The VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) 4.0 specification was released in January 2016, but hasn’t seen widespread adoption. Some recent updates point to an opportunity for successful pickup of the standard.
In this paper we lay out the reasons for this current state, and call on the industry to adopt the proposed changes.
In VAST 2 and 3, little facility was provided to enable measurement, particularly for viewability/verification. VPAID, originally intended to enable interactivity, was adopted as a way to facilitate this measurement. However, the use of VPAID introduces additional latency, presents risk in the execution of arbitrary code, and isn’t supported on mobile nor SSAI inventory. VAST 4 attempts to address these gaps.
