Support of CONTENTPLAYHEAD VAST macro

Clément Pinchedez

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Jun 19, 2019, 8:52:32 AM6/19/19

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Hello,

According to Vast 3.0 IAB specification (https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/VASTv3_0.pdf - section 2.4.4). Video player are expected to support the [CONTENTPLAYHEAD] macro.

[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]: replaced with the current time offset “HH:MM:SS.mmm” of the video content.

I tried a simple VAST tag with this macro on some tracking events or click through URLs on the Video Suite Inspector (https://developers.google.com/interactive-media-ads/docs/sdks/html5/vastinspector) on desktop (my UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.169 Safari/537.36). The VAST XML tag is attached to this post.

...
<TrackingEvents>
 <Tracking event="start"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/start?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="firstQuartile"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/quartile1?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="midpoint"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/quartile2?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="thirdQuartile"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/quartile3?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="complete"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/complete?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="skip"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/skip?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="pause"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/pause?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
 <Tracking event="resume"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/resume?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></Tracking>
</TrackingEvents>
<VideoClicks>
 <ClickThrough id="Criteo"><![CDATA[https://criteo.com/click?playback=[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]]]></ClickThrough>
</VideoClicks>
...

In Chrome devtools, I notice that the CONTENTPLAYHEAD macro is not replaced when the video player calls the tracking event URLs.

Can you tell me why? Do Google IMA SDK plans to implement this part of the VAST spec?

Thanks in advance,

Clement

vast_contentplayhead.xml

IMA SDK

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Jun 19, 2019, 2:11:32 PM6/19/19

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Hi Clement,

Thank you for reaching out to us. We've investigated the VAST XML you shared and no linear asset was found when i ran it against our VSI (see screenshot attached). In order for the SDK to send the event trackers URIs containing the CONTENTPLAYHEAD macros, the ad must be displayed. Also, the CONTENTPLAYHEAD is not always available because the SDK doesn't always know where it is, therefore the SDK won't replace it.
The IMA SDK Team is continuously implementing new features so that the IMA SDK can remain 100% compatible to all the IAB's VAST Specifications.

Regards,
Arnaud Casame
IMA SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UBoBcQ:ref

no_linear_assets.png

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Clément Pinchedez

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Jun 20, 2019, 5:42:59 AM6/20/19

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Hello Arnaud,

That's weird that you get a 403 error regarding the VAST I sent you. I try to forge a new VAST with new media files (the media files are taken from the sample VAST of the VSI). You should be able to launch the ad now.

If the VAST I send you is still invalid, can you send me a sample of VAST where CONTENTPLAYHEAD macro would be replaced?

I am aware the CONTENTPLAYHEAD macro might not be always available. At least I expect it to be replaced on quartiles, click or complete events.

Regards,

Clement Pinchedez

vast_contentplayhead.xml

IMA SDK

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Jun 20, 2019, 2:05:31 PM6/20/19

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Hi Clément,

As of the VAST Spec v4.1 , the CONTENTPLAYHEAD macro is deprecated (see screenshot attached), we don't use it or replace it anymore. Now we use the ADPLAYHEAD and it is replaced whenever the value is available to the SDK. We don't any VAST XML sample that would have the [ADPLAYHEAD] or [CONTENTPLAYHEAD] macros integrated.

[CONTENTPLAYHEAD]_deprecation.png

Clément Pinchedez

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Jul 1, 2019, 11:09:48 AM7/1/19

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Hello,

Thank you for your answer. I replaced CONTENTPLAYHEAD by ADPLAYHEAD macro and it works for tracking events.

On the flip side, it does not work on the ClickThrough URL. It seems no macro are actually replaced on the ClickThrough URL. Is it an expected behaviour?

We would actually like to redirect the click to a different URL location based on the time the user clicked the video.

IMA SDK

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Jul 1, 2019, 4:53:01 PM7/1/19

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Hi Clément,

The IMA SDK replaces the [ADPLAYHEAD] whenever the PLAYHEAD value is available, in your use case, the PLAYHEAD value was not available (variable was not filled) when the click-through event happened.

Clément Pinchedez

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Jul 2, 2019, 5:22:33 AM7/2/19

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Hello Arnaud,

I am not sure about this. I actually clicked the Ad after the quartile event was triggered. In that case the ADPLAYHEAD macro was replaced in the quartile event URL called, but it was not replaced in the ClickThrough URL.

I did the experiment with another macro a priori independent of the PLAYHEAD value, TRANSACTIONID. I have the same behaviour, the transaction id macro is not replaced in the ClickThrough URL.

Here is a snippet of my setup:

...

...

That is why I suspect macro are never replaced in the ClickThrough URLs. Can you confirm this?

Thanks in advance,

Clement

IMA SDK

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Jul 2, 2019, 2:59:43 PM7/2/19

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Hi Clément,

As per the VAST XML specifications v4.1 macros such as [ADPLAYHEAD] and [TRANSACTIONID] can only be used and replaced in <Tracking> elements urls and Ads requests urls, they are not allowed anywhere else in the VAST XML, specially in <ClickThrough> elements.

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