Ad Serving for VAST

[chompi]

Original author: [email protected] (July 22, 2011 21:28:36)

There should not be a separate mechanism for retrieving VAST markup. The auction conversation between exchange and bidder should not vary by ad unit. I’m not sure if the intent is to call both the win notice and then the VAST URL or just the VAST URL, but either way the VAST URL should be eliminated and returned on the win notice URL; in the case of a VAST video, this is essentially the served ad markup. The seller and/or SSP are quite capable of detecting whether the response markup is XHTML or VAST XML and will be expecting to make that determination based on the fact that it allowed VAST video in the bid request.

To amplify the point, when serving the ad in the bid itself (Section 4.4.1), the spec allows the VAST XML to be returned in the “adm” parameter just like XHTML. The seller and/or SSP will have to make exactly the same determination in that case. There is no reason for the win notice URL to be any different.

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/openrtb/issues/detail?id=32