Over the Top and Connected TV Certification Process

Overview

The Integral Ad Science (IAS) Over the Top (OTT)/Connected TV (CTV) certification process ensures the IAS VAST-based measurement solution provides an accurate measurement on a media partner's OTT/CTV properties.

Certification

IAS certification applies at the app version level, across all the relevant devices needed.

Ongoing discrepancy checks after certification should ensure that IAS and the media partner discover new issues. IAS strongly encourages media partners to proactively notify IAS of upcoming changes to the app version or device footprint, enabling both teams to test early and avoid problems.

Certification requirements

To make the certification process as efficient as possible and reduce resource requirements on both teams, IAS requires timely responses to the following requests:

• Trafficking of tags to production and staging environments.

• Delivery of reports for in-progress certification campaigns.

• Information on any reporting nuances (how numbers are generated).

• Information related to your video playback infrastructure, including SSAI (server-side ad insertion) and CSAI (client-side ad insertion) components, devices, apps, players, and degree of VAST support.

Troubleshooting requirements

If discrepancies exceed a 10% threshold, IAS requires the ability to run a creative asset with IAS tracking enabled on at least one relevant OTT/CTV device. IAS advises the media partner to provide this access as soon as the certification process starts, or soon afterword, for an efficient certification process and for post-certification campaign discrepancy analysis.

All tags used for certification need a special debug parameter ias_xdebug=true for IAS to capture additional debugging data. IAS provides examples at the start of certification.

Certification steps

1) IAS sends pixels to the media partner for trafficking, along with this document of instructions on the data requirements associated with those pixel requests.

2) The media partner trafficks the pixels.

• The pixel traffic needs to represent the full range of partners the media partner is using for monetization, including programmatic and direct.

• The media partner and IAS may need to coordinate a phased approach to testing different sets of inventory.

3) The media partner works with their IAS certification manager to provide regular publisher-side reporting.

• IAS compares the regular publisher-side reporting to IAS reports to find and resolve any discrepancies.

• The acceptable target for discrepancies is below 10% per placement for more than seven days in a row. The discrepancy is calculated on at least 10,000 impressions total.

4) IAS collaborates with the media partner to discover and resolve the cause(s) of a discrepancy larger than 10%, if discovered.

Data requirements

Minimal requirements

IAS requires at least the following data from the media partner:

• VAST events: an IAS-provided pixel is fired for the following events: start, impression, firstQuartile, midpoint, thirdQuartile, and complete.

• Support for a placement ID and a campaign ID macro to correctly associate the data with a given placement.

• Support for an app bundle ID that includes the name and the version of the app.

• Standards-compliant support for HTTP header data on incoming requests:

  • CSAI or SSAI with client-side beaconing:

    • user-agent

    • host

  • SSAI with server-side beaconing:

    • X-device-user-agent (reflecting client device).

    • X-device-ip or x-forwarded-for (reflecting client device).

Desired requirements

OTT/CTV devices are a relatively new addition to the advertising ecosystem, and as such, the industry has been willing to accept reporting based on a limited number of data points. IAS expects this to change rapidly and is already advising both agencies and advertisers, as well as media partners, to support the need for additional data.

VAST 4.1 specified a list of additional data points that, ideally, is transmitted via macro from the media partner player to agency ad servers and verification partners. IAS believes the following subset of data points should be the first priority for media partners who want to support buy-side demand for quality OTT/CTV inventory:

• Information to identify issues with new devices and SSAI.

  • [SERVERSIDE] (boolean) and/or [SERVERUA] or equivalent.

  • [IFA] and [IFATYPE] (if it can be used to flag the type of device) or equivalent.

• Information to help IAS avoid and troubleshoot discrepancies: [ADSERVINGID] (unique impression ID) or equivalent.

• Information to support brand safety verification.

  • [APPBUNDLE] (used for bundle ID, etc) or equivalent.

  • [PAGEURL] (if relevant).

  • Any content info that can be provided (title, description, rating, etc); this is currently unstandardized.

IAS welcomes collaborative discussions from media partners on the availability of these and other data points, both for immediate and future support. IAS believes in being well-aligned with media partners to develop a supported data set that underscores the value of this emerging inventory to advertisers and agencies.