Video Ads with Native Companion Products
This guide will walk you through implementing AdButlers' VAST + Native Ad Companion solution for customers using their own VAST-compliant video player.
Table of Contents
Import and sync your Product DB Create your Native Product Template (the creative asset to go along with your video) Create your Advertiser, Campaign, Ad Item and Assignment Making the VAST Ad Request Parsing the VAST Ad Response
Import and Sync your Product DB
Our ProductDB API documentation has not been imported into our public facing API documentation as of yet, but can be viewed from our public documentation link available here
Creating your Native Product Template
- From your AdButler dashboard, click on the “Templates” section from the Navigation Menu.
- Select “Manage Native Ad Templates”
- Click “Add Native Ad Template” from the top right corner of the table.
- Select the appropriate type of ad you wish to create.
- In this example, we’ll select ‘Product’ as the Native Format type.
- Select your Product Catalogue.
- Using CSS/HTML, design your ad unit using the Product Catalogue variable placeholders.
Create your Advertiser, Campaign, Ad Item and Assignment
This link lets you learn more about creating advertisers, campaigns and ad items. In this example, you’ll be creating a VAST video campaign.
After you’ve created your VAST video campaign, you will add your VAST 2.0 ad item.
Complete the summary and linear media tabs, which contain information about your VAST Ad item and the linear video asset that your video player will play.
Next, select the ‘Companions’ tab and from the ‘Resource Type’ menu, select ‘Native Product.’
Then, you will want to select the product from your product catalogue linked to this campaign. Any variables used in the Native Product Template will automatically be replaced with the corresponding fields from this product in your catalogue.
Next, from the product template dropdown, select your newly created Native Product template.
Lastly, before saving the ad, click on the ‘Advanced Options’ button, and you will find “Ad Slot ID”. This will be the DIV element on your page where this ad will render.
Assign your VAST campaign to your zone; you can read this guide for help with campaign assignments.
Making the VAST Ad Request
From your VAST zone, click get “Get Zone Link” button on the right-hand side, and you will be presented with a URL that looks like this:
This is a standard VAST URL, however you may wish to append additional query parameters to this URL to handle advanced targeting and reporting capabilities.
Additional Parameters
| Parameter | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ip | client-side ip | used for passing in client-side IP addresses for targeting. |
| keywords | your keywords | used for passing in comma separated list of keywords used for keyword targeting. |
| pdb_search | your search string | used to pass in a search string to match relevant ads from your product catalogue if applicable. |
| _abdk[DataKey] | Key Value Pairs | value used for passing in key-value pair data-key targeting. |
| _eld[EventName] | Custom Event Details | value used for passing in custom event log data in your event log reporting |
Parsing the VAST Ad Response
While your video player will likely handle most of the ad response for rendering the linear media file itself and tracking the standard VAST metrics such as quartiles, mute, reward etc. In order for your companion item to render, you may or may not need custom parsing, depending on your video players functionality.
Video Players that support Companions and Ad Slot IDs
Some video players may automatically handle Companion Ads, and you may simply need the corresponding DIV ID element on the page that matches the Ad Slot ID that you entered into your Ad Item earlier in this tutorial. If that's the case, congratulations, you're done!
Parsing the XML for <CompanionAds>
Contact support@adbutler.com for assistance.
