Video Ad Serving Template Explained

Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) is a specification defined and released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) that sets a standard for communication requirements between ad servers and video players in order to present video ads.

It is a data structure declared using XML.

VAST has 8 versions: 1.0 (deprecated), 1.1 (deprecated),^[1] 2.0, 2.0.1 (the schema version as the official VAST 2.0 schema),^[2] 2.6, 3.0,^[3] 4.0,^[4] 4.1 and 4.2.

Request

In order to play a video ad in a video player, the video player sends a request to a VAST ad server.

It is a simple HTTP based URL that typically appears as follows:http://www.example.com/?LR_PUBLISHER_ID=1331&LR_CAMPAIGN_ID=229&LR_SCHEMA=vast2-vpaid

Response

The ad server responds with a VAST data structure that declares these parameters:

• The ad media that should be played
• How the ad media should be played
• What should be tracked as the media is played
• The companion ad that should be displayed alongside the master ad

For example, the above request returns the following response (trimmed): LiveRail ....... 00:00:09 ....... ...... ......

See also

• Interactive Advertising Bureau

Notes and References

1. Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) Version 3.0. Grenager. Teg. 2012-07-19. Interactive Advertising Bureau. 2015-05-14. 8.
2. News: Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) 2.0. IAB - Empowering the Marketing and Media Industries to Thrive in the Digital Economy. 2017-06-01. en-US.
3. Web site: Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) .
4. Web site: Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) .