Tech Talk: Succesfully Transitioning to HTML5 Video

For, literally, years we have been discussing the technical shift in the marketplace away from Flash to HTML, for well-documented and persuasive reasons.

Last year, this shift occurred for rich media and display advertising, but for various reasons (outlined in a 2016 blog post), it has taken longer to take effect in the video market.

However, the time is finally upon us. Google has published two deadlines, which should be enough to help video publishers get over the Flash-to-HTML5 transition hump in 2017:

 
• Starting April 3rd, 2017, new Flash video ads will no longer be able to be uploaded into DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords.
 
• Starting July 3rd, 2017, Flash video ads will no longer be able to run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers or AdWords. Additionally, their Active View and Verification tools for video will no longer use Flash.

While Innovid operates at the behest of agencies and advertisers, and will continue to support whatever tag a publisher on the media plan requires, we are, however, strongly in favor of a clean and rapid migration to a single technology base. Straddling two technologies increases cost and complexity for all companies in the digital marketing ecosystem.

We have been supporting HTML5 VPAID at Innovid for over 2 years and have helped support early efforts to migrate some of the industry’s leading video players. To provide widespread and concrete help to video publishers, we are making an HTML5 VPAID tag available for your use in testing as you go through the process of making your players and systems compatible with HTML5 VPAID:

https://rtr.innovid.com/r1.58d0290183e480.45884558;cb=[timestamp]

The test tag provides an interface that you can use to fire all VPAID events, as well as an output field showing all the VPAID events as they occur.

We invite questions and feedback on the tag, as well as the transition period at htmlfeedback@innovid.com. This offer, of course, extends to agencies and advertisers as well as publishers.
(Developers – here’s the VPAID spec.)

Good luck!