Native VAST Ad Tag Waterfalling, Expanded Ad Scheduling, Chromecast Update
JW Player 6.10 is now available across all of our platforms. This release adds simplified and more powerful advertising capabilities along with expanded functionality for Google Chromecast.
Improved Advertising Capabilities
As video advertising continues to rapidly grow in popularity, we strive to deliver new functionality to help publishers take advantage of this monetization opportunity. In JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition we added new and simplified capabilities for VAST Ad Tag Waterfalling and Ad Scheduling. The ads control bar has also been refined based on many customer requests to fade away after the ad starts playing.
Native VAST Ad Tag Waterfalling
JW Player 6.8 Ads Edition was the first to implement VAST 3.0 video advertising in a simple, straightforward way, supporting VAST tags from nearly any Ad Server/Network. JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition builds on this industry-leading VAST capability by adding native Ad Waterfalling support.
To better understand the value of Ad Waterfalling, lets look at the problem it is trying to solve: Ad Fill Rate. When a video player makes an ad request, there is the potential for that ad request to not return an ad. The Ad Fill rate is the percentage of ad requests that are fulfilled and return an ad. In practice, this means that publishers are not able to monetize every video play.
Ad Fill Rate
JW Player (and other video players) can support VAST Wrappers which can provide a type of ad waterfalling, but the ad waterfall setup comes directly from the Ad Networks or Ad Servers, so the publisher does not have control.
Enter Native Ad Waterfalling in the JW Player. This powerful functionality allows a publisher to pass multiple VAST Ad tags into the JW Player and have the JW Player automatically call those VAST Ad tags in sequence. For example, the first VAST Ad Tag provided would be for the preferred ad network or ad server, i.e the one with the highest CPM and potential fill rate. The other VAST Ad tags would be for networks with lower potential fill rates or lower CPMs.
Ad Waterfalling
While Ad Waterfalling was possible using earlier versions of JW Player, it required additional Javascript development and could be complicated to implement. JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition removes all of this complexity and makes it just as easy to add multiple VAST Ad Tags as a single VAST Ad Tag.
With Native VAST Ad Tag Waterfalling in JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition, publishers can increase their fill rates with a simple, easy to implement solution that provides publisher control over the Ad Tags in the waterfall, meaning that a publisher can potentially monetize more of their inventory and ultimately make more money!
Ad Scheduling
JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition provides a number of key enhancements to Ad Scheduling including the ability to have a separate ad schedule per item in a playlist as well as more granular timing specification for ad playback.
Ad Schedule Per Playlist Item
Using JW Player 6.10 Ads Edition, publishers have the ability to adjust the placement of ads on a per content item basis within a playlist for more relevant and targeted ads. Simply put, this new capability will allow publishers to increase their ad inventory by expanding beyond pre-rolls for longer content.
More Granular Ad Schedule Timing
In previous versions of JW Player, ads could be scheduled to the second. Now with JW Player 6.10, ads can be scheduled with millisecond precision using the natural way to represent a cuepoint in the video timeline: a hh:mm:ss.mmm format. This enables publishers to have ads inserted in exactly the right spot for a better mid-roll ad insertion user experience. In addition to the expanded precision, the Player will accept percentages, making it even easier to setup ad breaks when the video content length is not necessarily known.
Google Chromecast Updates
Cast from iOS
In JW Player 6.9 we added a native Google Chromecast implementation, allowing a publisher to easily add OTT/casting capabilities to their web experience on Desktop (PC/Mac). With JW Player 6.10, we have added official support for Chrome on iOS for both iPhone and iPad using the built in casting capabilities of JW Player and Chrome for iOS. This provides publishers with the same simple, native Google Chromecast implementation, but now with more broad device coverage to enable casting of content to the big screen from mobile, tablet and desktop…all without having to build a native application.
Closed Captions on Chromecast
Content with closed caption text data can now have that closed caption text displayed along with the content on the Chromecast and includes FCC caption styling support.
Summary and What’s Next?
In July, we announced our move from Subversion to GitHub, with one of the benefits being easier and faster development. With the release of JW Player 6.10, we were able to add new functionality and enhance existing functionality faster than ever before, and we plan to continue a steady and rapid pace of product delivery.