Feature: VAST Unwrapper module

[karimMourra]

Type of issue

Feature Request

Description

The Video Committee has identified the need for a module capable of unwrapping VAST URLs. This would provide information that is valuable to publishers and vendors acting on behalf of Publishers, such as:

• Does the VAST tag respond with a valid ad
• the duration of the Ad
• the Universal Ad ID
• The creative ID

Technical Requirements:

• supported inputs:

  • VAST tag URL as string
  • VAST XML as string

• Configuration options:

  • max amount of redirects

• can request the VAST tag URL

• can parse the VAST XML

• Supports VAST versions: [TBD]

• returns metadata including the following information:

  • was the response invalid
    • response was empty
    • max redirects exceeded
  • Ad System
  • Ad Serving ID
  • Advertiser
  • Pricing (Refer to section 3.4.8 of the VAST 4 spec)
  • Expires (Refer to section 3.4.10 of the VAST 4 spec)
  • VAST version
  • Total amount of Ads
    • greater than 1 for ad pods
  • Total ad duration
  • for each Ad element:
    • ad duration
    • Universal Ad ID
    • sequence in pod
    • ad type (video, audio, hybrid.)

Other information

[bretg]

Thanks @karimMourra - any chance you can flesh out the "returns metadata" section with where this metadata should be placed?

As I see it there are 2 options:

• Identify where these go in ORTB (e.g. seatbid.bid.price, seatbid.bid.exp)
• for values without an ORTB location, define the appropriate or new Prebid "meta" field. (https://docs.prebid.org/dev-docs/bidder-adaptor.html#interpreting-the-response)

[patmmccann]

We've considered and not done this work in the past because unwrapping vasts causes them to not be able to be unwrapped again or causes ivt alarm bells to go off on the campaigns

[bretg]

We've considered and not done this work in the past because unwrapping vasts causes them to not be able to be unwrapped again or causes ivt alarm bells to go off on the campaigns

This is an important observation. Both the Audio and CTV committees have requested a Prebid Server VAST unwrapping module. @fowler446 did some testing on this recently.

[lcorrigall]

PMC: We see the value in having this and it seems useful. However, there are concerns about the impact of the performance of the browser downloading and parsing the wrapped VAST. Overall, the PMC if fine with building this out, but we're unsure how much it would get used given that impact.