Video terminology

[bretg]

The Video Taskforce debated the instream/outstream terminology. This is what we came up with.

The IAB has identified the use cases as perceived by the user in https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/AdCOM/blob/main/AdCOM%20v1.0%20FINAL.md#list_plcmtsubtypesvideo

1. Instream: Pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads that are played before, during or after the streaming video content that the consumer has requested. Instream video must be set to “sound on” by default at player start, or have explicitly clear user intent to watch the video content. While there may be other content surrounding the player, the video content must be the focus of the user’s visit.
2. Accompanying Content: The video player loads and plays before, between, or after paragraphs of text or graphical content
3. Interstitial: Video ads that are played without video content. During playback, it must be the primary focus of the page and take up the majority of the viewport and cannot be scrolled out of view.
4. No Content/Standalone: Video ads that are played without streaming video content.

However, though there are 4 use cases, there are only 2 types of integrations from a Prebid perspective:

1. In-Player: There's a video player already in the page. The publisher has to use the video module or supply a javascript function that passes bid responses to the player. The player calls the ad server. Prebid does no work at all to talk to the ad server or to render -- the player does all the work. Prebid's job is just to pass the bids.
2. In-Renderer: There's a renderer script but Prebid needs needs to do a lot more work than for the In-Player scenario. (a) Prebid communicates with the ad server as normal. (b) If it wins the auction and needs to render, there is special rendering activity required. (c) Prebid needs to create an iframe and do the appropriate thing to load and invoke the renderer.

The documentation needs to refer to the IAB's new terminology, mapping those use cases to the actual Prebid implementation. Here's a proposed mapping:

IAB scenario	Prebid Implementation
Instream	in-player
Accompanying Content	in-player
Interstitial	in-player or renderer depending on implementation
No Content/Standalone	in-player or renderer depending on implementation

[bretg]

Turns out I don't like the phrase "Prebid Renderer". Been trying to update some docs with this awkward new language. I would prefer "In-Renderer" rather than "Prebid Renderer", and I would like to be able to use the phrase "Not Instream" to encompass IAB scenarios 2, 3, and 4.

[bretg]

We discussed in the video taskforce. 'In-Renderer' was accepted as the least-bad solution we could think of.

FYI, I'm working on the AdOps and Mobile sections of the site and will make this update.