Outstream ad impressions are video ad units that are unaccompanied/followed by video content. While a pre-roll ad requires a publisher’s video to wrap around, an outstream ad is a video ad unit not tied to any piece of publisher video content. It can be added to the corner of the page, between paragraphs of text, as a video banner that sticks on top or on the bottom of the window, a video that appears over your website, etc.
They are designed to be viewable while the website visitor is either scrolling or interacting with the page containing the outstream code.
Step by step guide on creating outstream ads
To create a new outstream unit, you need to do a simple set of actions.
- Go to the Outstream tab (1), specify the channel and then source for your outstream unit (2). Click on the + New Outstream Unit (3) button to create it and not forget to name it (4).
- Choose the Outstream type for your unit (5). Currently, there are four main types we designed:
- In-Banner - Standard 300x250 banner size video ad unit, delivered as part of the display ad creative for a given placement.
- In-Read - Video ad unit embedded into the middle of editorial articles for optimal user experience. When visible on the user’s screen, the video plays pauses when the user can’t see it onscreen; it resumes when in view again. The audio starts on mouse rollover.
- Interstitial - a video ad unit that overlays page content and disappears when the view is completed or if the user skips the ad and continues to their intended content.
- Slider - a video ad unit that appears in the bottom right corner of the webpage and stays there when the user scrolls through the webpage.
* Launch when player visibility is (6) option allows you to set up a visible percentage of an outstream unit to play (e.g., if it is set up for 50%), the ad creative will start playing in 50% viewable by user screen ).
* When the player is invisible (7) option allows you to apply the action type to an outstream unit outside the visible zone. Five variants are available here: Pause, Continue playing, Continue Playing Muted, Close, Detach and Jump. - Jump method shows the advertisement to the users even when they scroll through the page in the different locations. Take one script from the Outstream unit configuration method with the Jump "When the player is visible" setting. After that, place the same script into the different parts of the same webpage. The jump method will expand as a usual In-Read or In-Banner unit once the user reaches the first script placement. After the user scrolls down (before the advertisement ended), the first Outstream unit will fold. Still, the Jump Outstream unit will expand at the next script location and keep showing the advertisement from the moment it stopped in the previous placement. You can place as many Jump Outstream units on the same page as you need.
- Select the player size (8) of your outstream unit in the correspondent section. You can set your custom values for the width and the height.
- Set Frequency capping per user (9) limits the max number of times the unit performs for a specific user per web page and can be set manually. You can also choose when the frequency capping per user works (Frequency capping period (days)). In this example, the ad will be shown 5 times during two days for a specific user.
- Choose one of the three audio options applicable to a specific outstream unit: Always On, Always muted, On hover (10).
- Select the one that fits your needs. You can also set up the sound volume of your unit using the volume bar (11).
**Disengagement method (12) applies solely to Interstitial units allowing you to select one of two possible options and determine the actions applied to the player: Close button or Detach button.
- Close button (13) option, in its turn, includes three variants: Show After, Do Not Show, Based On The Ad (max). If you select the first variant, then you will be able to set the time for the close button to appear.
- After choosing the second variant - Detach method, three additional parameters appear in the settings:
- Detached player location - the location where you want the detached player to be placed. (Bottom right, Bottom left, Center right, Center left, Top right, Top left)
- Detached player size (width and height in pixels(It is automatically set up according to the width parameter)).
- Detach button also represents three options: Show After, Do Not Show, Based On The Ad (max).
- After choosing the second variant - Detach method, three additional parameters appear in the settings:
- Add countdown field option (14) enables or disables countdown before the close button appears. Here you can set up how long the countdown will last.
- You can also set up controls (15) visibility in this section. There are two options to choose from Show Controls or Do Not Show Controls.
- Animation mode option (16) allows you to control outstream unit expansion speed on the webpage. There are five types of animations:
- Ease - an outstream player starts expanding slowly, then speeds up and ends up slowly until the unit reaches its full sizes entered in the setting;
- Ease-in - an outstream player starts expanding slowly and speeds up until it reaches its full sizes;
- Ease-out - an outstream player starts expanding quickly and slows down until it reaches its full sizes;
- Linear - the speed of the animation remains unchanged during the expansion;
- Step-start - an outstream player appears on a page without animations.
- An adaptive option (17) allows the outstream unit to fit the width of the browser window. There are three options available:
- All: an outstream unit will fit the width of the screen in the desktop and mobile environments. The player sizes in the source settings will be ignored.
- Mobile: an outstream unit will fit the width of the screen in the mobile environment.
- Off: an outstream unit will use the original size specified in the settings.
- The ratio (18) is the proportional relationship between video width and height. Video standards available:
- 16:9
- 3:4
- Passback tag (19) field allows adding a tag or a script to receive video or display ads if all the campaigns in the Connection did not provide ads for the Ad Request.
- Select Passback size (20) in pixels to define the ad unit size. You can also select custom size from the drop-down menu. Outstream unit size values are used by default as Passback size.
Add outstream ads on a website.
Once you are done with all of the settings, click Create at the right bottom of the page, and the outstream code (21) will appear in the very bottom field of the page.
Please copy a piece of JavaScript code from that field and paste it into every page of your website, depending on the type of unit you created:
- In-Read outstream unit fits the visible text zone of your web page best.
- In-Banner outstream unit fits the banner zone of your page best.
- Interstitial outstream unit should be pasted after the opening tag <body> since it will be activated on a page load.
- Slider outstream unit can be added to any part of the webpage.
It will be activated on a page load if "Launch when player visibility is" is set to 0%.