Best Practices For Video Ad Serving

By Author: John Z
Total Articles: 61
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Video advertising is popular because it is easy to consume within a short amount of time. People are getting busier and busier. They have many options available on the market to consume content. Video is consistently one of their first choices because they can digest a lot of information quicker than reading multiple lines of plain text. With the expansion of high-speed cellular networks, especially with 5G, video ad serving is everywhere because it's fast and effective.

Optimize load time
Video files are bigger than other ad formats so it is important to take ad loading time into consideration for an overall positive user experience. If your page takes more than 3-5 seconds to load then users might move to another page or even another site altogether. Using a fast CDN (Content Delivery Network) to host your video files is the first step. Next option is lazy loading video ads. With this approach, the main page has a higher priority and is loaded first. Ads are loaded after the page finishes loading or only when it comes into view.

Limit number of ads
Too many ads creates a negative user experience because ...
... the ads overwhelm viewers. They are unable to focus on the main content. Pages will take longer to load. Viewers will bounce to another page or even another site. Even worse, they might turn on ad blocker or specifically add your site to the block list. It is best to start with a simple layout and carefully add suitable ad placements depending on several factors such as page traffic, time spent on page, length of main video content, etc.

Know your audience
An ad is only effective if it is relevant to its viewers. First you need to know your target audience. It is important to understand their interests, location and the types of devices they are using. Second, you need to apply suitable targeting and restrictions to the video advert when you create it in the ad server. For example, you might want to have multiple video files with different video resolutions so that the ad can scale up and down accordingly, from small mobile phones to big screen TVs.

Choose the right video ad server
A video ad server can help you manage your ad inventory more effectively and maximize your ad revenue from video ads so it is wise to choose a suitable adserver from many ad servers on the market. You should first gather a list of requirements and features that you need. The chosen ad serving solution should offer multiple ad formats in addition to video ad serving because you do not want to use different ad servers for different ad formats. That would be inconvenient and difficult to manage. The video ad server should support the industry standards such as VAST, VMAP, VPAID, etc. so you can use one solution to work with different video players, advertisers, ad networks, and ad exchanges. Selecting the right ad server can save you from a lot of hassle and unnecessary waste of your energy, effort, and resources.

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