Review programmatic video creatives
Overview
With the Video creative review tool, you can review programmatic video creatives and reject them in your network. The tool is also able to automatically block video creatives that generate errors. The video creative review supports both in-stream and out-stream video creatives across all environments (web/app) and across all programmatic monetization channels (open auctions, private auctions, deals etc.)
Access
To access the Video creative review, go to Inventory > Video creative review.
Video creative review mode
The video creative review comes with two different modes:
- Post-delivery review — default mode; in this mode, the video creatives are delivered right away, without the need of explicit preliminary approval; only the explicit manual rejection of a creative by a user has an actual impact on ad delivery
- Pre-delivery review — in this mode, each creative requires approval for delivery; by default, no video creatives are served in your entire network at all — you must approve each creative manually to allow its delivery; mode available upon request only
Browse creatives
Time range
By default, the video creative review shows data from the last hour - with a delay of 30 minutes. For instance, if the current time is 10:55 and the selected time range is set to "Last hour", then the creative list will show the data from 09:25 till 10:25. You can adapt the time range to show data from the last 6/12/24/48 hours.
The time range selection applies to the metrics only. The Status column always shows the status in real time.
Running versus rejected creatives
You can view:
- Running creatives which are being served and have not been rejected/auto-blocked (read about auto-blocking in section "Automatic blocking of bad creatives" below)
- Rejected creatives which have been rejected by a user or auto-blocked, as explained in section "Automatic blocking of bad creatives" below
Filters
You can set one or multiple filter(s). Available criteria:
- Advertiser ID/Name/Domain
- Deal ID/Name
- Partner ID/Partner Name
- Autoblock (see "Automatic blocking of bad creatives" below)
Once you have selected the criterion, the most relevant values are shown at the top of the list for convenient selection.
Creative list
For each creative in the list you find:
- Status
- Labels - label(s) indicating features of the creative; at this time, only the VPAID label is available, indicating that the creative complies with the IAB's VPAID standard
- Advertiser
- Partner
- the number of files the video creative consists of (various resolutions, encodings, file formats etc.)
- Creative ID
-
Metrics
- Error rate - calculated with the formula [Video Error Count / (Video Error Count + Impressions)] * 100
- Delivery rate
- Bids - the number of times this creative was returned in a bid response
- Impressions
Creative detail view
Click on any creative in the list to display further details on the sidebar.
On the sidebar you will find:
-
Information & Metrics
- Preview
- Current error rate
- Chart displaying the recent trend of the error rate (either network error rate or global error rate, depending on the settings in your network - see section "Network error rate vs. global error rate" below); the time window shown in the chart corresponds to the selected time range (e. g. last hour)
- Current status by deal type - note that if your auto-blocking rules specify differing thresholds per deal type, the same creative may have different statuses by deal type; for instance, if you have set a threshold of 50% for Preferred Deals and a threshold of 60% for Private Auctions, then a creative with an error rate of 55% would be Auto-Blocked in Preferred Deals but still be Running in Private Auctions
- miscellaneous information
- Metrics
- VAST - access to the VAST XML file to Copy or Download
For a given creative ID, the VAST content may still change on the day it was retrieved in a bid response for the first time. Therefore, to ensure a consistent experience, any new creatives retrieved by Equativ on any given day become available at 00:00 of the following day. Creatives older than 6 days, including the current day, are no longer available in the Video Creative Review.
Rejecting creatives
To reject a creative, go to the Running section, hold your mouse over the creative and click on Reject. The creative will be moved to the Rejected section. To undo the rejection of a creative, go to the Rejected list, hold your mouse over the creative and click on Cancel. Creatives that were blocked due to the auto-blocking mechanism (see next chapter below), cannot be unblocked manually.
Any rejection/cancellation of rejection of a creative takes a maximum of one hour to take effect.
Creatives that were blocked from delivery due to rejection, receive the dedicated bid status "Blocked By Creative Review Rejected". The bid status is available as a dimension in Instant Insights and Instant Report Builder, as well as in RTB Health.
The Rules impact feature in private auctions/preferred deals does not affect the manual rejection of a creative made in the Video creative review tool. The rejection of individual creatives is always enforced.
Automatic blocking of bad creatives
How it works
Equativ automatically blocks bad creatives, i. e. creatives that generate a large amount of errors. The default error rate threshold triggering the automatic blocking of bad creatives is 50%, i.e. by default, any creatives generating an error rate greater than 50% are blocked from delivery automatically.
The error rate (in percent) is calculated with the formula: [Video Error Count / (Video Error Count + Impressions)] * 100.
Creatives that were blocked automatically, are shown with Status Auto-blocked on the Rejected list.
Even if blocked, the bad creative will still be allowed to win a small amount of auctions, so that Equativ is able to determine if the bad creative has been fixed on the demand side in the meantime.
Setting a custom error rate threshold
To modify the default error rate threshold, click on Auto-blocking rules and set the desired error rate threshold for open auctions (default threshold) and for the deal types (Private Auction, Preferred Deal, Programmatic Guaranteed).
If no threshold is defined for Private Auction, Preferred Deal or Programmatic Guaranteed, the open auction threshold is used instead for the given deal type.
Setting a very low error rate threshold may seriously impact monetization in your network. Equativ strongly recommends to first check the error rates in the past, using Instant Insights, and then set the threshold accordingly.
A bad creative is blocked only if it has won a minimum of 10 auctions. The error rate is computed for the last hour and remains valid for 24 hours. Creatives without any traffic over 24 hours are unblocked, i. e. the automatic blocking mechanism is reset.
The Rules impact feature in private auctions/preferred deals does not affect the automatic blocking of a creative done by the Video creative review tool. The automatic blocking of individual creatives is always enforced.
Creatives that were blocked automatically because their error rate was above the defined error rate threshold, receive the dedicated bid status "Creative Blocked By Error Rate". The bid status is available as a dimension in Instant Insights and Instant Report Builder, as well as in RTB Health.
Network error rate vs. global error rate
Equativ calculates two types of error rates:
- the network error rate representing the error rate the creative generates in your network; this error rate is shown in the Error rate column in the creative list of the Video creative review UI
- the global error rate representing the error rate the creative generates across all of Equativ’s networks, i. e. across all of Equativ’s publishers/supply sources; this error rate is not visible for Equativ customers
By default, the global error rate is the basis to auto-block creatives: if it exceeds the error rate threshold specified in the auto-blocking rule, the creative is blocked. Therefore, you may see creatives not being blocked, even though their network error rate is higher than the defined threshold. Such cases indicate that the error source is likely to be found in your video advertising implementation, rather than in the creative globally.
If you prefer auto-blocking based on the network error rate (instead of the global error rate), reach out to your service contact at Equativ who can enable this mode in your network.
Disabling automatic blocking
To disable the auto-blocking mechanism, you can set a threshold of 100% so that only creatives having a 100% error rate get auto-blocked. However, the bad creatives will still be allowed to win 10% of auctions, so that Equativ is able to determine if the the creative has been fixed on the demand side in the meantime.