New Video Ad Classification Will Alter How Marketers Direct Budgets

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab has updated the technical specifications for digital video ads, designed to provide media buyers with more choices and introduce more transparency, whose definitions will help determine the flow of billions of dollars in advertising budgets.

In the new classification system, each category can be evaluated by the presence or absence of user intent and the presence or absence of editorial video content.

In-stream inventory remains the most selective tier. To qualify as in-stream, the ads must appear alongside editorial video content, just as under the previous guidelines. 

The video can prove user intent through one of two methods—by being set to sound-on by default (a condition introduced in the August guidelines) or by having explicitly clear user intent to watch the video content (a new condition).

Playing a video with the sound on serves as a proxy for user intent, Bannister explained. 

But Google Chrome prevents videos from playing with the sound unless a user has changed their settings, so the “explicitly clear user intent” clause serves as an allowance for that fact. For instance, someone watching a video using subtitles, rather than audio, clearly demonstrates intent despite not using sound. 

The next category, accompanying content, must also play alongside editorial video content, but it does not require user intent. This category was created to reflect the vast chasm in relevance between premium, in-stream video and standalone video ads, said Jenn Chen, the chief revenue officer and president of video vendor Connatix.

The third tier, interstitial, deals with only a handful of scenarios. These ads do not accompany editorial video content, but they take over the entire screen, often during a mobile video game. Because they commandeer the screen, the IAB Tech Lab created a carve-out to distinguish them from the fourth tier.

Finally, no content/standalone, as the name implies, includes standalone video ads with no editorial content and no clear user intent.