mid roll ads

[Colin]

We're going to be doing multiple mid roll video ads. Was that something that ever worked? If so, how does the ad video play in the player without disturbing the currently paused main video?

For now we're going to do the feature by having an FLVPlayback component on top of the bcPlayer, but if there's already a better way in place, that would be worth trying. 

[BC-BrandonA]

Are you looking to halt the video and display the video ad or is it that you want your ad to display over the player as it keeps going (similar to what you see with a standard text overlay ad, like Google's AdSense for video)?

[Colin]

The main video would be paused, and set going again when the video ad finishes.

[BC-BrandonA]

Oh, perfect. That's actually really easy to implement. You won't have to do any Flash coding at all. The player can already playback FLV videos at mid-roll ad insertion points. As long as the ad that's being returned to the player from an ad server is in the right XML format, you'll be all set.

For now, since it's quicker to test, try setting this up as your ad tag URL: http://brightcove.saluteyourshorts.net/library/advertising/samples/video_only_01.xml? 

That will give you a lovely demo ad. You can also take a look at that to see how the XML needs to be setup for a video only ad. Make sure that for your player, in the advertising module, that you have the mid-roll ad insertion point enabled.

Now, the tricky part that could be very easy to overlook. You'll need to go to the BC2 console to assign those mid-roll cue points before an ad can play there. Go to http://admin.brightcove.com/console and under the Titles tab, you can edit a title and go to the Cue Points section. Scrub to where you'd like to add a cue point, click the "Add Cue Point" button and make sure to change its type to "Ad" (it defaults to "Code"). You can name it anything you'd like, it doesn't matter. Don't forget to check the "Stop Video at Cue Point" check box, since you don't want the video to keep playing. Now that video is primed to make an ad call at that position. 

Let's say for instance that you have the ad policy for the player set up like so:

• Video Based Ads
  • Play first ad on video number: 1
  • Ad frequency: every 1 video
  • Number of ads to play: 1 
• Insertion Points (right-hand column)
  • Player load ads = no
  • Pre-roll = yes
  • Mid-roll = yes
  • Post-roll = no

The experience you'd see (again, using that XML file which will give you an ad every time and is helpful for testing) is that the video ad will play when the video starts (either automatically or when you click the play icon), and again when your mid-roll ad cue point gets hit.

This probably seems like a lot of work, but it's really not. I just wanted to be really thorough and help you understand everything that's going on. Let me know if you have any questions. If all goes well, you should be able to use your own ads in an XML format like that soon, coming back from an ad server and all that fancy stuff.

Hope that helps.

- Brandon

[Colin]

Thanks for taking the time to write all that. We're already using BC2 and cue points to set chapter markers, that we shown to the user. We could easily change to Ad cue points, and use those as chapter markers, just for the benefits of triggering the ads.

We do also need to show a message to say how long the ad has to run, but hopefully we can pick up on the ad start events.

I'll let you know how it works out. 

[SteveWarren]

Hey Brandon,

I'm working with Colin on the mid roll ads.  Thanks for your detailed reply - that got me exactly where I needed to be last night.

I had success with the test ad tag you supplied, but not with a DoubleClick ad tag which has a differently named root node in the XML than the ginger ale test. 

The one that works looks like this:

<videoAd trackPointTime="" version="1" trackPointURLs="" duration="15" trackStartURLs="" trackMidURLs="" trackEndURLs="">

Where the one I'd like to use looks like this:

<myClientsDoubleClickAd duration="15" trackStartURLs="http://ad.doubleclick.net/imp;[...plus a bunch of specific id numbers separated by semicolons...]" trackMidURLs="" trackEndURLs="">

I notice 1) the node name is different and 2) there's a trackStartURLs attribute that I don't understand completely.

Beyond that, there's a videoURL and a videoClickURL, and a few other tags inside the DoubleClick XML.

Can I get this ad tag to work easily, without custom programming?

Thanks again for your help!

-steve

Message Edited by SteveWarren on 01-22-2009 01:12 PM

Message Edited by SteveWarren on 01-22-2009 02:03 PM

[SteveWarren]

PS - I see my client is using this Custom Ad Format elsewhere on their site.  Still trying to figure out how to make it work it in my player.

[BC-Erika · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve,

I'm assuming you're using DFP?

The formats that the players will recognize natively would need to have the first word matching one of these supported formats:

http://help.brightcove.com/developer/docs/advertising/ad-formats.cfm

i.e. "videoAd", etc. - these are as provided in our ad creative templates.

If it doesn't match any of these, it would be considered a custom ad format and would require some coding.

The player wouldn't recognize a custom ad format on its own, so you'd need to do some coding to deliver the relevant pieces to the player. That can typically be done in one of 3 ways:

An Ad tag translator:

 http://help.brightcove.com/developer/docs/advertising/ad-translator.cfm

Your translator could also be used in a Module if you're using a custom template:

http://help.brightcove.com/developer/docs/playerapi/create-components.cfm

Or you could handle the ads externally using externalAds, which is generally the desired method if there are elements in that custom ad format you want to display outside the player on the page:

 http://help.brightcove.com/developer/docs/advertising/external-ad.cfm

Note: if it's a customized player template, a custom ad format still won't work natively.The only supported formats for custom templates are listed in this new article:

http://help.brightcove.com/developer/topics/advertising/custom-templates.cfm

Erika

[SteveWarren]

Thanks Erika!  I've gotten ads to play properly.  Turns out I had to change my approach, and develop my custom controls as a component, and overlay the controls using a custom BEML template. 

I was originally trying to load my player as a custom SWF that created an instance of the BrightcovePlayer inside it, without using a proper BrightcoveExperience module on my HTML page.

Hope that makes sense!  Your comment helped me achieve my "a ha!" moment.

-steve warren