• February 6, 2009

The Interactive Advertising Bureau on Thursday announced the release for public comment of Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions Guidelines.

The definitions in the new guidelines are intended to help the interactive industry define a standard method for video ads to communicate with video players and enable ad compatibility across all VPAID-compliant players, as well as to provide specifications that can be implemented by any type of video player.

Additionally, the guidelines are meant to help cut production costs, and improve ROI for advertisers, while enabling a less intrusive experience for video content viewers.

Until now, video ads could only be posted on publisher sites that supported the same technology as an agency did when creating the ads. With VPAID, publishers adhering to these standards are expected to be able to render any type of video ad from any video ad serving technology that also adheres to the standards.

Likewise, the IAB is assuring advertisers that adopt the standards that the ads they create are usable by any ad serving technology and publisher.--Gavin O'Malley