What is VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) and why is it Important?

Video ad revenue has been explosive growth over the last couple of years and ad spending in digital video continues to accelerate, thanks to the emergence of mobile and OTT and the increase of CTV usage (among other things).

While display adv uses standardized browser tech to request and execute ads, digital in-stream video and audio adv operates on media players.

That’s why video ad standards have been developed separately and mostly around the Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), the standard of choice for programmatic and targeted ad delivery.

VAST is a communication standard crafted by IAB for structuring ad tags that serve video/audio ads to media players, making the delivery and monetization more efficient.

Using VAST, ad servers can serve ads to any VAST-compliant player. It also can deliver ads programmatically or include ads with complex interactions.

As the video ecosystem has evolved, VAST has evolved too. The current version is VAST 4.2 (released June 2019) that solves several challenges around ad delivery and measurement, aiming to create an easy and more transparent workflow between partners.

The AdTech industry has already started the adoption of the new version.

And you?

Have you already included the latest version of VAST in your product roadmap?

-LB

Other sources: see in the LinkedIn comments.

Previously posted by Luca Brighenti via LinkedIn.