ad display, but ad-stitching services and other ad vendor use it to generate files at appropriate quality levels for the environment in which they play.
• Ready-to-serve files: Along with support for including the mezzanine file, VAST 4.0 provides guidance on providing three ready-to-serve video files, each at different quality levels, to ensure that a linear video ad can always play. The IAB Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines offers guidance on video file specifications for linear ads.
• Universal Ad ID: While VAST has offered a creative identifier in the past, it has been used inconsistently. The new Universal Ad ID feature is used specifically for including a creative identifier that is maintained across systems. The existing adId attribute for creative can still be used to log creative IDs specific to the server.
• Ad Verification and Viewability Execution: Verification vendors have been using VPAID for measurement verification instead of using it for ad interaction as VPAID was intended. VAST 4.0 offers a designated space for inserting ad verification APIs, enabling a more streamlined process for executing files strictly intended for ad verification. In addition, a secondary impression element, the <ViewableImpression> element, has been added to allow publishers the option to track viewability on their inventory.
• Support for categories: Ad categories help video publishers separate competing ad creative and improve brand safety. VAST 4.0 ad categories support these efforts.
• Conditional ad declaration: In programmatic environments, a VPAID unit is sometimes used to decide whether or not to place an ad. If this “conditional ad” never results in an ad to display, the publisher may have to forfeit any revenue from the resulting lost inventory. A declaration in VAST for a conditional ad helps publishers prevent and reclaim any potentially lost inventory revenue in programmatic ad delivery.
• New error codes: Along with support for the mezzanine file and other new features, added error codes provide additional troubleshooting support.
• Standardized time stamp: Trackers used in VAST often include timestamp macros, but its use has not been consistent. In VAST 4.0, the [TIMESTAMP] macro and the format for time has been standardized to enable more consistent time-sensitive tracking.

Sources

• https://www.totalmediasolutions.com/blog/vast-4-0-elephant-room/
• https://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-ad-serving-template-vast-4-0/
• https://digiday.com/media/what-is-vast/
• https://adtagmacros.com/difference-between-vast-2-0-and-vast-3-0-vast-4-0/

Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
–Walt Whitman

KPIs are indicators of how well companies are performing as compared to their business objectives. They can include numbers such as the yearly return-on-investment (ROI) or profit margin of an investment. KPIs can even be found in sports with common stats such as a player’s points per game (PPG).

In the world of ad tech, advertisers utilize KPIs to measure the performance of their ad placements, whether done in house or via an agency/consultancy. Common KPIs include CPMs, CPAs, CTRs, etc. Although KPIs are useful tools to measure an organization’s performance against its end goals, we must be wary not to let optimization KPIs overshadow the ultimate goals.

Common KPIs

• Cost Per Mille (CPM): The cost of buying 1,000 impressions
  • CPM = (Cost of Ads/ Impressions) *1,000
• Click Through Rate (CTR): The rate of which clicks are generated versus the number of impressions served
  • CTR = Clicks/Impressions * 100
• Cost Per Click (CPC): The cost of each click
  • CPC = Spend/Clicks
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Also known as cost per action, CPA measures how costly it is to drive a consumer to do a certain action, such as make a purchase or register for an email list
  • CPA = Spend/Actions
• Viewability: Viewability is an important ad quality metric in ad tech that measures the whether or not an ad actually reaches a set of eyeballs. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC), a display ad is considered viewable if 50% of the pixels are in-view for at least 1 continuous second. For video ads, the same holds true except for 2 continuous seconds.
  • Viewability = Viewable Impressions/Measured Impressions
• Video Completion Rate (VCR): The percentage of all video ads that play through the entire video. There are also the 25%, 50%, and 75% variations.
  • VCR = Video Completions/ Video Starts
• Conversions Rate: The percentage of users who undertake in the desired action
  • Conversion Rate = Conversions/Clicks
• Return on Investment (ROI): Measures how much profit the initial investment generates
  • ROI = Net profit/Total Investment * 100
• Other Key Metrics to Consider
  • Revenue
  • Cost/Spend
  • Profit (Revenue – Cost)
  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • Fradulent Impressions
  • Brand Unsafe Impressions
  • Engagements

Aligned Goals

Within a company hierarchy, there can be vastly different goals at different levels of the ladder. Whereas the C-Suite may be rewarded for total company performance and growth, a trader at an agency or trading desk may be rewarded based on the number of impressions or clicks that they can muster. However, it could very well be the case that the trader actually buys many fraudulent and unviewable impressions, thus “performing well” according to their KPIs but actually hurting the overall performance of the company.

An example on the publisher side is traffic acquisition and traffic monetization. Whereas a traffic acquisiton manager may be compensated on the number of users it drives to the site, the revenue monetization manager may be compensated on the amount of revenue it can drive per user session. If the acquired traffic is all from bots, the monetization manager would have a very hard time monetizing traffic!

Ultimately, KPIs are useful tools to gauge company performance over time. However, they should be regularly adjusted and reviewed at all levels of the company to ensure that they promote actions which drive the profitability and sustainability of the company.

Sources

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-most-important-digital-marketing-kpis-track-rameshwar-thakur/
• https://ziftsolutions.com/blog/2017/09/digital-advertising-kpis-your-keys-to-measuring-performance/
• https://www.digilant.com/digilant_university/programmatic-buying-101-digital-marketing-kpis/
• https://blog.adext.com/en/important-kpis-measure-digital-marketing-advertising-strategy
• https://datorama.com/blog/2018/05/23/top-advertising-kpis-paid-media-dashboard/

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

— Abraham Lincoln