Vast in HTML5 video player

Question

I am currently trying to implement vast/ima ads into my html5 video player. I am looking at this tutorial for ads: https://developers.google.com/interactive-media-ads/docs/sdks/html5/client-side

My questions are:

1. Do I need to use this library? (ima sdk) What cant I just parse vast xml files, get the data and play ad video MediaFile in my player directly? Would I miss something in this setup? I know I need Clickthough url triggered when user clicks on linear or non linear ad.

2. what are these Tracking events? https://www.adbutler.com/help/article/vast-track-events . And in what way is my player suppose to send them somewhere? I cant see any info or code example about this.

Answer 1

Do I need to use this library? (ima sdk) What cant I just parse vast xml files, get the data and play ad video MediaFile in my player directly? Would I miss something in this setup? I know I need Clickthough url triggered when user clicks on linear or non linear ad.

This library is made to be VAST compliant. This means it will handle all the creative inner tracking generation. Yes you can do your own video wrapper by scrapping the vast response but you will :

1. make sure your wrapper is fully VAST compliant
2. have to maintain your wrapper over time

Here is the full specification from the International Advertising Bureau (IAB). As you will notice VAST protocole is not just about click tracking. It supports viewthrough rates and interaction measurement.

what are these Tracking events? https://www.adbutler.com/help/article/vast-track-events . And in what way is my player suppose to send them somewhere? I cant see any info or code example about this.

These are basically what you will need to trigger to make sure your player is VAST compliant. For instance, for the "Midpoint" event it means : once the ad video has played half of its length, your player has to trigger the attached tracking (usually a pixel url ping).