An Insight into the Basics of Dynamic Ad Insertion

Among the main components of the modern video ad servers is its transparent reporting, which gives its users an insight and allows them to formulate intelligent decisions, while they manage their ad campaigns.

These days, media owners require tools which help them evaluate the enactment of ads on their stock so that they can optimize profit and ensure that their user’s experience is not impacted negatively. Correspondingly, advertisers tend to rely on the accuracy in reporting of every impression that they purchased to aid them in understanding the metric they’re receiving and adjust consequently to maximize their efficiency.

However, getting access to all this information won’t take you far enough, unless you too lay your hands on the tools in order to act on it. And this is exactly where the dynamic ad insertion technology comes into play.

What is Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI)? 

Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) can be said, a server-side video ad technology which facilitates you in serving video ads into the live linear programming and in the video-on-demand content. Dynamic Ad Insertion technology brings your ads and the video content into a sole stream, which is independent of a web page, and removes from the SDK, the ad response process and ad requests. As a result, the probability of client-side omissions is reduced, and a seamless TV-like experience is produced without any buffering between the content and the ads.

There are a few dynamic ad insertion companies such as Amagi, which help you target the individual ads for the live linear and the video-on-demand programming, based on the user who is viewing the topic.

Dynamic Ad Insertion: Requirements 

While the Ad Manager tries to provide multiple supported options, DAI has got some additional requirements which ensure that only your premium content is combined with the premium video ads.

1. Transcoding

The method of accepting the ad in one format and then getting it converted into another format is called Transcoding. When it comes to live linear dynamic ad insertion technology, the ads are started in the linear format and later transcoded into the digital format.

2. VAST compliant

The IAB’s (Internet Architecture Board) Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) is the video format which is designed to standardize the communication between the video player and server, this facilitates the traffic that exists across all sorts of publishing platforms.

3. Uniqueness

While you create your DAI network, you must make sure that you set up ad units that are DAI-specific. This step will aid you in tracking and reporting the DAI campaign delivery, preventing the non-compliant video ads from becoming a target to the DAI inventory, and getting the trafficking errors reduced.

4. Video ad ingestion

Prior than deploying your DAI campaign for a live linear or a video on demand, the video ad content should be either ingested or uploaded in the Ad Manager DAI CDN, this is where it gets transcoded in the needed HLS variants.

However, one must keep in mind that If video ingestion and video transcoding are not done prior to launch, they will arise on the very first monetizable impression. Therefore, one must set up a test campaign for all the DAI campaigns to ensure the eligibility, transcoding, etc. for the video ads.

Setting up of test campaigns 

Following steps need to be followed to set up a Test Campaign:

1. Booking and testing of directly sold campaigns.

2. Booking and testing of programmatic buys.

3. Writing a script that requests streams along with targeting parameters.