Great news for publishers with video inventory, at last! The IAB jumpstarted discussions around standardizing communication protocols between video players and servers – I wish the initiative took place half year earlier and save me and my coworkers a great deal of guesswork and improvisation around building our player (www.muzu.tv) and enable in-stream advertising (due next week, by the way). We’re working on it these days and we’re definitely going to share our experience, grievances, and, of course, successes

NEW YORK, NY (July 29, 2008)—To meet the need for standardization in the expanding digital video landscape, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release of a “Digital Video Ad Serving Template” (VAST), designed to standardize communication protocol between video players and servers.

VAST will allow companies to build digital video players and video ad servers that have the same interfaces and speak the same standard language. Publishers who use the standard will be able to plug into multiple third-party digital video ad servers and networks without additional development and therefore enable a powerful tool for improving yield.

This document:

- Defines a standard ad response for in-stream video
- Provides specifications that are compatible with any video player framework
- Includes guidance for most on-demand video players (i.e., Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and Real Player)
- Includes accommodations for linear video and interactive ads (e.g.“pre-roll”) as well as non-linear ads such as clickable overlays as described in the IAB Digital Ad Format Guidelines
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