Home Mobile Updated MRAID Spec Could Be A Mobile Video Demand Driver

Updated MRAID Spec Could Be A Mobile Video Demand Driver

SHARE:

TodJenSpecs and standards aren’t that sexy, but industry experts say the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s recent video addendum to rich media standard MRAID could be one of the keys to unlocking more programmatic mobile video dollars.

MRAID is a mobile standard, used by many publishers and app developers, to render and serve mobile rich media programmatically. However, there is no common standard for mobile video.

Most mobile publishers support VAST [Video Ad-Serving Template] standards for video, which Jennifer Lum, co-founder and chief strategy officer for Adelphic Mobile, called a “template-based way of dealing with video.”

There are alternatives, however, notably a VAST overlay called VPAID [Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions] that gives advertisers more visibility into how their videos perform.

“This latest addendum to the MRAID spec allows mobile app publishers to include VPAID [Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions] video app support within their environment, which is a more detailed and involved method than VAST,” said Lum.

Providing VPAID support within MRAID diversifies measurement to include things like completion rate, views or plays within interstitial units. In addition, it could help decipher whether an impression was video or rich media-based, which could improve publishers’ overall executions, she said.

Adelphic’s platform historically saw four times more MRAID-compatible inventory than video-compatible inventory, and Lum said a “hybrid” mobile/video spec of sorts could help even out that mix.  

During the BrightRoll Video Summit on Thursday in New York, company CEO and founder Tod Sacerdoti said he’s seen a significant gap between mobile video ad requests and number of impressions served, which still indicates insufficient measurement.

A big issue with mobile is that it mostly has unique, non-standard formats, which makes standardization and consistent measurement challenging, he said. BrightRoll along with other mobile and interactive video ad platforms like Opera MediaWorks and Innovid were part of the MRAID Working Group to push for greater simplification in mobile support of VPAID events.

“Our supply growth massively outpaces the demand to the point where we’re saying, ‘There’s something wrong here and I think that that something is consistent measurement,’” added Bruce Falck, COO for BrightRoll and former head of Google Display Network.

He said it’s an industrywide problem.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

“I saw this lag in mobile demand with DBM [DoubleClick Bid Manager] and AdX [DoubleClick Exchange] too when I was at Google,” he added. “People spent years learning to buy on cookies and then mobile just leaves them wondering what to do, but I do think we will see explosive growth for mobile video in 2016.”

Lum said she’s encouraged by maturation in mobile video measurement on the buy side. While a marketer’s initial objective may be ensuring the video content they’ve invested in actually gets views, gradually they wish to augment mobile video into their broader media mix to determine ROI impact.

“In the first wave of testing in mobile video, completion rate was the key metric, but we’ve found higher percentages of marketers moving away from only being focused on completion rate to conversions and post-click actions,” she said. “Once we get more of that attribution in place, it will drive more dollars.”

Must Read

Comic: Off-Platform Media

How RMNs Use MFA And Cheap Inventory To Game Attribution Rules

Retail media is built on its attribution quality, but real purchases can be gamed by programmatic metrics and create perverse incentives for RMNs to serve ads across low-quality inventory.

There’s A Lot Wrong With Google’s And Meta’s Non-Transparent ‘Refund’ Practices

Google and Meta are playing with fire. Their opaque refund practices have already exposed them to customer blowback – and could lead to class-action lawsuits by disgruntled advertisers.

Comic: The Great Online Privacy Battle

How US Intelligence Agencies Buy And Use Programmatic Data For Surveillance

Mike Yeagley, an independent contractor who has scouted and acquired commercial data and technology on behalf of intelligence agencies, is one of the earliest evangelists of using ad tech tracking information to identify and surveil government targets.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Comic: The MFA Cafe

Adalytics Report Torches Ad Tech For Touting MFA Prevention While Scarfing MFA Supply

Practically every ad tech vendor has put out a press release in recent months full of bluster about cutting out made for advertising sites – and yet supply sources remain oversaturated with garbage inventory.

Cloud-Based Collaboration Is Ad Tech’s Post-Cookie Lifeline – But Will It Last?

Cross-cloud data collaboration technology is the best bet for a post-cookie solution. But it’s vulnerable to similar privacy concerns.

Topsort Raises $20 Million To Seize The Post-Cookie Market Opportunity This Year

Topsort raised $20 million, with plans to seize the 2024 opportunity for post-cookie ad tech.